Damascus has fallen. President Bashir al-Assad has reportedly fled to Russia, his once-vaunted army, unpaid and demoralised, disintegrating in the face of the rebels lightning offensive. First Aleppo fell to the rebels, then only days later Hama and the strategic city of Homs, and on to the capital Damascus. Assad’s prime minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali promises to co-operate with the rebels.
On the streets there were astonished, relieved residents, the rebels opened the doors of the country’s infamous prisons and in neighbouring Lebanon and Turkey exiled Syrians celebrated. The rebels have promised order, many posted outside banks and other public institutions to guard them.
In just a few days the balance of power in the turbulent region has been turned on its head. Blowback from the Israeli onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon, and an uphill battle in Ukraine for Russia, have seen Assad’s powerful allies turn their back on him, exposing the brutal, impoverished regime, as Mao Zedong would have put it, as a paper tiger.
It represents a watershed for the Middle East, in upheaval since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu hailed a “historic day” as he argued that his country’s attacks on Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbullah had set off a “chain reaction” throughout the region.
The Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which seized the opportunity and leads the alliance which swept the country, had largely been confined to Syria’s north-west province of Idlib before beginning its offensive 12 days ago. Once an affiliate of al-Qaeda, it has rebranded itself as a patriotic nationalist movement and its leader has sought to play down fears of reprisals .
International observers, delighted to see the back of Assad, will wonder nervously whether the leopard has really changed its spots. Not least are concerns that the multitude of factions who had united against Assad will now turn on each other.
Assad, a London-trained eye doctor, took power in 2000, the latest of a ruthless family at the head of the secularist Baathist Party that has run Syria since a 1970 coup. They are Alawites, a minority sect that is an offshoot of Shia Islam. In 2011 a bloody civil war started during the Arab Spring and escalated into a multifaceted conflict involving domestic opposition groups, Kurdish rebels, extremist factions and international powers, including the US, Iran and Russia.
More than 500,000 Syrians have died, and millions more have fled their homes, six million of them abroad to Lebanon and Turkey. But much now remains uncertain about whether a stable government can emerge, or more fighting and suffering lies ahead. And in turn this has major implications for the wider Middle East region.