The Week 1518

The end was “as stunning as it was swift”, said Rania Abouzeid in The New Yorker. Less than a fortnight after launching a lightning strike from its stronghold in northern Syria, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) this week succeeded in ending the 24-year rule of President Bashar al-Assad. The regime had pledged to defend the capital, Damascus, with a “ring of steel”; but in the event, the rebels’ rapid southward advance met little resistance. Regime soldiers abandoned their posts, leaving uniforms and equipment strewn in the street. By dawn on Sunday, Assad, his British wife, Asma, and other members of their family had all fled to Moscow. Their departure prompted jubilant scenes in cities across Syria. People tore down posters and statues of the Assads, who first came…

Great powers have fought for centuries for influence over the area that is now Syria, each seeing a prize in its “strategic position”, said Alissa J. Rubin in The New York Times. Now, governments with interests there are moving fast to take advantage of the vacuum created by the fall of the Assad regime. Ankara – which has long viewed the Kurdish region in Syria’s north as a safe haven for separatist groups active in its own territory – has launched attacks on the mainly Kurdish, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces that helped defeat Islamic State. Israel has sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone beyond the occupied Golan Heights, and has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria targeting military assets, including weapons plants and naval bases – claiming…

Who will rule Syria now? A prime minister has been appointed to lead the transitional government. Mohammed al-Bashir – the former head of the HTS’s rebel administration in the northwest of Syria – has been tasked with governing until March. But true power is likely to reside with the group’s 42-year-old commander, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Having dropped his Islamic nom de guerre, he now styles himself “President Ahmed al-Shara”, and is presenting himself as a moderate pragmatist. But his past as al-Qa’eda’s leader in Syria has left many questioning his promises to bring freedom, peace and stability to his country. “Well-educated, urbane and softly-spoken”, Jolani grew up in a middle-class family in Damascus, said Raya Jalabi in the FT. Yet by the time he was 20, he’d been radicalised. He…

It’s getting hard to keep track of Labour’s priorities, said The Times. In opposition, it specified “five missions” for government, built on “three foundations”. In October, Rachel Reeves laid out her “seven pillars of growth”. Last week, Keir Starmer “tried to bring definition to his flailing government” with his “Plan for Change”, which specified six “milestones”. So: “seven pillars of growth, six milestones, five missions, three foundations”. All that’s missing is the partridge in a pear tree. Some of the new milestones are notably unambitious: Starmer has downgraded his goal of the UK becoming the fastest-growing economy in the G7, in favour of “raising living standards”, judged by real disposable income, across the nation. It’s hard to see how he can miss this, even at the current “anaemic rate” of…

The UK and a number of other European countries have suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrians in the wake of the fall of the Assad regime. The Home Secretary said it was “right” for the UK to join the likes of France and Germany in pausing asylum decisions, given “people were claiming asylum from the Assad regime, which is no longer there”. However, Foreign Secretary David Lammy noted that the country may still not be safe. As of September, there were around 6,500 Syrians awaiting a decision on their asylum claims in the UK. In total, the UK has given asylum or resettlement to 41,535 Syrians since 2014.…

Unions representing teachers and NHS staff hinted this week that they might resort to further strikes, after the Government recommended a pay rise of 2.8% for public sector workers next year. In evidence to public sector pay review bodies, which will now consider the proposed rise, ministers warned that higher rises than that would force budget cuts. The British Medical Association accused ministers of having a “poor grasp” of the issues that had led doctors to strike in the first place.…