SYRIALines on a 1916 Map May Not Keep Syria Together
The question most observers are now asking is: what if any form of stable central government might emerge from this lightning fast upending of the power dynamics in Syria? A possible lesson from history is that insurgent armies of diverse allegiance, religion and ideology are capable of capturing cities, but their ability to administrate them is less certain.
Hayat Tahrir, al-Sham (HTS) led by Abu Mohammed el-Golani, has just taken Damascus. The officials of the Assad regime, and the administrative authorities are apparently in caretaker mode pending a transition of power. However, the capture of Damascus will be just the beginning to a massive change in the balance of power in the Middle East and perhaps the world.
The question most observers are now asking is: what if any form of stable central government might emerge from this lightning fast upending of the power dynamics in Syria? A possible lesson from history is that insurgent armies of diverse allegiance, religion and ideology are capable of capturing cities, but their ability to administrate them, ensuring supply of essential services and rule of law, less certain. It remains to be seen as to whether HTS can hold together the disparate elements that make up the forces that overthrew the Assad regime.
There are clear losers in the form of Russia and Iran at this stage, but it is not clear what major powers will move to fill the vacuum. Turkey has an obvious interest, but even there lies risk with the involvement of the US backed Kurdish groups in the East. Nature and geopolitics abhor a vacuum, and the fall of the Assad regime will generate a vacuum. Although HTS have apparently managed to transition from freedom fighters to administrators in Aleppo, there is no guarantee that the multitude of groups that make up Syria will accept this group as the legitimate government of Syria in the longer term.
The boundaries of Syria were set following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, along with Jordan, Trans-Jordan, Lebanon and the British mandate of Palestine. The lines on the map drawn Mark Sykes and Georges Picot in a secret agreement in 1916, known as the Picot-Sykes Agreement, in anticipation of victory over the Turkish Ottoman Empire. It did not remain secret for long with Russia publicly releasing the documents to the protagonists and participants alike, laying bare British and French ambitions for the region.
Like many European borders drawn before and after the First World War, lines on maps did not match the population already present. The agreement initially saw the formation of one or more Arab states, conditional on Arab forces capturing Damascus, Homas, Hama and Aleppo.
