Neil Salt, is a Constituency Officer for Streatham and Croydon North, Lambeth & Southwark Conservative Federation, and an emerging markets financial services recruiter
At various times in our lives momentous events occur that are the pre-cursor to a seismic shift in geo-political circumstances.
The decision by Bashar al-Assad to flee Damascus and seek refuge in Moscow, after 54 years of Assad family dictatorship – initially under his father, Hafez, between 1971 and July 2000 – could yet be one such momentous moment, in a similar way to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
The fact that no-one was predicting the speed at which the Assad regime would collapse – 12 days in the end – is surely symptomatic of just how distracted from supporting the Assad regime were both Vladimir Putin in Russia, with all of his focus on Ukraine, and Ali Khameini in Iran, with all of his focus on what has been going on in Lebanon.
As things stand currently, the West, whilst pleased to see the fall of the Assad dictatorship, awaits with some trepidation as to what may follow in its wake given Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is an Islamist militant group and an off shoot of Al-Qaeda.
There may be reasons to be cheerful:
HTS cut its ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization in 2016 and has spent the past 5 years transitioning HTS to position itself as a more moderate group than it had traditionally been when supportive both of Isis and of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 atrocity.
HTS has professionalised its army and sought to clean up its image to the Syrian people and beyond.
HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is a highly educated man, who is keen to stress HTS’s openness to working with all communities, including religious minorities.
The fact that the overthrow of the Assad regime has been welcomed by huge swathes of Syrians with jubilation, and with many refugees in the neighbouring countries of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan already crossing the border to return home, is surely a very good sign of good faith in the statements HTS has issued.
If al-Jolani is to be taken at his word, then maybe, just maybe, free and fair elections will yet be able to take place over time and with a multi-party approach established in the interim that will be consensual in its approach and welcoming to minority religious groups and others.
Early-stage signs are hopeful of a smooth transition, with the former Prime Minister under the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime, Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali, having sat down with Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and agreed to hand over power to the rebel “Salvation government”. It was further announced that Mohammed al-Bashir, who had up until now governed parts of north-west Syria (ie Idlib) as part of the Salvation government in that region, has been appointed as Syria’s interim Prime Minister through to 1st March next year. An engineer by background, he will lead a small government to ensure that public services can resume.
It won’t be easy. One of the legacies of Assad’s rule, is whilst that family amassed wealth Syria has been through a hard transition from Middle East economic success story to desperate levels of poverty.
Syria was economically well-positioned within the Middle East back at the very start of the Assad family regime during the 1970s through to the mid-1980s. During the 1970s Syria went through an economic liberalisation programme and diversified from what had been a traditional agrarian economy to one based around the services, industrial and commercial sectors.
Once the Syrian Civil War erupted in June 2012, following on from fifteen months of ongoing demonstrations after pro-democracy protests had swept through Syria during the Arab Spring of March 2011, Syria’s economy started to go from bad to worse, impacted hugely by the implementation of widespread economic sanctions.
Unemployment levels surged from 14.9 per cent in 2011 to 57.7 per cent by the end of 2014. Most shockingly of all, 90 per cent of Syria’s population was living below the poverty threshold in 2023.
So what’s next for Syria will its many refugees choose to return to help in the nation’s rebuild?
We can but hope at this stage that the capacity for a turnaround in Syria now, which can probably only happen with the early-stage and active support of leading Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and others of the Gulf states, may yet have a positive knock-on impact over time both on Afghanistan and Iran.
During the 14 years of civil war that followed the Arab Spring, Assad’s regime was at its most murderous as a consequence of its violent crackdown. This lead to 7 million Syrians fleeing their country.
What could today, be a nation of 30 million Syrians is now a country of just 23 million. Of the 7 million who have fled during that 14 years of civil war, 1 million have been accepted by the EU – including the UK through to 2016.
Between 2014 and 2020, 20,300 Syrians resettled in the UK via David Cameron’s Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS).
As the Commons Library Research Briefing of 10th September this year makes clear, prior to 2011 virtually no one from Syria sought asylum in the UK, but for the decade between 2011 and 2021 nearly 31,000 Syrians have been granted asylum here.
In the last 3 years, a further 9,766 Syrian refugees have been granted asylum in the UK. Around a further 5,000 are currently awaiting an asylum decision, according to Home Office figures at the end of September. According to Migration Observatory, Syrians have comprised only around 8% of those crossing the Channel in small boats illegally over the past 6 years.
The above numbers need to be compared alongside the more than 1 million refugees that Germany welcomed over a 2-year period between Jan 2015 and Dec 2016 and the huge number – 2 million – accepted by Turkey.
As quickly as the Assad regime has been overthrown , so the next few weeks and months will be critical in determining how successful or otherwise Syria may be in avoiding the chaos and lawlessness that followed the deposing both of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.
If the early-stage signals coming from Abu Mohamad al-Jolani are genuine this could yet mark the beginning of a return to a Syria that was well on the way to eventually becoming a leading economic light amongst Middle East countries as it was during the mid-1970s.
Would such a return affect immigration levels across UK, Europe and Turkey and with what political consequences?
On the back of the Syrian refugee crisis having had a seismic effect on public perceptions of migration, not only in the UK, but also across Europe – the popularity of the Freedom Party in Austria and Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany being just two examples in Europe – how good would it be if that level of underlying resentment started to ebb away in a strongly positive way, on the back of Syrian refugees returning to rebuild.
As Syria starts to return to stability, so its infrastructure will need to be rebuilt and professionals of all descriptions will be in huge demand, not only during the upcoming period of the transitional government, but well beyond.
The news that the Home Office has already implemented a pause on Syrian asylum applications would seem to suggest they see no reason why some Syrian refugees who were seeking asylum in the UK, couldn’t service that national need, in Syria.
From a political perspective in the UK, this may have the additional benefit of stymieing over time the further growth and popularity of Reform as an alternative to voting for the Conservative Party in many wards and constituencies across the UK, as ever growing concern over levels of both legal and illegal immigration over many years may start to subside as those levels then fall back to much more manageable levels, causing voters to focus their attentions more on growing our economy, managing the NHS effectively and cutting crime.
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