Assad’s fall: A complex system just got more complicated

The toppling of the dictator is just the latest Black Swan event to hit the Middle East. How do we make sense of it?

It’s amazing how quickly Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad fell after so many years in power. A family dynasty that had ruled with an iron fist since 1971 collapsed in just 12 days. And if you didn’t see it coming, join the club. Until last month, the biggest news about Syria was its renormalization with European and Arab countries. No one was talking about Assad facing an existential threat. Thus, the capture of Aleppo on November 29 took me by surprise, too, but I did have to think of two things: complexity science and Black Swan events. More on those in a moment.

Quick recap, in case you’ve been taking a mental health break from your news feeds the past two weeks: Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011, had morphed into a frozen conflict by 2017. Since then, the Assad regime had held about 70% of the country, with the rest split between Kurdish rebels in the northeast and a group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the Levant Liberation Organization) aka HTS in the northwest. Turkey has also occupied a sliver of territory near its border. The last offensive, launched by the Syrian government in December 2019 with the backing of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah ended with a cease-fire in March 2020. HTS began attacking government forces November 27, less than two weeks ago, sweeping from north to south until it captured Damascus and announced that Assad had disappeared.

The HTS offensive adheres to all the rules of complexity science, which govern how systems work. Systems can range from bacteria and little critters to families, cities, countries and the universe. Interactions within them lead to emergent properties that make it even more complex, and thus more unpredictable. In Syria’s case, the system in question is the Assad regime, which at first was stable and predictable but ruled in a way that led to its eventual collapse, leaving a very unpredictable system behind. (For a refresher on complexity science, click here)

The first rule of complexity theory is that the more individuals in a system, the more complex it is. Check: the Syrian political system was much simpler when it was just the Assad family in charge. The civil war spawned several players with intertwining relationships.

The theory’s second rule is that restraining, negative feedback loops must prevail to keep a system healthy. Check: the Syrian regime was stuck in a positive feedback loop, in which the Assad regime maintained its oppressive ways. Analysts had recently pointed out that despite the cease-fires, Assad never made any concessions on power, never improved the lives of civilians under his control and his forces even tortured refugees who returned home.

The third rule is that interactions are local. Check: anonymous foot soldiers, not world leaders, took down Assad. Many assumed Assad had stabilized his regime, which is why several countries were reestablishing diplomatic ties. But on the ground, his forces weren’t a match for a local rebel group like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. When HTS launched its offensive, Assad’s forces fled in ever-growing numbers, much like the Afghani forces who crumbled before the Taliban in August 2021. And Assad was powerless to stop them.

The fourth and final rule is that there must be a low level of randomness for the system to survive. The Assad regime suppressed randomness through its iron-fisted rule. For decades, the brutality seemed to pay off. Bashar’s father Hafez crushed a rebellion in Hama in 1982 and ruled in peace another 18 years. But that rigidity left the regime unable to adapt to a changing environment. Hence, Bashar’s brutal response to protests in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, didn’t lead to submission but rather civil war. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah propped him up over the past decade but, distracted by their own conflicts, couldn’t save him this time.

So now that we understand a little more about Syria, let’s look at Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. HTS is an emergent structure that the Assad system spawned through its violent rule. An Islamist group, it started out as an Al Qaeda affiliate but eventually broke away to cast itself as a less extremist nationalist group. Although it is on the terrorist list of the United States, EU and a dozen other countries, HTS claims to not to have a quarrel with the United States and insists it will not become a base for international terrorism.

Whatever its identity, however, its swift success certainly constitutes a Black Swan event. As you may recall from previous posts of mine, Black Swan events are ones that were totally unexpected yet in retrospect feel inevitable. But they are anything but inevitable; it’s just that the possibility of their existence was overlooked.

There are some eerie parallels to another recent Black Swan event, the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas. In both cases, regimes didn’t expect armed groups to be capable of pulling off a major attack. Just as Israel moved troops away from the Gaza border literally days before the Hamas invasion, Syria withdrew troops from the northern border area with HTS-controlled territory in recent weeks. Both Hamas and HTS decided on their own to launch an offensive, which in turn inspired other militant groups to join in.

The HTS offensive only became possible because of the deterioration in the positions of Assad’s patrons. First, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and has been distracted by that costly conflict ever since. Second, Iran has been weakened by Israel, both in the attacks it made on Iranian soil and in its destruction of Iranian positions and war materiel in Syria. The tipping point was likely Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah, starting with its countless raids since October 2023 and ending with its invasion in September of Lebanon.

While these developments created the adjacent possible of an HTS offensive, Assad’s inability to foresee such an attack left him vulnerable. And now there is a completely new iteration of the system, and we don’t know which way it is headed. HTS tried to reassure minorities last week of its intentions. HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Jolani reportedly said in Aleppo that "the distinct social and cultural norms of the city, Muslims and Christians in all their diversity, will be respected." But we can’t know how his supporters will behave locally, where – as you all know now – where the real interactions happen.

As I write this, the conflict is already triggering new emergent phenomena. For example, Israel responded today by invading the country and taking control of the Syrian side of the Golan Heights to prevent rebels from conquering the area. It has also struck multiple targets in Syria. These actions have implications as well, which I intend to address next week. In the meantime, I can be sure of one thing – it won’t be a boring news cycle, but it will be a complex one.

Supporters waving a Syrian opposition flag after opposition fighters took control of the city of Hama last week. (EPA Images pic)