By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Syrians have been rejoicing in the streets after one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships suddenly crumbled in a few short weeks.

For half a century, the Assad family ruled over Syria with an iron fist, with long-documented reports of mass incarceration torture, extra-judicial killings and atrocities against their own people.

A civil war that started during the 2011 Arab Spring ravaged the country and turned it into a breeding ground for extremist group ISIS, while sparking an international proxy war and refugee crisis that saw millions displaced from their homes.

On Sunday, after 13 years of civil war that fractured the country, rebel fighters declared Damascus “liberated” in a video statement on state television, sending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Russia.

The video showed prisoners being freed from Assad’s notorious detention facilities, and rebels, and civilians were seen ransacking the presidential palace, with footage revealing his luxurious lifestyle and large car collection.

Many in the country are hopeful that Syria could finally be free, but there’s huge uncertainty over what comes next.

When asked if the UK government would engage with the Syrian rebel group that has overthrown President Bashar al-Assad, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says it is "very early days".

"We do need a political solution," he tells the media in Abu Dhabi, during his first trip to the region since becoming prime minister.

He adds "it is a good thing that Assad has gone, a very good thing for the Syrian people".

For more than half a century, the Assad dynasty appeared to have an impregnable hold over Syria. Relying on a formidable security apparatus, brutal use of force, and powerful allies like Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, it had withstood multiple uprisings, and even a terrible civil war in which hundreds of thousands were killed and for a time the regime lost control of much of the country. In recent years, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose government had been sanctioned and ostracized from regional and international diplomacy since 2011, even regained some of his standing, as the Arab League reinstated Syria and there was talk of sanctions relief.

Yet in the end, the regime was a house of cards. To the surprise of the world, it was felled by the Islamist rebels of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—the Syrian Liberation Group, or HTS—in a matter of days, without putting up much of a fight. On Sunday, as HTS quickly took control of Damascus, Russia announced that Assad had taken refuge in Moscow; his former prime minister was escorted to the Four Seasons in the Syrian capital to formally hand over power. The entire affair had taken less than two weeks, with little bloodshed, in contrast to the vast numbers who had lost their lives during the regime’s final years in power.

The astonishing sequence of events that allowed HTS to bring down the Syrian regime had many causes, including Israel’s dramatic decapitation of Syria’s ally Hezbollah and the destruction of much of the group’s missile arsenal, the erosion of Iranian power and influence due to the loss of Hezbollah as its “forward defense," a breakdown in talks between Ankara and Damascus over reforms to the Assad government, Syria’s underpaid and demoralized army, and Russia’s preoccupation with the costly war it had unleashed in Ukraine. The lightning HTS offensive appears to have been greenlighted initially by Turkey, which had long protected the rebels in their stronghold in Idlib, in Northwestern Syria. But it was mainly a homegrown Syrian campaign.

On November 30, seemingly out of nowhere HTS rebels took Syria’s second city, Aleppo, in a single day and swept southwards to Damascus. As they did so, they ignited spontaneous rebellions against regime rule in Sweida and Daraa in the south and Deir Ezzour to the east. On December 5 they captured Hama, Syria’s fourth largest city; two days later, they took Homs, the third largest city, which sits on the road linking Damascus, the capital, to the regime’s Alawite heartland in the mountains looming over the Mediterranean coast. The rebels’ extraordinary momentum combined with the government’s drastically eroded base of support was far too great for the regime to withstand.

In their race to Damascus, the rebels brought a highly internationalized civil war, at least for now, to a positive conclusion, with hardly any foreign intervention. In the end, Syrian cities that had taken the Assad regime and its backers Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah years of bloody bombardment and siege to recapture during the civil war were easily overrun by opposition forces. The rebels’ takeover of the country marks a tectonic shift in the Middle East that leaves major regional and international powers uncertain how to react. As recently as a few weeks ago, the Biden administration was working with the United Arab Emirates to lift sanctions against Syria in exchange for Assad distancing himself from Iran and blocking Hezbollah arms shipments, according to multiple sources who spoke to Reuters.

