Thread by @MartinSkold2

It occurs to me that at least some people have forgotten what happened last time a decrepit Arab dictatorship fell, or might even be too young to have really followed it, so here’s a rundown on what to expect. We have quite a bit of data on this one. cnn.com/world/live-new…

1. The state itself has to be reconstituted pretty much from the ground up, typically incorporating the fighters that helped bring it down where applicable. This takes years and brings out regional differences.

Because Arab state militaries (as opposed to Islamist and tribal militias) are terrible at fighting, the state remains a basket case.

amazon.com/Armies-Sand-Pr…

—Iraq took about 7 years - from 2004 when we notionally handed it off to ‘Ayad ‘Allawi’s government to 2011 when US combat troops left - to reconstitute, and it was beholden to Iranian good graces throughout.

(Anytime Iran wanted something the Shi’a militias - which also had de facto control of the official security forces - could make noise; conversely the old Ba’athist forces went into hiding and merged with the Sunni Islamist insurgents.)

jstor.org/stable/20031907

—Libya is still a mess and even 13 years later has never really consolidated into a state as we would understand it - it has two power nodes (the government and Hiftar’s forces) each comprising a gaggle of militias, with IS kibitzing throughout.

Syria can be expected to follow a similar arc, though it will be distinct in certain respects, since there is no outside occupying force, and the rebel forces are a fairly cohesive Salafi jihadist group instead of a loose coalition like the Libyan rebels.

All else equal, HTS is now Syria’s “army” and governing body.

2. Ethnic majorities rule.

—In Iraq the Iraqi Shi’a, who comprised ~60 percent of the population, became the dominant ethnic group, made explicit by elections, although with clashes between religious leaders (Sistani and Sadr) and armed organizations (Jaysh al-Mahdi, Badr, and the Iraqi state itself)

—Libya was ethnically more homogeneous, but tribes and tribal coalitions came to determine who ruled what.

Syria’s ~70 percent Arab Sunni majority are now in charge; the question will be whether their coalition holds up or fractures postwar along tribal lines.

3. With central authority gone, regional forces assert themselves.

—Iraqi Kurdistan became a breakaway region with not one but two governments; a native Iraqi Shi’a militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, became a major political force, and Al Qaeda in Iraq, later rechristened the Islamic State, consolidated control of the Iraqi Arab Sunnis.

—Libya quickly split into two halves, one ruled from Tripoli and the other from Benghazi, each at war with the other; IS gained strength in between and (waves hand) around.

Syria’s Kurds -may- hold out in their home region if they can be supplied with Iranian arms via Iraq. The fate of Syria’s ethnically fractious coastal corridor is unclear.

4. There are mass prisoner releases, accompanied by revelations of the old regime’s cruelty; inevitably some of these are criminal elements or Islamist terrorists, and law and order breaks down as a result.

This happened in both post-Saddam Iraq and post-Qaddafi Libya; it is happening now in Syria.

5. Globally ambitious Sunni/Salafi jihadist organizations set up shop in any Arabic-speaking majority Sunni area, often aided by the influx of released detainees.

—In Iraq this was AQI/ISI, which later crossed the Syrian border during the Syrian civil war to become ISIS/IS

—IS in turn set up shop in various parts of Libya, which had historically furnished some of Al Qaeda’s most dedicated jihadist recruits via the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group ()…en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Is…

…an HTS-like organization that similarly rebranded itself as anti-AQ to rehabilitate its international image when it joined the transitional government.

A loose coalition of AQ-affiliated groups in turn attacked the US consulate in Benghazi in the now-infamous 2012 attack on the 9/11 anniversary.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Beng…

(Aside: Benghazi is a major recent datum in opposition to the “AQ good, IS bad” narrative currently being pushed.)

Since an actual AQ offshoot has now conquered Syria, the point is almost moot - but the release of IS members from ‘Assad’s prisons will probably rekindle IS’ ambitions.

Whether that leads to a merger or “buyout” of IS with the current jihadist government, or whether they end up in conflict, remains to be seen, but it is unlikely there will be no increase in activity.

6. Jihadist foreign fighters and materiel pour into the security vacuum created by the regime’s downfall, aided by the collapse of its port and border security.

—This was already true of Iraq even in Saddam’s last days (amusingly illustrated in Generation Kill, where as usual Lt. Fick picks up on the significance and Encino Man completely and comedically misses the point).

