A statue of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad being pulled down. Picture: X/@marwanbishara
As the Department of International Relations (Dirco) continues to monitor the development in Syria, an international relations expert said the fall of the Asad regime is expected to indirectly impact South Africa, but warned the country will have to tread carefully if there are changes.
Syrian rebels freed the capital Damascus from President Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship early on Sunday after a week of military advances against his forces, bringing an end to the more than five-decade rule.
Russian state media confirmed that Assad members of his family arrived in the Russian capital Moscow on Sunday.
A Kremlin source told the TASS news agency: “Russia, for humanitarian reasons, has granted them asylum.”
The fall of the Assad regime has profound implications for the major players in the Middle East, but how will it impact South Africa?
Speaking to The Citizen, Professor Alex van den Heever from the Wits University School of Governance said the fall of the Assad regime will largely have an indirect impact on South Africa.
“I don’t think South Africa had strong relationships with any of the affected parties, but it’s more perceptual. So for instance, Russia is a country that is affected so that forms part of the Brics arrangement.
“Iran which has been introduced into the Brics arrangement would also be severely affected. But the whole Middle East configuration is likely to change and this is going to create new dynamics,” Van den Heever said.
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He said Russia will likely be further weakened as a result of the Assad regime fall and the asylum granted to Bashar and his family.
“So the Ukrainian War has definitely impacted [Russia’s] economy, it [has] impacted its military structure and it’s struggling, and Iran, which has been aligned to Russia, is now also showing considerable weakness.”
Van den Heever said the African National Congress’ (ANC) non-aligned stance could also be affected.
“I think that to the extent that the ANC part of government, it’s argued that it had a non-aligned position, but it was quite clearly very strongly affiliated or at least showing a preference toward Russia is likely to be affected by its weakness.”
Van den Heever said while there will not be a lot of change in terms of narrative for the Brics arrangement, there is a significant change in the power structures of the Middle East region.
“So Syria is now going to be a very different country and that’s going to be a very interesting development to look at going forward. It’s effectively a shift from Shia to Sunni and its alliances are going to be quite different and that’s going to affect the whole security construct in the Middle East.
“That’s probably going to allow for things like the sort of gas pipelines etc to pass through Syria to Turkey, etc, which has an impact on Russia’s economy. So all of those kinds of things are going to impact. The relationships are now fundamentally different,” Van den Heever said.
Van den Heever said the fall of the Assad regime will likely cause ripple effects in Syria for some time.
“It’s not quite clear what kind of government Syria is going to get because whenever a government is constructed out of such turmoil, it takes a long time for institutions to stabilise because very often it merits corrupt efforts to take control, etc and it doesn’t immediately gel into a cohesive society.
“We will have to wait and see, but I expect that there will be a large attempt to kind of get those institutions working, but we don’t know how successful they would be.”
Van den Heever said Syria will also have to navigate the reverse immigration that happened because of the Syrian War.
“Millions of people went to Turkey, they went to Europe, there were a million Syrians that went into Germany, which impacted on their politics. So European politics and their own agreement structures were impacted by the Syrian War. Now we’re seeing a reverse, people are crowding to get back to their properties, to their houses. So that changes quite a lot of the political dynamics in Europe as well, which had a big right-wing shift because of the migration out of these conflicts into Europe and now that reverses.”
Van den Heever said there is a joker in the pack that is played out in Syria.
“The joker in the pack is going be people like [Donald] Trump and how the US government responds to this because he’s been seen as being quite close to Russia, but he’s also not very consistent. So we’d have to see how US policy develops over time in relation to the Syrian issue. But, it’s a joker in the pack but he probably will go with the flow.”
Van den Heever, however, does warn that South Africa should tread carefully.
“I think that if there’s a very big change, South Africa will have to tread very carefully in this because their historical affiliations probably have to be reconsidered,” he said.
International Relations Department spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told The Citizen, that they are aware of what is happening in Syria.
“Through our embassy in Syria we are monitoring the situation in Syria and will comment at an appropriate time,” he said.
Meanwhile, senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said the way forward for Syria should espouse:
“Freedom, not fear, patriotism, not sectarianism, justice, not revenge, political transition, not militant control reconstruction, not destruction.”
More than 600 000 people had been killed in Syria’s civil war as of March 2024, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that closely monitors the conflict.
More than half of the prewar population of 23 million had been displaced, either to other regions inside Syria or to other countries, according to the United Nations. That made it one of the gravest refugee crises since World War II.
ALSO READ: What we know about the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad
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