One month ago, during a meeting in Beirut, a senior western diplomat was venting his frustration: when would international sanctions be lifted from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad? Though the dictator had few friends, it seemed that the brutal killing and torture of hundreds of thousands of protesters had succeeded in finally crushing Syria’s 13-year revolution.
It was time to face facts, the diplomat said. Assad had won the war, and the world needed to move on.
As diplomats in Beirut talked, rebels in Syria were planning. A year earlier, figures in the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in north-west Syria had sent a message to rebels in the south: get ready.
A Syrian activist was saying that paradoxically it might have been the best outcome for Syria’s future. The rationale was that he will never now be a martyr or a rallying cry for loyalists. He will never evoke sympathy to his loyalists like Saddam or Gaddafi as the victim of angry haters. He’s always going to be the rich guy who betrayed them and left them alone to face the nation.