LARGE NUMBERS of workers and youth have occupied the Damascus residence of the just-deposed President Assad, with Damascus placed under a curfew.
After the collapse, members of rebel group the HTS have arrived to control the situation.
According to a statement from the Al Qaeda-led Syrian rebels, a curfew has been imposed in Damascus beginning at 16:00 local time (13:00 GMT). The curfew was expected to continue until 05:00 local time (02:00 GMT).
At the Turkish-Syrian border, hours after the rebels entered Damascus, there was a group of around 50 Syrian men waiting to go back to their country.
This is the crossing that leads to Idlib, which for years was the rebel stronghold in the north-west, and Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city that was captured from government forces last week.
The Al Qaeda-led attempted coup is a major blow to the Kremlin’s long-standing ambition of expanding Russia’s influence in the region, where the West is already seen as a major oppressor.
Syria was the focus of Russia’s presence in the Middle East, and Bashar al-Assad was Vladimir Putin’s main ally in the region.
Ukrainians may be happy to see Putin’s ally Assad toppled, but if Russia’s troops and military hardware are pulled out of Syria, they may be deployed in the Ukraine.
Western leaders are enthusiasts of the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. French President Emmanuel Macron posted on social media: ‘The barbaric state has fallen. At last.’
Israel is the state that they admire.
France’s Macron, who is under a massive working class attack at home, said: ‘I pay tribute to the Syrian people, to their courage, to their patience. In this moment of uncertainty, I send them my wishes for peace, freedom, and unity. France will remain committed to the security of all in the Middle East.’
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Assad’s fall ‘good news’ and urged a political solution to stabilise Syria. ‘Bashar al-Assad oppressed his people brutally. He has countless lives on his conscience and has driven numerous people to flee, many of whom have arrived in Germany,’ Scholz said, according to the news agency.
UK Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said if the Assad regime has fallen then the government ‘welcome that news’. They would prefer to have Al Qaeda running Syria.
The leader of the Jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has made a statement on Syrian state TV. Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani said there is no room for turning back and that ‘the future is ours’.
‘Syria is in such a strategic location in the heart of the region, what happens in Syria affects all its neighbours and, by extension, the wider world.’
The current scenario is that what happened in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi in 2011 and Saddam Hussein in Iraq after 2003, years of torment, bloodshed, and civil war are on the agenda in Syria.
The Russian foreign ministry has said that deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad left his post and the country following negotiations with ‘other participants in the armed conflict’ and gave instructions for a peaceful power transfer.
It insists that Russia was not involved in those negotiations and that its military bases in Syria are on high alert but not under threat.
Israel has already sent reinforcements to the occupied Golan Heights, which shares a border with Syria.
Israeli forces have pushed into the buffer zone already, which is on the other side of the Golan Heights, and they have been carrying out strikes in the last 24 hours against some of those rebel groups who they say have advanced towards that buffer zone.
The issue is that the Syrian working class must get ready to take the power and bring in a Workers Government that will expropriate all of the bosses for the benefit of the vast majority of the working class and the youth.
In fact, the Syrian workers must set up Councils of Action to run the country as a Workers State, and show the whole of the Middle East the way forward.
