Russia announced that Al Assad had “resigned” and left the country. “After 50 years of oppression, and 13 years of crimes and forced displacement, we announce today the end of this dark period and the beginning of a new era for Syria,” the rebels said.
The fall of the Bashar al Assad regime On Sunday, the president put a dramatic end to his nearly 14-year struggle to hold on to power as his country fragmented into a brutal civil war that became a proxy battleground between regional and international powers.
The rebels' moves towards Damascus came after The Syrian army will withdraw from much of the south of the country, leaving more areas, including several provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters.
Russia announced that Al-Assad “resigned” and left the country. Hours earlier the rebels announced that “after 50 years of oppression, and 13 years of crimes and forced displacement“We announce today (Wednesday) the end of this dark period and the beginning of a new era for Syria.”
The dictator's downfall marked a stark contrast to his first months as Syria's unlikely president in 2000, when many expected him to be a young reformer after three decades of his father's ironclad control. At just 34, the Western-educated ophthalmologist was a mild-mannered techie.
But when faced with protests against his regime that broke out in March 2011, Assad resorted to his father's brutal tactics in an attempt to crush them. As the uprising spiraled into civil war, he used his army to bomb opposition-held cities with support from allies including the Iranian and Russian regimes.
International human rights groups and prosecutors alleged the widespread use of torture and extrajudicial executions in detention centres run by the Syrian dictatorship.
The war in Syria has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half of the country's pre-war population of 23 million. As the uprising turned into a civil war, Millions of Syrians fled across borders into Jordan, Türkiye, Iraq, Lebanon and into Europe.
His departure marks the end of the Assad family regime, which lasted nearly 54 years. Without a clear successor, the country is plunged into great uncertainty.
Until recently, it seemed that Assad was almost out of the woods. The protracted conflict had settled into fixed positions in recent years, where The regime had regained control of most of Syrian territory while the northwest remained in the hands of opposition groups and the northeast under Kurdish control.
Although Damascus remained under strict Western sanctions, Neighbouring countries had begun to resign themselves to Assad's continued dominance. The Arab League reinstated Syria's membership last year, and Saudi Arabia announced in May the appointment of its first ambassador to Syria since cutting ties with Damascus 12 years earlier.
However, the geopolitical tide quickly turned with a surprise offensive launched by opposition groups based in northwest Syria in late November. Government forces quickly collapsed, while Assad's allies, busy with other conflicts - such as Russia's war in Ukraine and the wars that began more than a year ago between Israel and armed groups backed by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas - They seemed reluctant to intervene forcefully.
Assad's whereabouts remained unclear on Sunday amid reports he had left the country as insurgents took control of the Syrian capital.
The president came to power in 2000 by a twist of fate. His father had been grooming Bashar's older brother, Basil, as his successor, but Basil was killed in a car accident in Damascus in 1994. Bashar was brought back from his job as an ophthalmologist in London, subjected to military training and promoted to the rank of colonel to establish his credentials so that he could one day rule.
When Hafez Assad died in 2000, parliament moved quickly to lower the presidential age requirement from 40 to 34. Bashar's rise was sealed in a national referendum, in which he was the only candidate.
Hafez, a career military man, ruled the country for nearly 30 years. during which he established a Soviet-style centralized economy and kept such a stifling grip on dissent that Syrians feared even to joke about politics with their friends.
He imposed a secular ideology that sought to bury religious differences under Arab nationalism and the image of heroic resistance to Israel. He formed an alliance with Shiite religious leaders in Iran, consolidated Syrian domination over Lebanon and established a network of Palestinian and Lebanese militia groups.
Initially, Bashar seemed completely different from his authoritarian father.
Tall and thin with a slight lisp, he had a calm and friendly manner. His only official position before becoming president was as head of the Syrian Computer Society. His wife, Asthma al-Akhras, whom he married several months after taking office, was attractive, elegant and British-born.
The young couple, who had three children, seemed to shun the trappings of power. They lived in an apartment in Damascus's upmarket Abu Rummaneh district, as opposed to a palatial mansion like other Arab leaders.
Initially upon taking office, Assad released political prisoners and allowed more open discourse. In the “Damascus Spring,” salons for intellectuals sprang up where Syrians could discuss art, culture and politics to a degree impossible under their father’s regime.
But after 1.000 intellectuals signed a public petition calling for multiparty democracy and greater freedoms in 2001 and others tried to form a political party, The salons were stifled by the dreaded secret police which imprisoned dozens of activists.
Instead of political opening, Assad turned to economic reforms. He slowly lifted economic restrictions, allowed in foreign banks, opened the doors to imports and empowered the private sector. Damascus and other cities, long mired in monotony, saw shopping malls, new restaurants and consumer goods flourish. Tourism increased.
Abroad, he stuck to the line his father had established, based on the alliance with Iran and a policy of insisting on the full return of the Golan Heights annexed by Israel, although in practice Assad never confronted Israel militarily.
In 2005, it suffered a severe blow with Syria's loss of control over neighboring Lebanon., which had lasted for decades, after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese accused Damascus of being behind the assassination, Syria was forced to withdraw its troops from the country and a pro-American government came to power in Beirut.
At the same time, the Arab world was divided into two camps: one of countries led by Sunni allies of the United States, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and another with Syria and Iran, led by Shiites and linked to Hezbollah and Palestinian militants.
Throughout this process, Assad relied heavily on the same local power base as his father: the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam—which makes up about 10 percent of the population. Many of the positions in his government were filled by younger generations from the same families that had worked for his father. He also joined the new middle class created by his reforms, including prominent Sunni merchant families.
