The quick toppling of the Syrian regime – punctuated by the flight of leader Bashar al-Assad to Moscow – came as a surprise to U.S. military officials.

“I think everybody expected to see a much more stiff resistance from Assad’s forces,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Monday as the regime was agreeing to hand over power to the Sunni Islamist Syrian rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Now the Department of Defense is closely watching whether pockets of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters – who controlled 34,000 square miles and 2 million people at the height of their self-described caliphate a decade ago – will try to “take advantage of this opportunity and regain capability,” Secretary Austin said. 

The United States, too, is sussing out opportunities amid a strategic free-for-all. As it scrambles to keep a strong presence in the vortex of world powers operating in Syria, the U.S. military is hoping to protect vulnerable allies and hit ISIS hard enough so that it never regroups. 

For this, the U.S. has roughly 900 troops in Syria. But times of transition are precarious, and these forces face particular risk now that the country’s government has collapsed, analysts say.

As if to highlight these concerns – and to allay them – U.S. Central Command, which runs Pentagon operations in Syria, announced that it conducted “dozens” of airstrikes against ISIS operatives and training camps Monday.

Omar Sanadiki/AP

A Syrian man flashes the victory sign while passing a burned military vehicle that had been hit by an Israeli strike, in Damascus, Syria, Dec. 9, 2024.

Today, Israel  Defense Minister Israel Katz said  Mr. Assad’s Navy  was destroyed to keep it from falling “into the hands of extremists,”  It’s one of hundreds of hits by Israeli warplanes since the rebel takeover.

Intelligence specialists are still assessing the results of these strikes – which for the U.S. involved U.S. B-52 bombers, F-15 fighter jets, and A-10 attack planes. But “I think we’re going to find that we’ve been pretty successful,” Secretary Austin said. 

The collapse of Syrian and Russian air defenses means the U.S. and its allies do “not need the elaborate preparations and countermeasures that were needed before,” says retired Col. Mark Cancian, a senior adviser in the Defense and Security Department of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

While U.S. forces are concentrated in the northeast of Syria, the fighting by HTS has primarily taken place in the west and southwest of the country. But as HTS consolidates its control, the rebel group will “bump into these U.S. forces,” Colonel Cancian predicts.

So far, the U.S. military hasn’t communicated directly with HTS, though it has “counterparts and other groups that have ways of delivering messages,” Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday.

More immediately, the Defense Department is focused on helping ensure that chemical weapons produced by the Assad regime “don’t fall into the hands of anyone that would want to use them against civilians, or against our partners in the region,” she said. “We have expertise in this issue.” 

Troop tripwire

The U.S. military was eyeing stepped-up ISIS hostilities this summer.

The U.S.-designated terrorist group had doubled its attacks on U.S. and allied forces to 153 in Iraq and Syria between 2023 and 2024. After being routed in 2017, ISIS was trying to grow again, U.S. Central Command officials warned.

Commanders gave a rundown of the U.S. military’s response: The “Defeat ISIS Mission” carried out 59 operations with Kurdish-led Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) in the first half of 2024, killing 14 ISIS operatives and detaining 92.

Today, there are roughly 2,500 ISIS fighters still “at large” across Iraq and Syria, according to Central Command. When not rooting out people identified by U.S. intelligence as terrorists, American troops in the country are tasked with helping the SDF protect oil fields in the northeast, a mission first given to the troops by President Donald Trump in 2019. 

Baderkhan Ahmad/AP/File

This October 2019 photo shows U.S. forces patrolling Syrian oil fields. In the wake of the fall of Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8, 2024, a prime Pentagon focus is protecting oil fields in the northeast.

Critics at the time called it an American money grab. The prospect of oil revenue for U.S. companies reportedly helped dissuade Mr. Trump from completely withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria.

U.S. officials said the point was denying terrorists and the Assad regime critical cash and resources.

Today oilfield money and control is a key reason the Kurds can govern much of Syria’s northeast. This does not please Turkish leaders, who say Kurdish terrorists use the region to plan attacks on them.

Up until now, U.S. troops on the ground have lent protection to the Kurds, a de facto “tripwire” of sorts, deterring Turkey from attacking America’s Kurdish allies, notes Steven Simon, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. 

The Kurds have been key comrades in arms in the U.S. fight against ISIS and against Al Qaeda in Iraq. What happens to them matters to many U.S. veterans of these wars and others.

Among them – most notably the late Sen. John McCain – there has long been a “romanticized image of Kurds as daring fighters fending off terrorist hordes to spare the U.S. an onerous burden,” notes Mr. Miller, who served as the National Security Council senior director for the Middle East under President Barack Obama.

