Was die siegreichen Rebellen Syriens aus den eklatanten Misserfolgen von Al-Qaida gelernt haben

**From Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington:**

The lightning victory of [Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham](https://www.msnbc.com/the-weekend/watch/who-are-the-rebels-behind-the-fall-of-the-assad-regime-226489925619) in its stunningly successful offensive to unseat the more than 50-year-old Assad family-led Baathist dictatorship in Syria was highly reminiscent of the manner in which the Taliban pushed down the house of cards that was the nominal Afghan government [when the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-trump-rcna78728). It took the Taliban 10 days to race to victory and HTS a mere week to [unseat Bashar al-Assad](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/syrias-assad-hts-russia-iran-united-states-rcna183478). In both cases the existing regime’s military forces mostly disintegrated, virtually without a fight.

But the echo is louder. The most significant through line between the Taliban and HTS victories is that they signal a new phase in the Sunni radical fundamentalist militant movement: back to the future, or at least back to the early 1990s.

**Read more:** [https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/syria-assad-hts-taliban-al-qaeda-jihadist-rcna183540](https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/syria-assad-hts-taliban-al-qaeda-jihadist-rcna183540)