The term “Great Games” (inspired by the French term Le grand jeu suggesting risk, chance and deception) was coined in the 19th century to frame the rivalry between the competing British and Russian Empires over dominating Asia. The British wanted the vast arid lands and steppes of the Central Asian Region to become a strategic buffer to protect its crown jewel i.e., the Indian SubContinent. Naturally, places like Afghanistan were given to vested interests, intrigues and much bloodlust.

It could be well argued that the surreptitious concept of “Great Games” was, and is, equally applicable to the ancient and civilisational land of “AlShams” or modern day Syria. It has been yet another region that has been given to relentless ravages, raids and competing agendas of foreign powers for eons. It is only natural for one of the oldest capital cities of the world i.e., Damascus, also poetically called “City of Jasmine”, to have been the epicentre of fierce competition, aspirations and machinations. From the Romans, Macedonians, Persians, Babylonians to the Phoenicians, to even latter day Egyptian, Ottoman, French, English, Italian and German overlords ~ this land has witnessed relentless attempts to control its narrative.

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Proximity to the Biblical/ Abrahamic land and multiplicity of foreign invaders bestowed it with unprecedented diversity that includes religious and ethnic citizenry who could be Muslim (both Sunni and Shia e.g., Alawite), Christian, Druze, Kurd, Armenian etc., Ironically this diversity enabled many competing foreign powers to usurp certain denominations and turn them into their proxies to do their bidding. The problems of foreign interests are so deep rooted that many regional and global powers still fancy Syria as their “backyard”. For example, just before its independence in 1945, it was under the Ottoman-ruled French Mandate. Therefore, Turkey as the successor to Ottoman credentials always sought a role in Syria’s internal affairs.

Naturally, independence ensured a testy existence as it was given to multiple coups, supported by vested interests. It even underwent an unnatural experiment in sovereignty when it entered a brief union with Egypt as United Arab Republic (UAR) ~ it had got caught under the spell of Egyptian Pan-Arab nationalism. It had taken a coup d’etat in 1961 to revert back to Syria (though yet another coup d’etat occurred in 1963). Many turbulences and bloody intrigues later, it was the decisive takeover by Hafiz Al Assad in 1971 (after leading his third coup) that gave a sort of stability to the land that constantly kept changing hands.

But Hafiz Al Assad had one fundamental challenge ~ he belonged to the minority Shia Alawite sect that made up only about 10 per cent of the Syrian population (as opposed to the majority 75 per cent of Sunni denominations). This was a fault line that Hafiz Al Assad had to navigate (often brutally) by ensuring that the most sensitive security positions were only given to his loyal Shiite Alawite members. Neighbouring countries that were predominantly Sunni e.g., Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were not pleased by the regime of a proverbial “other”.

But Hafiz Al Assad had to earn his stripes amongst the comity of Arab neighbours, and he did so by championing the common cause of Palestinian rights, to the extreme consternation of yet another neighbour, Israel. From a sectarian perspective, co-Shia Iran and members of neighbouring Lebanon’s Shia militia i.e., Hezbollah, became instinctive allies. The unique composition of the Al Assad family’s sectarian background and co-sectarian affiliations made the Syrian regime under him militate with other predominantly Sunni Arab monarchies and their principal benefactor, the United States of America, who all opposed Assad’s regime.

This American outcome of anti-Syrian sentiments along with Syria’s avowed commitment to the Palestinian cause led to yet another American ally i.e., Israel, positioning itself against the Assad regime. Reflexively, Syria aligned with the Soviet Union (later with Russia) on the superpower mapping. At a regional level, it was aligned to the much pariahised Iran and its co-sectarian proxies like Hezbollah in Le ba non. All these alliances, grandstanding, and regional politics led to the decidedly more affluent, powerful and influential neighbours like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and even the United States to inadvertently support forces that were inimical to the Al Assad family rule, even after it had passed from Hafiz Al Assad to his son, Bashar Al Assad. While the Assad family rulers were as dictatorial and undemocratic as any of the neighbouring Arab monarchies, they did not pander to religious extremism as was done by the likes of Saudi Arabia or Turkey which fanned fundamentalism and nurtured “friendly” militias.

If anything, the Bashar Al Assad led Syrian military was at the forefront of taking on (and successfully countering) the scourge of the Al Qaida or later, ISIL. Ironically, while the US was supposedly against religious extremism of ISIL et al, it counterintuitively targeted Assad’s Syrian forces and the likes of Iranian General Soleimani who fought valiantly against the likes of ISIL like no one else. Now it has taken the offspring of the ultra-extremist Al Qaida i.e., Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by Abu Mohammad alJulani, to end the Assad family’s 50-year-old reign as it finally overran Damascus. Even though he is ostensibly a “Specially designated global terrorist” (with a bounty of $10 million on his head) ~ unsurprisingly, neither al-Julani nor his forces were targeted meaningfully by the forces of US, Saudi Arabia, Israel or Turkey and he seemed oddly flush with resources to dislodge the Assad regime.

In fact, he had great tactical support from the age old nemesis of Turkey through their proxies like Ahrar ash-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra etc., It is unfathomable to think that the ouster of Bashar Al Assad’s regime could have been undertaken without the tacit support (or at least an approving nudge) from the likes of US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or Israel. Now that HTS has taken over Damascus, it guarantees no peace as history is instructive of such bigoted and extremist forces ousting “dictators” only to lead to even more lawlessness, violence, and spiral of sectarianism than before. It is the same sort of ouster as was facilitated in Saddam Hussien’s Iraq, or with Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya, by a combination of Western forces and short-term interests, and the subsequent flow of events only confirmed the worst.

Syria’s secular but dictatorial ruler has now been replaced by religiously charged extremists and regressive revisionists, and this can hardly augur well for Syria. The timeless curse of the “Great Game” continues to define Syria as foreign powers play “sides” dangerously, to the detriment of stability (however imperfect) and order, as prevailed earlier.

(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)