But the fall of Assad also shows how interconnected, and in unpredictable ways, the region’s various conflicts are, and what can happen when they are neglected or normalized. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Syrian civil war had both shared this fate. The sudden re-eruption of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with Hamas’s October 7 attack led to Israel’s war Gaza, the Houthis’ campaign in the Red Sea, Israel’s war in Lebanon, and volleys of attacks between Iran and Israel. In Syria, this latest earthquake has ended the existing order. In both cases, rapid upheavals for which no external actors were prepared show the folly of sidestepping the Middle East’s protracted conflicts to maintain an unbearable status quo. Although many questions remain about how the HTS will try to manage the country—and indeed whether it will be able to contend with the various groups competing for influence—the end of Assad seems certain to transform the region's balance of power.

Strike on Mezzeh airport:

 

The War the West Forgot

The HTS campaign against Assad has its origins in the Syrian civil war that began in 2011 and never really ended. Amid the Arab Spring uprisings, Syrian citizens had launched peaceful protests, but the regime’s lethal crackdown caused some protesters to take up arms and insurgent forces to get involved, including ISIS and Al-Qaeda. This quickly spiraled into an internationalized conflict in which outside powers—Iran, the Gulf States, Russia, Turkey, and the United States, in particular—shipped weapons and funds to their preferred armed groups. But at the time, Iran and Russia, the Syrian regime’s allies, proved to be more committed: Iran and its proxy militias—especially Hezbollah— helped Assad to besiege and bombard his own people; Russia with their Sukhoi fighter jets annihilated entire cities. With their help, it is estimated that the regime killed at least half a million of its own people, disappeared another 130,000, and left about half the population—some 14 million— displaced. In the end the UN stopped even counting the dead.

The conflict had far-reaching international repercussions. The arrival of more than a million Syrian refugees in Europe in 2015 accelerated the rise of far-right parties in many European countries, causing European governments to strengthen ties to authoritarian leaders like Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Tunisian president Kais Saeed to stem the refugee flow. Many of these parties also curried favor with Damascus and the Kremlin, an added benefit for both regimes. The war was also a major coup for Moscow, which used its successful 2015 intervention to prop up the Assad regime and expand its own military influence. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, Russia was engaging in a major conflict outside of its “near abroad.” Russia has also cherished its access to its only warm-water port—in Tartous on Syria’s Mediterranean coast—as well as its control over the Hmeimim airbase near Latakia, in Western Syria.

And although Russia’s growing alliance with China is often traced to the beginning of its fullscale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the two countries’ tightening ties actually began with the Syrian civil war, when Beijing began voting in lockstep with the Kremlin at the UN Security Council, using its veto power more often than ever before. Although China’s role in Syria was minimal, its votes and rhetoric in support of the Syrian regime were a way to push back against U.S. hegemony and to efforts to challenge sovereign governments for human rights violations, thus helping to align Beijing with the Kremlin in what would later become the “no limits” partnership.

A burning Syrian military vehicle in Damascus, December 2024

By 2018, to outside observers, the Syrian civil war had been managed and largely contained. Assad’s allies and foes crowned him victorious even though, by many accounts, the seams were fraying. Since the summer of 2024, Israel’s offensive in Lebanon and attacks against Iran had dramatically weakened Iran and Hezbollah, Assad’s stalwart allies. Indeed, in addition to decimating the upper ranks of Hezbollah, Israel had degraded the group’s vast arsenal of Iranian rockets and missiles, and Israel continued to attack Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah in Syria even after Israel and Lebanon declared a ceasefire on November 27. At the same time, Erdogan, a frequent antagonist of Assad, was losing patience with Syria’s refusal to compromise and reconcile with Turkey, and even Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad’s close ally, was frustrated by the regime’s unwillingness to find some measure of accommodation with the opposition.

Meanwhile, HTS had evolved from its status as the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda into an Islamist group that abjured transnational jihadism, centering its fight squarely on the Assad regime. Biding its time, it had made alliances with other groups, moderated its message, gained protection from Turkey, and established a civilian government in its area of control in Idlib, even as it ruled with an iron fist. During those years, the rebels never lost sight of their overarching goal: to depose Assad. Then, in early November, negotiations between Damascus and Ankara—over creating conditions that would allow Syrian refugees in Turkey to return home safely, which has become a driving issue for Turkey—fell apart again because of Assad’s intransigence, an event that may have led Erdogan’s government not to stand in HTS’s way when they decided to break out of Idlib a few weeks later.

