Moscow lost Syria this week, both the physical and information space simultaneously. It marks the most significant realignment of regional security architecture since the Iranian Revolution.
The new leader of Syria may have bona fides in operational success that only now are being scrutinized externally. The transformation playing out in Damascus defies conventional analysis, but rather begs decolonization frameworks and indigenous revolutionary leadership.
Each system represents both a governance challenge and a security vulnerability. The next six months will determine whether Syria becomes a case study in successful transition or a cautionary tale about usual dangers in abrupt militant regime change. While attention focused on his break from ISIS and later al-Qaeda, al-Sharaa was building something unprecedented: a hybrid governance model that combines tight operational security with sophisticated digital administration with domestic roots.
When Barre fell, there was nothing left to govern with. The US hawks create the fairy tale model of governance β hard shell candy power vacuum with nothing inside β that makes state collapse inevitable.
We see now how Russian limited capacity, incompetence and Iranian distraction produced an opposite effect, unintentionally. The Idlib experiment proved crucial. Running a province of 4 million people required more than just maintaining order β it demanded managing complex bureaucratic systems, coordinating with international aid organizations, and building functional administrative structures.
