After four years of ‘struggle’, US wipes out ISIS in hours as Syria awaits a new era

Alameen Templeton
After struggling valiantly and unsuccessfully for four years to wipe out ISIS in eastern Syria, United States bombers “finished the job” in about five hours of concentrated bombing early Monday morning.
Forces News reports the US air force launched dozens of lightning strikes against dozens of ISIS camps with B-52 high-altitude bombers, F-15 Eagle and A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack fighter bombers.
End of an era
It was a grand finale to a four-year campaign in which Washington preferred to allow ISIS to continue functioning and disrupting civil life in the desert terrain in the east of the country as it weakened the Assad regime.
That function of convenience ended the moment Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over Damascus Sunday morning and former-president Bashir al-Assad fled with his family to exile in Russia.
“[The aim was] to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria,” US central command said Monday, Associated Press reports.
ISIS never attacked America’s Al-Tanf military base in the east of the country. Russian, Iranian and clan militia on the ground repeatedly claimed over the past four years that ISIS was only attacking Syrian targets and was periodically resupplied with weaponry by the Americans at Al-Tanf.
So, America’s air strikes against 75 targets over Sunday night probably caught its ISIS allies by surprise.
13million refugees waiting
No one in Syria is mourning the demise of ISIS that controlled the bulk of the country just nine years ago. That situation was turned around only by Russian air support for the Assad regime and ground support from Iran.
Today, 13 million Syrian refugees – about 6.7million inside Syria and about 5million scattered in refugee camps in foreign countries – are hoping to go home soon.
Centcom official General Michael Kurilla issued a veiled warning to HTS and its allies Monday, reminding them of the imperative to “toe the line”: “”All organisations in Syria should know that we will hold them accountable if they partner with or support ISIS in any way.”
That will be reminder to HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, whose birth name is Ahmed al-Sharaa, that any indication he’s returning to his Al-Qaeda roots will not go down well in Washington.
Jolani wasn’t wasting time, getting down to the business of running a government Monday as traffic and life returned to the heart of Damascus. He met overnight with Assad’s prime minister Mohammed Jalali and vice president Faisal Mekdad to discuss a transfer of power to a transitional government, Reuters reports.
That transitional authority will be headed up by Mohamed Al-Bashir who ran HTS’s Idlib governate for about four years.
Returning home
Syrian banks said they’d reopen Tuesday and would continue using Syria’s currency. The oil ministry called on all employees to return to work Tuesday while the feared interior ministry that ran Assad’s police force remained empty while armed rebels stood guard.
Damascus’s 1 300-year-old Umayyad Masjid in the city’s central square is the centre of congregation where victorious rebels and residents are mingling peacefully. Now, fighters are looking forward to returning home and resuming a peaceful existence.
“We had a purpose and a goal and now we are done with it. We want the state and security forces to be in charge,” Firdous Omar told Reuters. He had been battling the Assad government since 2011 and was now looking forward to returning to his life as a farmer in Idlib.
The advance of a militia alliance spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al Qaeda affiliate, is shaping up into what some are calling “a generational turning point for Arabia”.
Front collapsed in hours
Its rapid success caught even HTS and Ankara by surprise, mirroring the sudden collapse of Southern Vietnamese Army Forces in Vietnam at the end of its war with the US in the 1970s. There too, army generals tried to reorder their front line in the face of a small Vietcong offensive, ordering a withdrawal to more secure positions.
But the initial withdrawal was misinterpreted as a general retreat that then dissolved in to a full-scale collapse of the front as soldiers panicked and fled in their tens of thousands, descending on the capital, Saigon, within a matter of days.
Al-Assad’s flight ended a war that had killed hundreds of thousands and flooded European and other countries with five million refugees who fled the fighting.
Entire cities were bombed to rubble and atrocities committed against friend, foe and civilians became commonplace as the economy was hollowed out by war and US sanctions.
Rebuilding brotherhood
Assad’s fall removes one of the main bastions on which Iran and Russia relied to wield regional power. Türkiye has emerged undoubtedly strengthened by the outcome.
“The Arab world faces the task of reintegrating one of the Middle East’s pivotal states, while containing the militant Sunni Islam that has in the past metastasized into the sectarian violence of Islamic State.
“HTS is still designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations, but has spent years trying to soften its image to reassure foreign states and minority groups within Syria,” Reuters reports.
Moscow might not be pleased with the unfolding events, but that did not prevent Syria’s revolutionary flag from being flown outside its embassy in Moscow; the nameplate was removed Sunday, Anadolu Ajensi reports.
“Today, the (Syrian) embassy opened and operates as usual under a new flag,” a source in the country’s diplomatic mission told Russian state news agency Tass. He added the embassy was awaiting instructions from Damascus’s new leadership.
It confirmed Al-Assad was in Russia but denied any contact with the deposed leader.
The head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence agency said Monday HTS could be removed from the list of banned “terror” groups if they behave themselves and the country stabilises. At the moment, the UK remains excluded from contact with HTS because of its “terror” designation.
Ticking the boxes
The BBC reports Cabinet minister Pat McFadden said “obviously” HTS’s designation needed to change, saying: “They’ve been proscribed for quite a long time now.
“The leader of that group has distanced himself in a way from some of the things that have been said in the past. He is saying some of the right things about the protection of minorities, about respecting people’s rights. So we’ll look at that in the days to come.”
The questions hanging over HTS are being asked on both sides of the equation; genuine mujahideen in rebel ranks also have expectations, some diametrically opposed to the West, many anathematic to their interests, like having a legitimate Muslim government ruling Syria.
Given the strong Muslim Brotherhood presence in many of the main cities like Hama and Homs that attracted much attention from the Assad regime, other Arabian countries are watching developments warily as they unfold.
Ahmed al-Shara (Jolani) has voiced a willingness to disband HTS if it’s in the interests of the country to build national unity.
Meanwhile, Nazi Israel has wasted no time, effectively annexing a “buffer zone” inside Syria along its borderline and is striking all weapons, ammunition and arms manufacturing centres across the country.
Several Arabian countries are demanding its withdrawal as the region settles down to digesting the new reality and considering its future ramifications.