US politician compares Syria situation with Germany – “Implications remarkable”

Merkur US politician compares Syria situation with Germany – “Implications remarkable” Simon Schröder • 4 hours • 3 minutes reading time Assad flees to Moscow For Syria, Assad’s flight after decades of civil war could be a turning point. Many are now hoping for a change. Like in Germany? Washington D.C./Damascus – After the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the country in the Middle East could have a unique opportunity to break the spiral of violence that has now lasted for decades. Since the Arab Spring in 2011, Syria has been in civil war – and has been almost continuously. The conflict flares up again and again. The fall of Assad could now represent a turning point, says Joe Wilson (Republican from South Carolina), who draws a comparison with Germany. The MP told the right-wing news channel Fox News: “This is so significant. The fall of the Assad dictatorship. The impact of this event will be simply remarkable." The US politician goes on to draw parallels with a historical event in Germany: "It is really comparable to the Berlin Wall, which led to dozens of countries becoming free after 50 years of occupation and totalitarian control." After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, many of the Soviet Eastern Bloc states could not hold on for much longer. Wilson speculates that something similar could now happen in the region around Syria. The fall of Assad could cause the regimes in Iraq and Lebanon in particular to crumble. But the future of the country after Assad is uncertain. Only on Sunday had rebels been able to gain control of the capital Damascus. The Syrian army offered little resistance. Assad himself had meanwhile fled to Moscow, as Russian news agencies reported on Sunday. Rebel offensive in Syria: Assad has to flee to Moscow On November 27, an offensive began in Syria, coordinated by the leader of the Hai' at Tahrir al-Sham (Committee for the Liberation of the Levant, HTS for short) militia, Abu Muhammad al-Jaulani. Together with the Syrian National Army (SNA) and the western Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Syrian cities, starting with Aleppo, gradually fell into the hands of the rebels. The HTS itself is classified as a terrorist organization by the UN and the USA, as AP News reports. Wilson attributes the rapid conquest of Syria by the rebels to a weak Russia and a battered Iran. Both countries supported the Assad regime and helped the dictator to maintain his position, especially militarily. When it comes to restructuring the Syrian state, the Republican MP is relying above all on the democratic will of the citizens of Syria, the MP told Fox News. How will Syria organize itself after the fall of the Assad regime? The rebels' success in Syria was made possible primarily by the war in Ukraine and Israel's war against Hezbollah, Wilson continued: "By weakening Russia, they were unable to defend the dictatorship in Damascus and so it all ties together in a very positive way." He continued: "And then people need to know that the Russian air base 'Hmeimim' (in Syria, editor's note) was the transit point for dictatorships in Central Africa." Whether the fall of the Assad regime is actually a kind of fall of the wall for the region cannot yet be said. It is still uncertain how leader al-Jaulani will organize the country in the future. US President Joe Biden also called the fall of Assad a “historic opportunity.”