In the end, hardly any Syrians proved willing to sacrifice any more for this regime, or simply couldn’t. Perhaps most importantly, HTS calculated that poorly trained, underpaid, and demoralized Syrian army forces would not put up more than token resistance. They turned out to be right. Syrian forces, for the most part, melted away. Watching HTS’s rapid progress, the people of Daraa and Sweida in the south quickly rose up and expelled the regime from their areas on their own accord.

Perhaps even more shocking was the collapse of Assad’s international support. On December 6, Russia recalled its troops and diplomats and began to withdraw from its bases. With dwindling options, Iran also withdrew its allied militias, recognizing that fighting for Assad would be futile. In the east, Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Arab-led military councils struck deals with regime forces to seize regime-controlled areas of Deir Ezzour and, most significantly, the Albu Kamal crossing with Iraq, cutting off the regime’s supply lines from Iran and Iraq. As the rebels approached Damascus, remaining Russian, Iranian and regime forces also withdrew from their positions throughout the northeast.

 

Jubilation and Jitters

Syria’s future, and the region’s, is filled with uncertainty. Clashes are already ongoing between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) armed groups in the north and the Kurdish-dominated SDF. While most Syrians are jubilant, including the millions of exiles who are beginning to find their way home from Lebanon, Turkey, and elsewhere, the fate of many Kurds expelled by Turkey previously from Afrin and other areas in the north is less certain. SDF General Mazloum has announced that his administration is pleased with the downfall of the Assad regime and his coordination with HTS, but the Kurds and Turkey will need to come to a compromise that does not unleash more bloodshed inside and outside Syria’s borders, a daunting challenge in the best of times.

Meanwhile, thousands of Islamic State fighters remain in prisons in the northeast under SDF control. Those fighters, should they escape or if cells should reemerge, would be a major spoiler for any post-Assad government and for the region. Likewise, Israel has already invaded the demilitarized zone on its border with Syria and has continued to strike weapons depots and suspected chemical weapons production sites. For the moment, Turkey has gained the strong upper hand in the current outcome, and Russia, in its hasty retreat, has suffered a devastating loss. Iran, however, appears to be the biggest loser, with its “forward defense” strategy in tatters, and Tehran itself now dangerously exposed to a potential Israeli attack on its nuclear program.

Amid this rapidly shifting balance of outside forces, Syrians will face an uphill power-sharing battle at home. HTS is a U.S.-designated terrorist group with little popularity in its home territory of Idlib. Thus far, its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has been careful to take a conciliatory stance, not just with Syria’s many minorities but also with former regime officials. The question of whether this tone will remain and whether other insurgent groups and opposition factions will follow his lead is another question. As more Syrians return to the country, including various opposition leaders, there will be inevitable tensions. Many people may find their homes looted or new families living in them. Armed groups within Syria and the exiled opposition may struggle for power. For the moment, HTS appears to be pursuing an inclusive model of governance at the local level, bringing in minorities and those who never lived in opposition-controlled areas.

The rebel offensive was possible, in part, because of dynamics beyond Syria’s borders, including the dismantling of Hezbollah and the bottoming out of relations between Ankara and Damascus. Conversely, Assad's demise will cause shock waves far beyond Syria. To secure a stable and unified country, urgent and sustained regional and international support will be needed to help HTS restore order, establish a civilian government, encourage reconciliation and transitional justice, and start rebuilding a devastated country.

For too long, Syria has been neglected by the United States and its Western allies, which deemed the Assad regime unmovable, until they discovered it wasn’t. Now, Syria is on the verge of becoming a failed state. Along with the legacy of years of international sanctions and economic mismanagement, the prospect of a new civil war and yet further instability across the region cannot be discounted. Preventing further tragedy will require Western countries and Gulf Arab states, in particular, to reach out to the new leaders in Damascus, and steer them toward pragmatic, if not democratic, governance. Having at last regained hope from the fall of the House of Assad, the Syrian people expect no less from the countries that have for so many years allowed the country’s agony to continue at their expense.

Below we sum up the dramatic developments in the hours since rebel forces seized the capital Damascus unopposed and toppled Bashar al-Assad.

 

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