Lenin once said, “There are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen.” Last week was one such moment when the 54-year-old Republican Assad family dynasty folded up over the weekend, with President Bashar Al Assad fleeing Damascus, similar to the flight witnessed earlier this year in Dhaka when Prime Minister Hasina Wajed fled the country following the Student Revolution in Bangladesh. This is a classic example of regimes and rulers on the run. As so often happens in countries where dynastic despotism exudes an arrogance of power, an aura of infallibility, and instills in a ruler a false sense of entitlement, as if they are ‘born to rule’! The end, when it comes, is a swift surprise, an unraveling of the entire edifice in a matter of days.

The Syrian Surprise is the biggest tectonic transformation in the Muslim World since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, marking three significant changes.

First, it marks the formal death of Baathism as an ideology, replaced by Al Qaeda’s radical Islamism. Baathism had been a major driving force in Arab politics for most of the 20th century, ruling two key countries like Iraq and Syria and dominating the intellectual discourse for decades on end.

Second, the dismantling of the Assad dynasty also marks an end to the ‘Axis of Resistance,’ which Iran had cobbled together with Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Not only Iran and Russia, but Arab Gulf monarchies are now also the biggest losers, as they put in a lot of effort, energy, and money to block the political Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood (even instigating a coup in Egypt). But the net result is the resurgence of allies of Al Qaeda and ISIS, who now control Syria.

Third, a hundred years after the 1920 Treaty of Sevres dismantled the Ottoman Empire, carving it up among the then two key colonial powers, like Britain and France, there is now a resurrection of the modern refurbished neo-Ottoman Turkey under President Erdogan as the dominant force in a truncated Syria, and Turkey has avenged the injustice done a century ago! Israel and the West are happy for the moment.

The irony is that the War on Terror led to the installation of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and the ‘Arab Spring’ has culminated in the assumption of power by Al Qaeda in Syria, Frankensteins that will eventually turn on their masters! Actually, the ‘Deep State’ of this Triple Alliance of Israel, the US, and Turkey has, for the first time, defeated the Iranian ‘Deep State’ in the Middle East Great Game!

It’s difficult to empathize with the fallen Assad dynasty, as Bashar had the opportunity to do a deal with his opponents, but he dismissed them as ‘non-entities’ and squandered that moment.

Regime change in the Arab World that began with the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 has devoured long-standing regimes and rulers, starting with Tunisia (21 years), Egypt (30 years), Libya (42 years), Yemen (33 years), Sudan (22 years), and finally, Syria (54 years). When the primary goal of any regime is self-perpetuation by converting itself into family/dynastic despotism, then the logical end is predictable. Some lessons need to be learned from this epochal moment in the Muslim world. Regimes have to be responsive to popular aspirations; otherwise, whether it’s Afghanistan, Bangladesh, or Syria, the propped-up rulers end up fleeing to save themselves. More often than not, when the end is near, they cling to straws seeking a deal, but then it’s ‘too little, too late.’ Clinging to power at all costs is not an option. For example, the human costs of the Syrian Civil War have been horrendous: out of a population of 23 million, 13 million are either displaced at home or refugees abroad, and over half a million killed in strife.

The legacies of the Western policies of intervention and regime change in the Muslim world have had devastating consequences, as can be seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria. The seeds of the Frankenstein monsters they created in short-sighted policies aimed at achieving tactical goals have become strategic liabilities with long-term complications.

For example, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, famously told a French journalist in 1998, when the Afghan Jihad funded by the US had morphed into Al-Qaida: “What is more important, a few stirred-up Muslims or the dismantling of the Soviet empire and collapse of Communism?” In other words, what the CIA did during the Afghan Jihad—pumping $2.1 billion into supporting the Afghan and Arab mujahideen—was well worth it!

For South Asian countries like Pakistan too, there are lessons, as the winds of change are blowing all across the region, from Damascus to Dhaka, where unpopular, family-oriented, despotic, dependent regimes are crumbling.

2024 is ending with historic changes in the South Asian political landscape: the Student Revolution in Bangladesh, a leftist anti-establishment political party sweeping to power in Sri Lanka, a Maoist party winning power in Nepal, while a radical nationalist party won in the Maldives, and in India, a diminished Modi is now being challenged by the resurgent troika of the Gandhis (mother, son, and daughter). However, with the ‘Mother of all Change’ taking place in the United States with the victory of President Trump, who has promised to demolish the American ‘Deep State,’ 2025 is certain to be a year with a difference!