When Turkey took advantage of chaos created by the Assad regime’s collapse to fire on Kurdish forces Dec. 7, killing at least 22 SDF troops, Secretary Austin got his Turkish counterpart on the phone.

They agreed on the need “to prevent further escalation of an already volatile situation, as well as to avoid any risk to U.S. forces and partners,” according to a Pentagon readout of the call. 

Whether the Kurds will inspire the same loyalty in the incoming Trump administration that they have historically garnered with American administrations is unclear. Mr. Trump “does absolutely support the Kurds,” House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, told CBS News on Sunday.

At the same time, the president-elect will embark on “an assessment as to whether or not" U.S. troops should stay in Syria and “make clear … that any threat to U.S. troops will be unbelievably responded to,” Representative Turner said during the broadcast.

On this, Pentagon officials agree, particularly as they grapple with lingering concern that skirmishes between Turkish-backed militias and the SDF could create enough confusion for ISIS to hatch prison breaks, bolstering their ranks. 

For now, U.S. troops have the job of helping the SDF guard the 9,000 ISIS prisoners still in Syrian detention centers, along with 43,000 displaced persons awaiting return from camps in the northeast.

Next door, the pending U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq has been emboldening attacks on U.S. forces in Syria, defense officials say. It’s an effort, they add, to pressure America to leave the country for good. 

Orit Praag is so delighted by the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that she’s almost bouncing as she walks along the lavender and rosemary bushes in the garden of her son’s home.

His family has not lived here on this kibbutz near Lebanon for the past 14 months.

Along with some 60,000 other residents in villages and towns along Israel’s northern border, they left the day the community was awoken by evacuation orders. The region became a second war front a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel’s southern border from Gaza, when Hezbollah opened fire in solidarity with Hamas.

Since then, a Hezbollah missile landed on the sidewalk next door, shattering windows and leaving the walls of all the nearby houses riddled with shrapnel. Kibbutz Dafna’s avocado grove was destroyed by a fire, the roof of its school struck, and thousands of missiles and drones were shot toward the community and points deeper in Israel.

But residents say they hope the ceasefire means they will return to this communal farm that is nestled in the Hula Valley. A ridge of Lebanese hills marks the border about a mile away.

Ms. Praag's family, like so many of the other evacuees from kibbutzim and towns along the northern border, remains torn, awaiting clarity to the question they’ve debated every day since their abrupt departure: Will it be safe enough to return?

“I admit I’m feeling optimistic right now,” she says. “The ceasefire has created positive feelings and hope. I could see that this past weekend, seeing so many young families arrive to visit their homes and sleep over. My grandson even made a video about the kibbutz for his classmates, declaring, ‘This is my home.’”

Syria’s impact

According to the ceasefire brokered by the United States and France two weeks ago, Hezbollah forces must retreat 18 miles north of the border within 60 days while Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon, to be replaced by Lebanese and United Nations troops. Then tens of thousands of Lebanese and Israeli civilians from both sides of the border are allowed to return home.

Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

Neighbors look at a damaged home following the ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah, near the Israel-Lebanon border in Metula, northern Israel, Dec. 3, 2024.

Buoying hopes, the dramatic fall over the weekend of the autocratic Assad regime to rebel forces in Syria increases the likelihood the truce holds, some Israeli military officials believe. The regime’s abandonment by its longtime sponsor Iran signals Tehran’s diminished power and ability to easily resupply Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Dafna and other northern communities historically were seen as among the most threatened in Israel. In the Jewish state’s earlier years, the kibbutz was targeted by Syria and later by militant groups in Lebanon.

But the communities had never been evacuated, even amid the fierce Lebanon wars in 1982 and 2006. The question of returning is also symbolic, a test of the Zionist ethos of defending borders through settlement.

Ms. Praag’s parents’ generation founded Kibbutz Dafna as young refugees from Nazi Europe. The northern Galilee, ringed by Syrian and Lebanese hills and under the gaze of towering Mount Hermon in the northern Golan Heights, is beloved for its fresh air, pastoral views, and relaxed pace far from Israel’s crowded center.

“I was born here, and this is home to me, with these views and the sound of nearby rivers,” says Ms. Praag. “Since I was in nursery school I heard the Syrians around me, threatening us in those days, but I knew that Israel would save me.”

Now, referencing the 100 Israelis still held hostage in Gaza, and an Israeli government that she and others criticize for not acting more urgently to negotiate their release, she wonders what would happen if Hezbollah captured her or her neighbors.