Over time AQI, by reports, probably hosted the greatest and most diverse gathering of jihadist foreign fighters ever assembled since the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (even as it recruited native-born Iraqis). en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_f…

—It’s speculative, but you really have to wonder if the sudden disappearance of Libyan port security after Gaddafi’s fall…

…and the equally sudden increase in Salafist activity across the Islamic Maghreb (including not only AQIM but Boko Haram and others) were linked as opposed to coincidental.

For reference:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_…

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram

We’ll see in the case of Syria, but otherwise it would be the first time this did not happen, and would require a lot of people to act quite out of character.

https://twitter.com/pegobry_en/status/1866381123586032109

7. Arsenals of the defunct regime get raided/looted to support the jihad.

—This was widely reported to be the case in Iraq, where deserting (and re-forming) Republican Guardsmen formed the initial wave of the Sunni insurgency.

—Not only were arsenals looted in Libya, but the US reportedly got in on the action…

…with stories circulating in mainstream sources of MANPADs (shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles used by infantry to take down aircraft) being run from Libya to the Syrian “rebels” (=what is now called HTS). businessinsider.com/obama-admin-ad…

Assuming that was the case, it’s an open question if they were all used up.

Israel’s strikes on ‘Assad’s arsenals (and major equipment like planes and ships) are clearly designed to prevent this from happening, and represent a rare instance of learning from recent history…

…though it’s rather unlikely on face that they will get all of the small arms and ammunition caches.

8. Ideological differences between various jihadist and even “moderate” groups blur to the vanishing point as groups merge and combine (and diverge and recombine over personality and tribal clashes) and various networks assist all of them.

—In Iraq there may have been a notional initial difference between Ba’athist “dead-enders” and AQI, but a few years in no one was paying attention anymore, and no one does now.

—At least two groups - Ansar Al-Shari’a and AQIM - are alleged to have been behind the Benghazi attack in Libya (see above)…

…which also (as depicted in the film 13 Hours) was aided by desertions (and possibly defections) from the secular forces supposedly providing security for the US. thedailybeast.com/in-benghazi-ci…

It’s fair to ask if anybody even knows or cares at this point.

This is the reason to be skeptical that a group like HTS, which split off from ISIS over what amounted to creative differences, will behave all that differently from the above cases, particularly with lots of IS fighters being released from ‘Assad’s hellish prisons.

9. The country becomes a cockpit for foreign proxy warfare, with each major power choosing their fighter, sometimes tripping over each other in the process.

—In Iraq, of course, Iran took over the Shi’a areas by backing militias that also came to control the official security forces; they had to alternately fight and co-opt Sadr’s more overtly Iraqi Jaysh al-Mahdi to do it.

Meanwhile Turkey maintained its relationship with the Kurdish KDP (which under Saddam had been selling bootleg oil to it, and still does)…

anfenglishmobile.com/news/people-of…

…even as Iran backed its rival, the PUK - …

dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/…

… - but Iran, by reports, came to arm both in time.

middleeasteye.net/news/iran-prov…

Turkey, of course, also had an ethnic obligation to look out for the Iraqi Turkmen, which it very minimally did.

dailysabah.com/politics/diplo…

As for the Sunni insurgency…it wasn’t polite to ask, but you really have to wonder how secure those borders were, and what (largely obvious) motives might have been at work. journals.openedition.org/conflits/10042

(Hollywood can help us here, too - War Dogs is at least based on a true story; you can figure the rest out yourself.)

—In Libya, of course, the US initially acted as the government’s patron; in short order, though, the fight between the government and Hiftar’s breakaway faction became a proxy fight between Turkey and Russia (whose Wagner mercenaries established a strong presence).

Syria, of course, has been a battle royale this entire time, though it’s noteworthy how murky some of the details are. Crudely, Saudi Arabia has backed “the rebels” (=HTS), whereas Qatar by many reports is IS’ bank…

…but if we accept that Turkey has been the logistics hub for both (oft-reported, and anyhow how else do you get Toyota Hiluxes into Syria with the government guarding the coastal corridor?), it’s questionable how careful the package handling was. meforum.org/isis-k-exploit…

In any case, of course, Russia and Iran famously spent heavily in blood and treasure to shore up ‘Assad, and the US backed the Syrian Kurds over Turkey’s objections…but when it came down to it the two “deconflicted” to fight IS.

And, if anyone helps the Kurds now, apart from God, it will, for better or worse, be Iran.

Because HTS now has control of much of the country, it’s unclear how much proxy warfare there will now be. And that may actually be a problem for Israel in particular, which has tended to prefer it when its neighbors were fighting internally.

Bottom line, this is the beginning, not the end, and however much ‘Assad may have had it coming, or what interests people opposing him may have sought to advance, the enemy of our enemy…may well remain our enemy.

As ever.