Lessons From Damascus’ Fall: Former British Ambassador to Syria Details How the West, Israel and Turkey Won

On December 8, 2024, the almost 14 year long war between the Syrian government and multiple Islamist insurgent groups came to an end, with the capture of the capital Damascus, dismantling of the Syrian Arab Army, and overthrow of the ruling Ba’ath Party marking the end of an era of over 60 years. With the insurgency having received extensive support from across the Western world, and from the West’s Middle Eastern strategic partners in particular Turkey, Israel and Qatar, its success facilitated the toppling of a longstanding thorn in the side of Western geopolitical interests in the region. Elaborating on the origins of the war, the factors which led to the country’s ultimate defeat, and the longstanding security threats it has faced, Military Watch interviewed former British Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford. Ford has given interviews throughout the conflict’s duration to outlets including CNN, the BBC,&nbsp;France 24, and&nbsp;The Independent, and has published widely on the subject.&nbsp;Ford recalls that the posting to Damascus was the pinnacle of his 35 year diplomatic career, noting that “as a trained Arabist I felt joy to be going to the country rightly described as the ‘beating heart of Arabism’.” He continued to take a close interest in Syria during subsequent work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which it involved frequent visits to refugee camps in “the most hospitable of all Arab countries to Palestinian refugees.” He subsequently co-chaired the London-based British Syrian Society which he stated “campaigned for fair treatment for Syria” during the conflict.&nbsp;<img src=" title="Syrian Capital Damascus in Peacetime">Military Watch (MW):&nbsp;When looking back at your time as ambassador in Damascus, what experiences do you believe allowed you to form a more accurate understanding of the conflict?Peter Ford: As an insider I was able to see the animus felt by the British and Americans towards Syria over Syria’s refusal to collaborate with the Coalition pacification of Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam. That refusal was prompted by Syria’s well-founded fear that next after Iraq on Washington’s to do list was Syria. This, combined with longstanding resentment at Syria’s refusal to toe the line on Israel and rejection of diktats on WMD and human rights, poisoned the chances of Bashar’s tilt towards the West being consummated. It was accordingly no surprise to me that when the Arab Spring was getting under way the US and UK were quick to seize an opportunity for regime change.During my time as ambassador I also had occasion to frequent opposition circles, which were given a certain amount of leeway to operate. That helped me to see, as soon as conflict started in Syria, that the besuited mild-mannered opposition were never going to play any role other than providing a cover for the hard men of the Islamist groups which had gone to ground after the Hama uprising of 1981 but were always a potent potential threat. If Syria was a police state, I realised, it was because there was a lot of policing to do to stop the Talibanisation of civilised, multiethnic, multicultural Syria.&nbsp;<img src=" title="Syrian Police Officer in Damascus After Bombing">MW: Turkey, Qatar, Israel and the United States are frequently pointed to as the parties which played the primary roles in the war effort against Syria. Which state actors do you think played the most significant roles, and how did their contributions to the war effort complement one another?Ford: The importance of different countries changed over the years. In the early years of the Syrian conflict the US and UK played major roles in equipping, training and directing operations of the armed opposition, while Saudi Arabia and UAE provided much of the funding. In latter years Qatar became more active with funding while Saudi Arabia and UAE reconciled with Bashar. As the fighting became more focused in the North, Turkey became the dominant force, acting as part of a tag team with the US and Israel.<img src=" title="U.S. Army Soldiers in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Northeast Syria`s Oil Rich Regions">MW: Turkey and the United States have long imposed occupations on oil rich northwestern and northeastern regions of Syria, and extracted Syrian oil for sale. To what extend do you assess this played a central role in weakening the Syrian state over the long term to facilitate its eventual defeat?Ford: It would be hard to overstate the importance to the Syrian state of its being deprived of a resource, oil and gas, which represented over 20% of its GDP and which was crucial to electricity supply. The North East is also the bread basket of Syria, a primary source of grain. No state can survive indefinitely being shut off in this way from its own major sources of wealth, as the US and Turkey well knew.<img src=" title="Syrian Man Protesting Against the U.S.-Led Sanctions Regime">MW: Analysts have frequently criticised economic sanctions as an effective tool of Western foreign policy, citing their inability to topple adversary governments. To what extend do you believe sanctions were effective in the case of the Syrian conflict in allowing Western states to achieve their objectives?Ford: The sad truth is that sanctions do work, if sustained long enough and if the target state has no effective work-arounds. For a long time it seemed that Syria could survive but sanctions work not just on essentials like electricity and food but also on morale, on the morale of the people and the military. Thanks to the simultaneously waged information warfare, the Syrian people blamed Assad for deprivations wholly attributable to Western sanctions. Even corruption, one of the major causes of discontent, was in large part due to the fact that sanctions always give rise to corruption as part of a war economy. &nbsp;Unpaid soldiers demand fees at road blocks, for example.&nbsp;Given US proclivity for sanctions the Syria example bodes badly for many other countries which get into Washington’s cross-hairs.<img src=" title="Syrian Arab Army T-62M Tank">MW: Assessments have varied widely on what factors led the Syrian Arab Army to effectively collapse from late November to early December. As a veteran analyst of the conflict and of the country’s domestic and international politics, what has been your assessments?Ford: The Army was nowhere near battle ready. Given the dire economic situation there was no way it could have been made ready. Many experienced soldiers had had to be released to go back and help their struggling families. The Hizbollah back up was no longer there after Hizbollah’s setbacks against Israel. Russia saw what was coming but distracted by Ukraine was in no position to remedy shortcomings or fill gaps.