Hamas’ mass hostage-taking is a plan reportedly modeled on one by Hezbollah.

“We were used to having security incidents, but nothing prepared us for what happened on Oct. 7, and what happened that day could have happened here,” says Ravit Rosental, principal of the kibbutz middle school and high school. “I won’t feel safe until the hostages return.”

“It’s a crazy reality”

Arik Yaacovi, the kibbutz manager, says the trauma is so deep, “It will take a generation for a sense of security to return.”

Dina Kraft

Arik Yaacovi, manager of Kibbutz Dafna, kneels in front of a home damaged by shrapnel from a missile that exploded just a few feet away in the communal village in northern Israel, Dec. 4, 2024.

Especially dangerous to border communities is the firing of anti-tank missiles directly onto homes. That threat has been curbed, as has the risk of infiltrations, he says, thanks to the massive Israeli offensive that began in September and included the first ground invasion of southern Lebanon since 2006.

Israeli forces uprooted Hezbollah tunnels and lookouts, and airstrikes killed much of Hezbollah’s top leadership, including its storied leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Yet the threat of ballistic missiles remains.

“I’ve lived in this area almost 50 years and have experienced how we go from round of fighting to round of fighting. ... It’s a crazy reality. No one wants to raise their children like this,” Mr. Yaacovi says.

“What will make the difference in people feeling safe is the beefing up of security arrangements, including the kibbutz fence, and how extensively the army will be deployed along the border,” he continues. “But we have no other country, and woe to us if we surrender. It’s an essential part of the country.”

When the kibbutz, whose main income is from tourism and avocado and citrus groves, evacuated its 1,050 residents, they scattered across the country and even abroad. Many are staying at hotels and apartments paid for by the government near the Sea of Galilee.

Often in the same families, partners disagree over where they should cast their future. Ms. Rosental, the school principal, reports a spike in anxiety and other emotional problems among the students, with parents too emotionally spent to address them.

As the fighting ramped up in September, with daily missile barrages on the entire north, people were terrified of driving, fearing they’d be caught on the roads without shelter.

Yet if the ceasefire holds, Mr. Yaacovi says, and a new sense of normalcy replaces the dread from the sirens and booms of air defense systems intercepting rockets overhead, he has an optimistic assessment: “By this summer, I hope we will see most people moved back.”

“My heart definitely wants to come back”

Five miles west of Dafna is the working-class city of Kiryat Shmona. Today it feels like a ghost town, its businesses shuttered and playgrounds and streets empty.

On the second floor of a building where three generations of Achi Natan’s family live, a children’s room lies in tatters from a missile.

Dina Kraft

Achi Natan stands in front of his home, which was damaged by a Hezbollah missile, in Kiryat Shmona, Israel. He is doing his military reserve duty in the local security force.

Mr. Natan, a musician doing his military reserve duty in the local security force, says he will never leave this place that his family has called home for decades.

He was named for his father’s brother, who was killed fighting in the 1982 war. Yet he expects, regardless of what this ceasefire brings, that his sons and grandsons will also have to fight in Lebanon.

At the site of a direct missile hit on a shed that lit an adjacent apartment block ablaze, the smell of smoke still lingers four months later.

Yotam Degani, Kiryat Shmona’s director of resource development, looks beyond the damaged buildings, motioning to the surrounding nature.

“I’m biased, but this is the most beautiful place in Israel. It’s a real community in Kiryat Shmona. When you live here, you are living as a family,” he says.

“My heart definitely wants to come back,” he adds, pausing. He explains that his wife is hesitant about bringing their baby daughter and toddler son here. “There has not been a day we have not talked about it, cried about it – it’s complicated.”

The night before, though, he slept in his own bed for the first time in six months. “It feels like home; it’s magical – the place I want to come back to.”

FOX News Channel/Reuters

Luigi Mangione, a suspect in the New York City killing of UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson, arrives for his arraignment in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Dec. 9, 2024, in a still image from video.

An untraceable ghost gun fitted with a silencer. Subsonic rounds with casings etched with a possible motive. Cash instead of trackable cards. A daring escape route out of New York City.

The plot to get away with the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was not only laid with care and intelligence, but also could well have succeeded as the shooter disappeared into New York’s holiday crowds and Central Park, law enforcement experts say.

But on Monday, after a five-day manhunt, police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, took a suspect into custody fitting the description of that shooter. Experts say the man – a mid-20s, former-Ivy League engineering graduate student – may have underestimated a more profound respect in the United States for the common good.

Even in a country riven with class and political divides, the citizen-led capture underscores that a core group of Americans don’t see turning an eye from violence as a solution to social ills.

