Assad’s fall was swift. He goes into history as a failed leader

When states implode as suddenly as Syria just has, they do so as a result of external pressures combining with internal weaknesses, to thus create a dynamic of critical mass to the point where said implosion takes on the character of an idea whose time has come.

Bashar al-Assad, in the last analysis, was not a leader to inspire the kind of valour and self-sacrifice of those whose duty it was to defend the state and country over which he’d presided for 24 years. The Syrian Arab Army was a hollowed out shell by the time it evaporated in the face the surprise offensive mounted by jihadist insurgents from Idlib in the north east of the country on Wednesday 27 November.

Assad, confronted by reality, chose personal survival over principle. Unlike Saddam Hussein, who died spitting words of defiance into the faces of his executioners, Assad escaped the scene of his demise on a private jet with his loot intact and in tow. In his wake, he left behind a broken-backed country of whose people he misled into believing he was worthy of their loyalty. Now, as he settles into the luxury of exile in Moscow, Syria is faced with the challenge of a new sectarian paradigm as the basis of its future.

With this in mind there are already emerging reports of Islamist gangs in Homs, the country’s third largest city, seeking out and slaughtering members of the city’s Shia community along with former Syrian army soldiers and officers. The wild scenes of celebration over Assad’s departure are already giving way to the grim realities of life under Salafi-jihadism.

Make no mistake about it; this turn of events constitutes a huge win for both Netanyahu and Erdogan. The former is currently engaged in seizure of another chunk of Syria, while Erdogan is doing same in the north of the country. Historical parallels with Hitler and Stalin’s seizure of Poland in 1939 come into admonitory view.

The Arab world has never been in a more parlous state. Division everywhere, unity nowhere, in which a clutch of bloated potentates vie with one another for the right to be considered the most egregious traitor to decency, fidelity and honour.

Assad, at least — unlike his fellow Arab rulers across the region — refused to go along to get…