Until this weekend, the Assad dynasty had dominated Syria for over fifty years – with a regime so brutal, so oppressive, it was generally known as “The Kingdom of Silence”.
As international correspondent William Christou explains, it had appeared as not too long ago as two weeks in the past that it could merely stick with it. Bashar al-Assad, president since 2000, had crushed the uprisings that began 13 years in the past in opposition to his rule, and he had slowly taken again management of most of Syrian territory over the course of a decade-long civil struggle – the bloodiest battle of the twenty-first century.
But regardless of the looks of stability, inside Syria there was a deep malaise: establishments hollowed out, a individuals impoverished, a president held in energy solely with assistance from his international backers. So when an Islamist insurgent offensive started from the north, two weeks in the past, it confronted barely any resistance in any respect, taking first Aleppo, then Hama, Homs – after which lastly, this Sunday, capturing the Syrian capital Damascus itself, forcing its dictator to flee.
Christou, there in Damascus on the primary day of post-Assad Syria, reviews on the celebrations all around the nation, in addition to the scenes from contained in the regime’s infamous prisons, as they free a few of the tens of hundreds of the ‘disappeared’ underneath Assad’s rule.
Michael Safi additionally hears from Damascus resident Anas Aldruby on what it has been wish to stay underneath Assad in the previous few years, in addition to the previous few days, because the rebels moved ever nearer in direction of his dwelling metropolis.