The man, Luigi Mangione, has been arrested and denied bail on several charges in Pennsylvania, and New York prosecutors filed a murder charge against him on Monday night. He will have to be extradited to New York.

Mike Segar/Reuters

Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny speaks next to New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch during a NYPD press conference after the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York City, Dec. 4, 2024.

“My initial reaction was that the guy was a pro,” says Thomas Mockaitis, author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat,” noting he doesn’t condone the acts.

Instead, Mr. Mangione is described by police and others as a prep school valedictorian from an affluent Baltimore family who had moved to Hawaii with a remote job and who may have suffered from chronic back pain. Online posts suggest he had lost contact with friends and family over the past year.

“He was extremely methodical. He unjammed the gun, made sure the guy was dead, and had a pretty good escape plan,” says Dr. Mockaitis. “His only real mistakes were allowing his face to be seen and not recognizing the degree to which law enforcement put together a response.”

Video, fingerprints, and database clues

The manhunt involved a massive effort by the New York Police Department and the FBI, as well as other jurisdictions. Investigators combed through thousands of hours of video, processed evidence, including DNA and fingerprints, dug through databases of photographs, and followed up on myriad leads.

Yet, as time passed, none of that work yielded a suspect’s name. Police say it took an observant McDonald’s worker to raise an eyebrow at a young man who ordered breakfast and sat alone in the back of the restaurant. Officers who answered the 911 call asked him to remove his mask and instantly recognized the face from widely distributed still images. The McDonald’s employee may be eligible for an offered $50,000 FBI reward, depending on an interagency review that will determine the total award amount after any conviction.

“We should never underestimate the power of the public to be our eyes and our ears in these investigations,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said after the arrest, also praising U.S. media for its wide distribution of still and video images of the suspect.

Yet the shooting also divided the American public in ways that many found disturbing, including a yawning lack of empathy for the victim and even cheering for the shooter.

Mr. Mangione, the man arrested in connection with the shooting, was carrying a three-page, handwritten paper complaining about corporate greed, particularly of UnitedHealthcare. Police have also linked him to online writings that address deeper cultural complaints about the dehumanizing impacts of corporate profiteering.

The shooting came as law enforcement, for years, has been warning of a growing risk of political violence, some rooted in online radicalization and conspiracy theories.

Matthew Hatcher/Reuters

Customers drive through the McDonalds restaurant where the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Dec. 10, 2024.

Incivility strikes a dissonant chord

Yet unexpected – and unsettling – sympathy for the shooter also spilled over into the public conversation more broadly as his complaints touched on common concerns for many Americans: a medical establishment, including private health insurance, that can seem byzantine, increasingly expensive, and dehumanizing.

While some have blamed rising health care costs on medical providers or hospitals, insurers are not faultless.

One estimate states that UnitedHealthcare denied nearly 30% of claims under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, more than any other insurer. Meanwhile, its earnings grew at a double-digit rate between 2022 and 2023.

The shooter’s complaints placed him in a gray area between ideological terrorism and idiosyncratic lone-wolf extremism, experts say.

After the shooting, many anonymously rooted for the killer, defended his actions, and noted his appearance. But some went further, urging people to actively undermine the investigation. Some digital sleuths who have assisted police in previous manhunts refused to cooperate to find the New York shooter.

“He touched into popular anger,” says Dr. Mockaitis, a history professor at DePaul University in Chicago. But in the end, “the same social media that has gotten him praise from a certain segment of the population also made it easier to catch him.”

That some people seemed to sympathize with the suspect clearly rattled police, says former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. Would they help the investigation? Or hinder it?

It was a far different response than what followed the Boston marathon bombing in 2013. That manhunt ended in the death of one of the suspects and the arrest of the other after a resident alerted police to a suspicious person in his backyard.

Mr. Davis led that search. But apparent in the aftermath of Mr. Thompson’s killing, he says, was a tribal response that suggests Americans have grown more comfortable with the notion of violence as acceptable political speech.

While most Americans consider such attacks un-American, one in five told an April PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll that violence may be acceptable “to get the country back on track.”

“It’s almost like a gangster mentality when you sign into something like that,” says Mr. Davis, who now runs a private security firm in Boston.

“You’re basically throwing away the rule of law and the justice system, and chaos reigns.” The response to Mr. Thompson’s death and the capture of a suspect “speaks to who we are and also points where we have to go to correct it.”

Boston is on track to set a new record. The city may ring in the new year with its fewest homicides and shootings in a single year – for the second year in a row.

