The people of Syria were jubilant over the toppling of Bashar al-Assad and dared to dream of a better future after five decades of dynastic rule came to an abrupt and unexpected end when the dictator fled to Moscow.
Crowds of thousands waved the Syrian revolutionary flag and toppled statues and portraits of the president and his father, Hafez, as celebratory gunfire and car horns echoed through Damascus on Sunday as a stunning rebel advance reached the capital.
From crying family pictures and reunion videos over lovers lost to the blackness of the regime's wicked prison system, people wailed and clung one to another in disbelief at their newfound freedom. Others threw themselves into the presidential palace with gleeful abandon and ransacked in awe at the wealth of the finer things of life alongside designer cars in a nation where 90% of people are below the poverty line.
read more: Where are Syrians celebrating the fall of Bashar Assad?
Hours earlier, it was reported that Assad had flown out of the capital in a private plane and that his regime had collapsed. Sunday evening, Russian state news agencies quoted the president and his family as being in Moscow, though they have been granted asylum "on humanitarian grounds".
The main highway from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to Damascus, was littered with discarded army uniforms Sunday after Syrian army soldiers threw them in the streets when they learned their leader abandoned them after 54 years of his family ruling Syria.
The civil war in Syria has escalated into the bloodiest conflict of the 21st century as foreign interests added an even more complicated layer of problems since the regime of Bashar Assad launched brutal crackdown measures on peaceful pro-democracy Arab Spring demonstrations beginning back in 2011. Allies Iran and Russia prevented the advance of rebel forces backed by Qatar and Turkey, plus Hezbollah of Lebanon in 2015 that forced the opposition to retreat into northwest Syria.
The Assad Axis and the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which are based in the northeast, have been fighting to topple the self-declared caliphate of Islamic State between 2014 and 2019, yet another theater in this war that has dragged a neighbor, Iraq, into the fray.
At least 300,000 have been killed since 2011, and 100,000 disappeared, while half the country — nearly 12 million people — have been displaced, half of whom have sought shelter outside the country, about 5.4 million.
Frontlines have been calm for the most part since a truce was brokered in early 2020 between the regime and the opposition, but erupted with fury just less than two weeks ago during a push by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on Aleppo, purportedly in response to an expected regime offensive.
HTS, under the banner of the Turkish-backed umbrella of militias Syrian National Army, thought Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia had their own wars to win this round, both against Israel and Ukraine; nobody came out to save Assad, while loyalist forces of Syrian forces fled or collapsed while the rebels marched south capturing city after city.
Speaking live from the capital on Sunday afternoon through a broadcast on state television, a rebel spokesman declared: "To those who bet on us and to those that didn't, to those one day who thought we were broken, we announce to you the victory of the great Syrian revolution after 13 years of patience and sacrifice."
Damascus was still shaking: smoke from the night's battles hung above the city like a fog. The windows shook with every other explosion, the target and party unknown.
"I feel like I am in a dream, I haven't slept and I can't absorb what's happened," Fatimeh, originally from north-west Idlib, long an opposition bastion, said as she approached Damascus after leaving Lebanon. "I am from Idlib," she said again, and for years whenever she was in Damascus wouldn't dare say where she came from for fear of showing any association with the region which is part-held by Islamist rebels and provoking reprisals.
It was not clear Sunday night whether the Assad regime's coastal strongholds of Latakia and Tartus had fallen to the rebels. Fighting was reported on the Turkish border between Turkish-backed Arab rebels and Syrian Kurdish groups in Manbij.
US forces said in another statement that they conducted dozens of strikes on IS forces across central Syria, saying they won't let the jihadist group "take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute". US Central Command said it had hit over 75 targets without detailing where.
Reports also came that Israel has carried out airstrikes on the regime and Hezbollah weapons depots in Damascus and the southern countryside of Syria, seemingly fearing these would fall to the wrong hands. In a move to deter forces from rebels, Israel reportedly sent ground forces into some parts of the Syria-controlled Golan Heights after that army withdrew.
There are so many questions and challenges which, as yet have not been touched upon regarding Syria's future, as well as that of the region. However, in a statement just released to journalists after leading the rebel's offensive was its leader, the head of HTS announced that Syrian's Prime Minister, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali would be staying in Damascus to govern a transitional administration over the coming months.
read more: Did Syria's Government Fall in a stunning end to 50-year rule?
Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the fall of a dictatorial regime in Syria but now called on its rebuilding.
"Today, 14 years into a brutal war, with the fall of this dictatorial regime people of Syria will seize history, build the stable peace which has never been offered there," Guterres stated, repeating a call made some days back for nonviolence, protecting all rights among the people of Syria without making a distinction.
The UN Security Council will hold an emergency, closed-door session on Syria on Monday afternoon at the request of Russia. The US president, Joe Biden, referred to the fall of the Assad government as "a fundamental act of justice," yet also "a moment of risk and uncertainty." The US would reach out to Syrian stakeholders for the purposes of a peaceful transition of power, he said.
Jolani was a late bloomer to the capital: fighters from the southern province of Deraa, rather than HTS, were the first to reach the gates of Damascus. HTS forces were busy securing Homs to the north, cutting off Assad's last lifeline to Tartus and Latakia.
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