Assad also turned to his own family. His younger brother Maher He led the elite Presidential Guard and would lead the repression against the uprising. His sister Bushrah She was a strong voice in her inner circle, along with her husband, the deputy minister of defense. Assef Shawkat, until he was killed in an attack in 2012. Bashar's cousin, Rami Makhlouf, became the country's biggest businessman, heading a financial empire before the two had a rift that led to Makhlouf being sidelined.
Assad also increasingly relied on his wife, Asma, for key roles before she announced in May that she was undergoing treatment for leukemia and was stepping back from the spotlight.
When protests broke out in Tunisia and Egypt, eventually toppling their rulers, Assad dismissed the possibility of the same happening at home, insisting his regime was more in tune with its people. After the wave of the Arab Spring hit Syria, its security forces carried out a brutal crackdown as Assad consistently denied he was facing a popular uprising, blaming “foreign-backed terrorists” trying to destabilise his regime.
His position won over many of Syria's minority groups, including Christians, Druze and Shiites, as well as some Sunnis who feared the prospect of a government of Sunni extremists more than Assad's authoritarian rule.
Ironically, on February 26, 2011, two days after the fall of the Egyptian Hosni mubarak In front of protesters and just before the wave of Arab Spring protests swept Syria, in an email published by WikiLeaks as part of an archive in 2012, Assad sent a joke he had found mocking the Egyptian leader's stubborn refusal to step down.
“NEW WORD ADDED TO THE DICTIONARY: Mubarak (verb): To hit something or hit something… Mubarak (adjective): slow to learn or understand,” it said.
Lightning offensive
Almost half a century of Assad family rule in Syria thus came to an end. This Sunday the regime fell after a surprise lightning offensive by the rebels. Early today, when the insurgents managed to enter the capital Damascus, the NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that The dictator had left the country for an unknown location.
Syrian Prime Minister, Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and hand over its functions to a transitional government. “I am at home and have not gone out, and this is because of my belonging to this country,” he said in a video. He also said he would go to his office in the morning to continue his work and called on Syrian citizens not to damage public property.
However, he did not comment on reports about Assad's whereabouts.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory, told the agency The Associated Press Assad left Damascus by air early on Sunday. Meanwhile, state television in Iran, the dictator's main backer in the years of war in Syria, reported that he had left the capital. It cited the Iranian news network Al Jazeera from Qatar for information and did not give further details.
It was the first time that opposition forces reached Damascus since 2018., when Syrian troops recaptured areas on the outskirts of the capital after a years-long siege.
Pro-government radio Sham FM reported that Damascus airport had been evacuated and all flights halted.
The insurgents, for their part, also announced that They had entered the Saydnaya military prison, north of the capital, and “released” their prisoners there.
Last night, opposition forces seized the central city of Homs, Syria’s third-largest, as government forces abandoned it. The city sits at a major intersection between Damascus, the capital, and Syria’s coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus — the Syrian leader’s base of support and home to a strategic Russian naval base.
The rebels had already taken the cities of Aleppo and Hama., as well as large parts of the south, in a lightning offensive that began on November 27. Analysts said rebel control of Homs would be a game-changer.
The gains last week were by far the biggest in recent years by opposing factions led by a group that traces its roots to al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. In their bid to topple the Assad regime, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have encountered little resistance from the Syrian army.
Rapid rebel advances, coupled with a lack of support from Assad's former allies, pose the most serious threat to his rule since the start of the war.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, called for urgent talks in Geneva on Saturday to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the Doha Forum in Qatar, he said that the situation in Syria changes by the minute. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country is Assad's main international backer, said he felt "pity for the Syrian people."
On Saturday, Syrian state media denied rumours circulating on social media that Assad had left the country, saying he was carrying out his duties in Damascus.
He had little or no help from his allies. Russia is busy with its war in Ukraine. The powerful Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to back Assad's forces, has been weakened by a year-long conflict with Israel. Meanwhile, Iran's regime has seen its proxies in the region weakened by continued Israeli airstrikes.
The next president of the United States, Donald Trump, posted on social media on Saturday that The United States should avoid military involvement in Syria. Separately, President Joe Biden's national security adviser said his administration had no intention of intervening in the region.
Pedersen said a date would be announced later for talks in Geneva on the implementation of UN Resolution 2254. The resolution, adopted in 2015, called for a Syrian-led political process, starting with the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and finally, UN-supervised elections.
Later on Saturday, foreign ministers and senior diplomats from eight key countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Turkey and Iran, along with Pederson, met on the sidelines of the Doha Summit. to discuss the situation in Syria.
In a statement issued on Saturday night, the participants said their support for a political solution to the Syrian crisis “which would lead to an end to military activity and protect civilians.” They also agreed on the importance of strengthening international efforts to increase aid to the Syrian people.
The march of the insurgents
Hassan Abdul-Ghani, a rebel commander, posted on the messaging app Telegram that opposition forces had begun the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus.
HTS controls much of northwestern Syria and in 2017 established a “salvation government” to manage day-to-day affairs in the region. In recent years, HTS leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has sought to change the group's image by cutting ties with al-Qaeda, getting rid of hardline officials and promising a policy of religious pluralism and tolerance.
The surprise offensive began on November 27, during which gunmen captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest, and the central city of Hama, the country's fourth-largest city.
Opposition activists said Saturday that a day earlier the insurgents entered Palmyra, which is home to priceless archaeological sites and had been in government hands since it was captured from the Islamic State group in 2017.
To the south, Syrian forces have withdrawn from much of Quneitra province, activists said.
The Syrian regime has referred to opposition gunmen as terrorists since the start of the conflict in March 2011.
Qatar’s top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticised Assad for failing to use the lull in fighting in recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad did not take this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his people,” he said.
(With information from AP)
Source: INFOBAE