The Death Of A Nation

A brief word on what happened in Syria

The collapse of Syria was almost without precedent. There is no point in trying to deny or hide from this fact. While the causes of this collapse are many and the outcome is still unclear, it is not too soon to perform some analysis of the situation in order to help us understand just how Syria died so quickly.

The entire country of Syria was ceded to terrorists¹ almost without firing a shot. The collapse was so rapid and so severe that it has come as a shock to everyone involved. The Syrian Arab Army, which had stood for over a decade as a bulwark against the myriad of jihadi groups seeking to bathe Syria in blood, was defeated entirely without anything but a token fight.

The few garrisons that tried to fight were surrounded by the terrorist vanguards, who used the electronic warfare equipment gifted to them by their western patrons to sever the enemy’s lines of communication with command, then isolated the garrison with fast moving forces in pickups before follow-on forces would arrive.

Usually, a force in this situation could break out, light infantry in pickups pose little threat to armored and mechanized forces, but the terrorists are heavily armed with Ukrainian drones which greatly increased their firepower. The fronts were full of video footage of SAA forces being attacked by FPV and grenade dropper drones, tactics for which they had very little counter. Surrounded, cut off from their command and under constant aerial attack with no hope of reinforcement or rescue, there was very little choice but to surrender. While a handful of garrisons did fight to the death, and there were even some successful counter-attacks outside of Hama the majority of the SAA simply stripped off their uniforms and went home.

Russian and Syrian air power inflicted a heavy toll on the terrorists, who’s penchant for filming everything backfired on them as they revealed their positions to the enemy. Thousands of terrorists were killed by Russo-Syrian airstrikes, but as has been proven time and time again, airpower cannot win wars by itself. Without forces on the ground to hold the line, the air force could not prevent the collapse of the Syrian state.

While it’s tempting to assign blame entirely to moral factors like courage, this is a simplistic view. The SAA’s downfall did not come about because they were cowards. This is the same army which had reclaimed most of the country at a heavy cost. They did not lack for courage when fighting for Aleppo the first time. As usual, the moral factors do not tell the whole story, there were material factors at play behind the fall of the Syrian state.

The seeds of the Syria’s defeat came about not in 2024 but in 2019, when crushing sanctions from the Trump regime were put into place, further emaciating a country that had already seen tens of thousands of deaths from starvation, disease and deprivation. The new sanctions cut off Syria’s access to banks and sent their economy spiraling into hyperinflation and a liquidity crisis. With their own money basically worthless, the government had to raise foreign currency to pay it’s bills. This was virtually impossible under the sanction regime, which put severe penalties on anyone who dealt with the Assad government. Even things like construction materials were kept from reaching Syria, thereby preventing the country from rebuilding after the long, brutal civil war.

The situation inside the Syrian Army was no better. Rank and file infantry soldiers were paid only $22 a month, with even the air force pilots earning only $140 a month. This situation did not just effect the army, the Syrian government and intelligence apparatus were in the same boat with only a few exceptions for the highest-ranking of them.

These sanctions took place in a country that had already been denied 40% of it’s oil and the majority of it’s water, cotton, barley and wheat, which was east of the Euphrates in the lands occupied by US-backed Kurdish forces. The lack of these crops caused not only food shortages, but serious economic issues as cotton was one of Syria’s primary cash crops prior to the war.

Charts showing the agricultural production of Syria by region. Only Aleppo was under government control. Source: USDA