In 2023, it reported 37 homicides, its lowest number ever since the Boston Regional Intelligence Center began counting. The murder rate of 5.29 per 100,000 residents was the city’s lowest in the 21st century.

As of Dec. 10, Boston has reported 22 homicides – a little over half of the 40 it had just two years ago, according to the City of Boston Homicide Dashboard.

The historic decline began early. In the first quarter, the city of 654,000 residents saw the largest drop among all big U.S. metropolises: Homicides plunged 82% compared with the same period last year, ahead of second-best Philadelphia (37%).

There were only three homicides by June. Even during the summer months, which often see more crime, there were just 17 reported by the end of September – a 60% reduction year to year.

SOURCE:

Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Boston Police Department

|

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Gun violence remains the leading cause – in Boston, as well as nationwide – with fatal shootings accounting for 18 of this year’s 22 homicides. However, shootings also reached record lows in the city, signaling a broader decline in violent crime.

Last year, Mayor Michelle Wu announced a violence prevention plan to cut homicides and shootings by 20% by 2026. The city has already surpassed that target.

While it’s difficult to pinpoint a specific cause for the steep decline, public safety experts point to the tight-knit network of neighborhood associations and community-based organizations focusing on young people at risk for violence. For his part, Police Commissioner Michael Cox, in early 2024, credited an increase in anonymous tips and the growing trust and cooperation of Boston’s residents.

“There seems to be a renewed effort to include the community in the process of public safety,” says Jack McDevitt, a professor emeritus of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University. He also points to Massachusetts’ low gun ownership rate and stricter gun laws.

SOURCE:

Major Cities Chiefs Association, U.S. Census Bureau

|

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

“Boston has always been a place where the community was involved,” he adds. “But under Commissioner Cox, it looks like he has made a renewed effort to get more community voices, more different neighborhoods, trying to say, ‘What are your problems? How can we deal with them?’ And certainly on top of that list would be homicide.”

While Boston remains an outlier, overall violent crime and homicides have continued to drop in 2024 in the United States, after a spike during the pandemic. When compared with cities with similar population sizes, Beantown has fared pretty well: In 2023, Washington reported 274 homicides, Baltimore had 259, and San Francisco 53.

Professor McDevitt cautions that one or even two years does not a trend make. However, he points out, in 1990 the city recorded 152 homicides – a record high. “Now we’re talking about the 20s. It’s a pretty amazing turnaround.”

To listen to Troy talk about his original story about Boston’s low homicide rate, here’s the Monitor’s podcast.

AP

People inspect documents they found in the infamous Saydnaya military prison near Damascus, Syria, Dec. 9.

Just days after their country’s liberation from a long dictatorship, many in Syria have begun to shake off long-held fears and reclaim their innocence. Tens of thousands of political prisoners, for example, have been released from detention. Some had been held for decades simply for their views.

At the same time, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that ousted the Assad regime offered amnesty to conscripted soldiers, in effect declaring them innocent of following any orders from higher-ups. In addition, low-level government workers have been asked to stay on.

In postconflict societies, sifting innocent people from guilty people is often seen as essential for national reconciliation. Syria now has a “huge chance” for an inclusive and fair political transition, said United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk Dec. 9. And, he added, accountability “is going to be a key piece of the transition, because we cannot afford [to] go back to those periods where indeed impunity reigns.”

The new leaders in Damascus – who themselves are suspected of atrocities by some countries – promised on Tuesday to pursue former top government officials responsible for torture and war crimes. That task may be much easier for Syria than for similar postconflict countries. The civil war that began in 2011 after a pro-democracy uprising is considered by scholars to be the most documented conflict in history.

For years, atrocities in Syria have been recorded by both private and U.N. bodies in hopes of prosecuting guilty people someday. Some of the evidence has indeed already been used to put former Syrian officials on trial in European countries. That wealth of evidence has now been greatly enhanced by paperwork uncovered in prisons and elsewhere since the taking of Damascus Dec. 8.

“There is a sea change,” said Robert Petit, a Canadian prosecutor who heads the U.N. investigative body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism Investigating Serious Crimes in Syria. The country’s new leaders have promised rewards for information on senior security officers involved in war crimes.

Breaking the cycle of violence in Syria will require a careful approach in what is called transitional justice.  Innocent people and the survivors of past atrocities are often best equipped to define the right balance between justice and mercy, as many countries have discovered.

For now, Syria seems off to a good start. It is hailing the innocent who were wrongly imprisoned and forgiving low-level soldiers forced to follow orders. The act of affirming innocence can be just as effective as finding guilt.