Thirteen violent years after Syria first rose up, the Arab Spring has finally prevailed in Damascus.

On Sunday, the country got the change it first demanded in February, 2011, when a wave of pro-democracy revolutions was sweeping through the Middle East. Bashar al-Assad’s regime is gone, the dictator having flown to Moscow on Sunday, where the Kremlin-run TASS news agency reported he and his family had been granted asylum.

The tragedy is that it took a prolonged and horrific civil war, and cost more than 500,000 lives, to reach an ending that Mr. al-Assad, the British-trained ophthalmologist who inherited a dictatorship from his father, could have facilitated at the start by gracefully stepping aside.

Instead of listening to the people when they took to the streets against him, Mr. al-Assad ordered his army to shoot. Today, much of the country lies in ruins. The economy has shrunk to less than half its 2010 size. One in five Syrians – five million people – live outside the country as refugees. Entire neighbourhoods were reduced to rubble by the multisided fighting in which the regime used prohibited chemical weapons and crude barrel bombs to suppress its enemies.

As recently as two weeks ago, Mr. al-Assad – assisted by Russia and Iran – appeared to have won a Pyrrhic victory over his opponents. The insurgents were largely confined to the northwestern province of Idlib, where they were protected by the Turkish military. Mr. al-Assad’s hold on Damascus looked secure.

Then came the perfectly timed rebel offensive that began on Nov. 27. The Russian military, which had waded decisively into Syria’s war back in 2015, was distracted by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which drew military assets away from Syria. Similarly, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah – a proxy force that Iran had sent into Syria to defend the regime at the start of the civil war – was too battered by 14 months of war with Israel to again save Mr. al-Assad’s regime.

Without the support of those allies, Mr. al-Assad’s army quickly collapsed. The insurgents entered the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs one after another last week, heading first to the main prison in each city to free those held captive in the regime’s notorious jails.

On Sunday, Damascus fell into rebel hands with only a few shots fired. Videos emerged online a day earlier showing members of Mr. al-Assad’s army deserting their posts and changing into civilian clothes.

“This victory is for all Syrians,” Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the most powerful rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, said in a speech from the Syrian capital’s historic Umayyad Mosque. “We are the rightful owners [of this country], we have been fighting, and today we have been rewarded with this victory.”

World reaction to end of Assad regime in Syria

As the rebels’ victory became clear, residents of the capital poured into the streets to tear down a statue of Mr. al-Assad’s father, Hafez, and then to loot the presidential palace that had been the seat of the Assad dynasty for much of its 54-year rule.

The next target for some was the Iranian embassy, where Syrians smashed windows and tore down posters of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and former Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, two key allies of Mr. al-Assad. Mr. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Beirut in September, while General Soleimani was assassinated by the U.S. in 2020.

The length and depravity of the civil war transformed the uprising against Mr. al-Assad. Instead of a transition to Syria’s pro-democracy figures – something that could perhaps have been managed back in 2011 – it was a group of heavily armed jihadists that led the lightning offensive that finally brought an end to the Baathist regime. The largely secular ex-army officers who led the initial armed opposition to Mr. al-Assad (under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army) were gradually eclipsed by Mr. al-Sharaa and HTS, a former al-Qaeda offshoot.

What happens next in the country will largely be decided by the 42-year-old Mr. al-Sharaa, whose nomme de guerre is Abu Mohammed al-Golani. On Sunday, he announced that Mr. al-Assad’s last prime minister, Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali, would oversee the running of state institutions for an unspecified transition period.

Mr. al-Sharaa – who was greeted with cheers of “God is great!” on Sunday as he strode through the centre of Damascus, surrounded by armed men – called for an end to all fighting, and forbade acts of retribution against those who had previously served Mr. al-Assad.

But HTS, which is designated as a terrorist group by Canada and the United States, even as it has sought to moderate its image in recent years, doesn’t control all of Syria. The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, itself a coalition of smaller armed groups, holds sway in parts of the north of the country. Kurdish forces, under U.S. protection, run a mini-state east of the Euphrates River, near the country’s border with Iraq. In recent days, as HTS approached Damascus from the north, other rebels of unknown affiliation emerged in Daraa – the city that first rose up against the regime in 2011 – and converged on the capital from the south.

It’s unclear whether the other rebel factions will agree to a process led by Mr. al-Sharaa and HTS, or whether the various groups will now turn their guns on each other. Damascus was placed under a 4 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew Sunday night.

There were already signs on Sunday of more chaos ahead. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the Turkish military, which fears the creation of an independent Kurdish state, shelled Kurdish-controlled parts of Syria, and there were clashes between the Turkish-backed SNA and Kurdish forces in the northern city of Manbij.

Meanwhile Israel, which regarded Mr. al-Assad as a foe but also worries about the rise of an Islamist government on its northeastern border, occupied the Syrian-controlled side of Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights, a step Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was taken “to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.”

Israel also carried out at least three air strikes inside Syria on Sunday, including one attack that reportedly struck a scientific research centre in Damascus and another that hit a building used by Mr. al-Assad’s notorious mukhabarat intelligence service.

Despite the many uncertainties, most Syrians believe their future is far brighter now that Mr. al-Assad is gone.

“This day has been a dream for 13 years,” said Asaad Hanna, an exiled Syrian journalist and former member of the White Helmets rescue group that rose to international fame for its efforts to save the victims of air strikes carried out by the regime and its Russian allies.

“I’m still dizzy, not sure if this is true, but we are a free country right now,” Mr. Hanna said. “I’m going home as soon as possible.”

Mark MacKinnon
Senior International Correspondent
The Globe and Mail, December 8, 2024