I’m writing this month’s column less than a week after the suicide bombing in Damascus, which killed several top Assad regime officials. As fighting begins to rage in parts of Damascus, reports that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces have captured several border crossings and areas in the northern half of the country, and of regime efforts to reclaim them, keep filtering in. In Syrian Kurdistan, Assad forces and administrators continue to withdraw from a number of areas, where people quickly raise the Kurdish flag upon their departure.

Although the Assad regime may hold on a little while longer, most actors in and around Syria view these latest events as Assad’s end game. As the smell of imminent regime collapse grows, Assad supporters increasingly run for whatever exits they can find, or prepare to barricade themselves in Damascus and the Allawite northwest of the country. Picking up the same scent in the air, more and more people openly side with the opposition.

As the tide of the uprising appears to turn in favour of the rebels, Syrian Kurds increasingly appear willing to fight the regime again. Rather than engaging on the side of the larger Syrian opposition, however, Syrian Kurds proclaim their ability and right to liberate their own region. They continue to forbid FSA forces from operating in areas they control. Additionally, the pro-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Democratic Union Party (PYD) appear to be cooperating with the other Syrian Kurdish parties. In other words, Syrian Kurds are maintaining a strategic, more or less unified, posture with a vision to the post-Assad struggle for power.

They will need this unity, as the post-Assad scenario will not be an easy one. The non-Kurdish opposition will be under great pressure from their Turkish benefactors to reassert control over Syrian Kurdistan, lest the region fall completely under PKK influence. Syrian Arabs have also shown precious little enthusiasm for ethnic group, as opposed to individual, rights. If the larger opposition moves quickly and effectively to establish an effective post-Assad administration, the pressure on Syrian Kurds to submit will likely prove strong. If, on the other hand, the overthrow of Assad is followed by an orgy of bloodletting, revenge against Alaawis in general and virtual civil war, Syrian Kurds may enjoy a bit more room to consolidate an autonomous administration in their region. They may be tempted to move quickly in this kind of scenario to establish and hold control over any “disputed territories,” in order to avoid the long-running quandary of their brethren in Iraq. Such a strategy carries grave risks, of course, and could open the door to a repression of Syrian Kurdistan reminiscent of the new Islamic regime’s pacification of Iranian Kurdistan in the early 1980s.

In terms of regional repercussions, the fall of Assad would be every bit as significant as that of Mubarak. Seeing as the old guard in Egypt still clings to power in many ways, the end of the Assad regime might even prove more momentous. The rivalries between Shiite and Sunni powers in the Middle East, including Iran, Hezballah, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, would witness a huge boost for the Sunni camp. Wider Kurdish aspirations would experience the most significant opening since the 1990 Gulf War and the 2003 fall of Saddam. The Arab-Israeli conflict would enter new, uncharted waters. Lebanon would experience an opportunity to free itself from both Syria and Hezballah’s grip. Russia would lose its only foreign naval base in Tartus and its most important ally in the Middle East. If civil war follows the fall of Assad, violence and refugee flows could destabilize the region even more than they already have. Syria’s Christian community, one of the last remaining significant Christian populations in the Middle East, might feel particularly inclined to flee abroad and avoid the fate of their co-religionists in Iraq.

The most momentous change may prove psychological, however. If Syrian rebels manage to overthrow the Assad regime without direct outside intervention in their favour, as they seem increasingly likely to do, the whole future of the “police state” will fall into question. Like their fellow Ba’athists in Iraq, the Syrian government ruled through fear and patronage. Opponents and critics of the regime were either coopted and put on the state payroll or savagely repressed. The military and police appeared omnipresent. More than a dozen domestic secret service agencies spied on everyone, including each other. Arrest and torture awaited anyone showing the slightest inclination to speak out against their rulers. How a people’s revolt managed to seriously challenge such a system from the bottom up – in the streets rather than via a conspirational coup d’état at the top – still defies the imagination. And once the imagination gets successfully defied, the aura of invincibility of every police state the world over suffers a blow.