'World has gone a little crazy'

President-elect Donald Trump said this in France as news rolled in of Syrian regime folding before the rebel onslaught of largely the HTS - a group known to have risen from asking for basic rights some 13 years back. That Damascus fell and the HTS now has replaced the forever ruler of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, is history on repeat. The Assads empire lasted for only 54 years - Dad Assad ruled by force and ruthless repression for thirty of those while Son Assad could only make 24 years. As HTS workers called out in the dungeons of the presidential palace below where prisoners had been kept for years at stretch, they shouted back, "who are you?", unsure if they were being set up for yet another calamitous end to their lives already hanging by the tether.

Iqbal said this decades ago: Taqdeer ke qazi ka yeh fatwa hai azal se; Hai jurm-e zaeefi ki saza marg-e mafajaat (Death is the ultimate arbiter for pervasive weakness) - sorry, I couldn't do it any better. But you get the gist. Syria was the last bastion in the throes of an Arab Spring of 2011 when young man asking for fundamental rights were crushed by the regime lest the Spring found an anchor. As nation after nation reeled before the phenomenon Bashar al-Assad held off with assistance from Iran and Russia. Initially Turkey too helped but she has been a strange companion needing separate treatment. Iran and Russia were understandable supporters of the regime given that the US was at the back of the entire upheaval around revolution in digital connectivity. Those that were zaeef (frail and fragile) were easily swept away by this tsunami of people's uprising.

But why and how was Syria, the inheritors of Mesopotamia and Babylon, so enfeebled under another dynastic stint in the modern times? When force wins you power through non-democratic authority - Dad Assad was the commander of the Syrian Air Force when he forced a coup - and establish the rule through oppression, suppression and repression the cycle of history repeats leaving no chance than to submit to popular discontent. Millions were forced to flee and escape the turmoil under his ruthless reign. Popular opinion was easily tweaked to give Dad Assad the perpetuity in power. When he finally died, he handed power over to the son as was the wont of monarchist autocracies. The people below were forcibly muted as military forces reigned over them marginalising masses.

The dad and the son had a choice: establish systems of governance enabling the common man his right to life and property in equal measures for all, or rule by decree. Both chose the latter and ruled by decree. Syrians in millions were forced to leave and live as diaspora across the world. Many have felt exuberantly relieved at this change of fortune though what might follow will hardly resemble reassuring order. If at all it is another Libya in the making where only boundaries denote, with fiefs divided between sharecroppers without a central authority to mimic a state. With five different axes of advance from five different directions by the respective militant groups often in contention against each other, Syria will be the playground of the armed resistance fighters of various denominations under respective patrons for a long time. Iraq exhibits that even better. Turkey, Israel, the US, possibly Iraq and Iran, remnants of ISIS and AQIS, and Russia who has bases in Syria, all have a finger in the pie.

As the chain of Middle East autocracies began unravelling Syria was equally buffeted with its multi-ethnic and multi-faith composition. That armed groups had found root there from Iraq, Lebanon and Iran meant the authority of the central government was already limited and compromised. Three patrons helped at a cost - Iran, which began using Syria as a conduit to sustain Hamas and Hezbollah; Hezbollah which used Syria as its strategic depth in return for propelling the Bashar al-Assad order in the face of melting reliability and professional capacity of Syrian armed forces; and, Russia which formed an air and a naval base to mind its strategic interests in the region and the Mediterranean even as it gave Bashar al-Assad the assurance of its security. Syria thus remained in the crosshairs for all the wrong reasons. The force of the Spring may have been quietened for a bit, but it was never dead. As soon as the environment enabled an artificially kept order was dismantled in hours.

A weakened and dependent Syria, divided along ethnic and sectarian lines, manifested by militancy and armed groups, patronised by international and regional players each with its own strategic interest to mind, minus a central direction in a fragmented nation stood dissolved at the hand of an organic sentiment. A leadership - the Assad duo - who ruled by decree than any real investment in their people was as easily dispensed away in divine relief by the masses. They have been celebrating since even as ushers of the new order discover floor upon floor of underground prisons filled with women and children incarcerated in dungeons. A leadership which rules by fear, suppression and decree and leaves no breathing space will soon find the end of its tether even if it had seemed long in perpetuity. People's will must be respected, or they will soon have ideas. Force alone will not keep them aligned.

Highly accomplished and prosperous Syrians live across the street from my brother's in the US. They were from the first migrants from the 1970s Syria of Dad Assad. Patriotic to the core they have remained committed to their homeland through lavish contributions to the cause of freeing Syria from the tyranny of Assads. For them it has been a continuous celebration since. Their ordeal has been redeemed. They may be able to now go back home and visit the graves of their forefathers, but it will still be a long haul before Syria can return to normalcy, if at all. Israel has begun bombing to smithereens of what remains. That is Israel's way of finishing off the last remnants of any 'ring of fire' or a perceptible 'axis of evil'. Strategically she sits at the peak of its own security from impending and imminent threats. It shall be a few generations down that another Hamas and another Hezbollah may find the strength for another round. Turkey, Israel and the US will hold sway over what remains as a new Syria, new Lebanon and a new Gaza beckons. What a time for someone like Trump to walk in and claim the trophy.

Arab Spring is not dead. Iran must be weary. Egypt and Pakistan will do well to pay heed.