i'm going to summarize what actually happened in syria over the least 25 years, first. i've done this before.
- many years ago, syria and iraq were governed by the same political party, the ba'ath party. this was a secularist party that adhered to something called arabic socialism, which was socialism with arabic characteristics. it was aligned with the soviet union.
- we know what happened to iraq's ba'ath party, but the ba'ath party continued in syria until the dictator there, who was pretty bad but not as bad as saddam hussein, died and was succeeded by his son
- the actual dictator assad had two sons. one was groomed for power, and he was pretty brutal, and this story would be different if he had taken over, but he died young. instead, power passed to the second son.
- the second son was an eye doctor in britain and had married a british woman he met in britain. they had to bring him back from britain.
- in some ways, this second son was nothing more than a powerless figurehead, and not any sort of dictator at all. the actual power was in the junta, and the continued to act as a branch of moscow's military command structure. during this period, syria was essentially a client state of russia, with little autonomy, and where the decisions were made in moscow and enforced by the junta. the younger assad was trotted out to wave to the crowds sometimes.
- however, assad was also a democratic reformer. despite western claims otherwise, russia is in fact a democracy, it's just an extreme democracy. it's a democracy with extremely real choices. we may have a hard time understanding that here in western democracies, where the parties are all the same. in russia, a democratic transition would not be a meaningless change of which party is in power; in russia, you have broad, important choices to make between toryism (that is what putin is. he's an old tory.), communism or fascism. as it does elsewhere, washington supports the fascist parties in russia, then accuses the russian government of stifling dissent when it jails the fascists. what russia does not have is a liberal democratic party with any serious support as that ideology remains unpopular in russia. there is an overwhelming tory consensus there, and liberal democrats often have to vote for the tories to block the communists, who remain the only serious opposition group. the russians don't like supporting authoritarian regimes because it makes them look bad, but they do it.
- assad was correctly seen as a weak ruler by the surrounding countries, particularly the saudis and the turks. turks and arabs don't like each other very much and don't have a direct border anywhere in the region. syria is a buffer state between turkey and saudi arabia.
- the saudi theocracy does not want democracy on their borders because they see it as a threat to their own system of government and consider it to be "western colonialism". they will routinely send in armed thugs to destabilize any sort of democracy in the arab world. they don't want it taking hold anywhere.
- that is what started the war in syria. first, the younger assad scheduled a referendum to chart a democratic transition in syria, with russian encouragement. then, the saudis sent their goons in to try to stop it. the turks moved in to block the saudis, and everything imploded from there.
- the younger assad was initially trying to realign syria with nato but, due to saudi opposition, he had to realign closer with moscow, and then everybody except the russians wanted assad out.
- eventually, a functional coalition between the russians and kurds largely defeated the saudi-backed thugs. the americans have taken credit for this but, as was the case in world war two, it was actually the russians that won the war, and it's still not entirely clear what side the americans were even really on at all.
- that left assad in control of damascus with russian support, the kurds in the north, a small american force in the south (that appears to have been helping isis more than hindering it) and some remnant turkish backed jihdist groups that almost everybody, apparently including the syrian military, had forgotten about and wasn't taking seriously.
- then the turkish-backed jihadists launched a sneak attack about a year ago, with apparent american support, that succeeded in taking damascus by surprise. this did cut the saudis out, at first glance, as fighting isis remained the pretext for american involvement.
- since then, this turkish-backed nazi/jihadist government has both identified itself as a stronger american proxy and taken steps to re-align itself with the saudis
- the result is that the jihadists have essentially won the war in syria and are now in control of syria
- as would be expected, they are carrying out ethnic cleansing against the same minorities that isis targeted
- after a few years of propaganda training through us media, including trying to generate empathy for "isis wives", who should be summarily executed with no sympathy at all, the americans are now openly supporting the jihadist groups under an apparent promise that they'll share the oil wealth if they take control of it.
- but this is not so much a switcheroo so much as it was kind of what was always going on. the americans were always supporting the jihadists, and the goal was always to replace assad with the jihadist groups. the kurds were always a temporary ally acting in their own interests and everybody always knew that. but the turks managed to chase the saudis out, so now it's turkish groups and not saudi groups.
- now that the jihadists are in control in damascus like ankara, riyadh and washington all wanted, they are chasing the kurds out, as was always the plan.