<img src=" title="U.S. Senator John McCain with Libyan Insurgent Leaders">MW: Figures supporting continued offensives against countries outside Western influence have widely alluded to the possibility of using information warfare tools to destabilise other adversaries. U.S. Senator John McCain, for one, described the instability which spread across Arab republics in 2011 as “a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing,” while founder of Liberty in North Korea and Pegasus Strategies Adrian Hong, a close affiliate of U.S. intelligence agencies, stated in much the same vein following successful operations to destabilise Libya and Syria that the offensives were “a dress rehearsal for North Korea.” How do you think Syria’s destabilisation and eventual fall can serve as a warning to other states, and how do you think the kind of modern warfare tools used against the Syrian state could evolve in future?Ford: Syria didn’t even try to compete in the information battle space. It gave up even having a recognised spokesperson after Western and Gulf-controlled Arab media refused to give Syria a hearing. It was asymmetrical warfare, where the pro-armed opposition side had the big guns like Al Jazeera, the US channels, BBC etc and Syria had a few sympathetic Western bloggers and the not-much-watched RT and Press TV. As mentioned earlier this was crucial to undermining domestic support for Assad and diverting attention from the economic warfare being waged against Syria. The Syrians made the mistake of downplaying the impact of sanctions in the belief that admitting harm would affect morale: rookie error.&nbsp;&nbsp;Equally importantly, the information war, especially demonisation of Assad, enabled Western governments to massage their own public opinions into accepting that attempted regime change was a good thing, despite the disasters which regime change had wrought in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.&nbsp;States wishing to avoid the fate of Syria have to up their game. It is quite remarkable that China is so absent from the information battle space. Russia is much more adept and has noticeably upped its effort and sharpened its language.&nbsp;Information counter-warfare can only work if accompanied by sensitive domestic policies which take account of the dominance and penetration of adversary narratives. &nbsp;Target states need in some cases to loosen up to avoid being eaten up.&nbsp;&nbsp;<img src=" title="Turkestan Islamic Party Child Soldiers in Syria`s Idlib Governate" >MW: Conflict in Syria is frequently referred to in the West as the ‘Syrian Civil War,’ while Syrian officials have consistently rejected this characterisation. The term implies that the insurgency is largely indigenous, which critics have argued attempts to disguise both the central role played by foreign actors, and the predominant role played by non-Syrian Islamist militants drawn to the conflict from as far as London and Xinjiang. What is your assessment of this characterisation?Ford: Without huge assists from external actors the insurgents would never have made much progress. Military supplies from the US, training and equipment from Turkey, information support from the UK, jihadi fighters from Central Asia and China, unlimited funding from the Gulf – these were undoubtedly crucial, coming on top of all the economic and information warfare waged from outside. However it was self-deluding to deny the indigenous element, which had already manifested itself in previous decades. And as already mentioned, discontent with the government undeniably increased as the years of deprivation rolled by without any prospect of relief. It was always the calculation of Western strategists that ultimately sanctions would create enough unrest to rekindle the flames of conflict after the conflict appeared to be largely contained. That is exactly what happened.<img src=" title="Soviet and Syrian Leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Hafez Al Assad in 1974">MW: The Soviet Union was the primary protector of Syria during the Cold War, and went to considerable lengths to modernise the country’s armed forces, support its economy, and deter Israeli, Turkish or Western attacks on its territory. &nbsp;To what extend do you agree with the assessment that the Syrian War and the great pressure placed on the Syrian state were long term consequences of the disintegration of the Soviet Union?Ford: What I would say is that the Syrian conflict could be regarded as a subset of the West’s long term undeclared war on Russia going back to the days of the Soviet Union. As a British diplomat I was acutely conscious of the fact that London didn’t like Syria because it was close to Russia. In a sense Syria suffered precisely because it was seen as a way of scoring points against Russia. Syria could not be left in peace after the virtual ending of hostilities in 2019 because that would have been to concede Russia a win. Become a pawn in geopolitics at your peril. Syria has paid a heavy price for the West’s obsession with doing down Russia.<img src=" title="Israeli Howitzer Fires 155mm Shell Into Gaza " >MW: How do you predict the outcome of the war in Syria will affect the outcome of the ongoing war in Gaza and the longer term Israeli-Palestinian conflict?Ford: In one sense what has happened in Syria will make no difference to the situation in Gaza. Syria was never in a position to lift itself a military finger to help Gaza, and the base it provided for Hizbollah hardly made any difference to the help Hizbollah gave to Gaza, which judged by results was nugatory in any case. On the other hand the collapse of Hamas’s erstwhile supporter and the discomfiture of Iran contribute psychologically to the situation by giving an impression that the momentum is all with Israel. &nbsp;Over the long term the loss of the last Arab state which unequivocally supported the Palestinian Resistance may sound the death knell for Palestine. The beacon is gone. The beating heart of Arabism is dead. &nbsp;With no Syria to shame them what is to stop the Saudis now jumping on the normalisation bandwagon with Israel? What then can prevent the Israelis applying to Gaza the treatment already being applied to the West Bank (parcellisation and creeping annexation) and to the West Bank the treatment being applied to Gaza (devastation, culling of population and ethnic cleansing)?

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