He did in order the rebels entered and seized Damascus, seemingly with little fightback from Assad’s authorities forces. Their lightning advance solely started Nov. 27, shortly overrunning the cities of Aleppo, Hama after which the capital itself.
The rebels seem to have capitalized on Syria’s backers being distracted elsewhere: Russia in Ukraine, and Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah preventing Israel. Nevertheless, many consultants didn’t see this coming. And Moscow was no completely different.
“What occurred stunned the entire world and we are not any exception right here,” Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov mentioned Monday.
Syria dominated worldwide consciousness for nearly a decade, its civil conflict erupting after Assad crushed peaceable protests through the region-wide 2011 Arab Spring.
It quickly grew to become a head-spinning, complicated battle, with Iran, Russia and Hezbollah lining up behind Assad and the U.S., Turkey and others supporting completely different insurgent teams, which in flip fought not simply one another but additionally the Islamic State terror group because it captured after which surrendered massive swathes of Syria and Iraq.
But till final month the battle had been largely at a stalemate, after Assad’s forces regained management of a lot of the nation.
Many Syrians are celebrating and looking
As the rebels swept via Damascus, celebratory gunfire reverberated across the streets as individuals swaddled themselves within the flag of the Syrian opposition and toppled statues of the fled former ruler.
The conflict noticed greater than 13 million individuals flee their houses, in keeping with the U.N.’s refugee company, UNHCR. Some 7 million of those have been displaced inside the nation, and 6 million overseas — scattered all through Turkey, different elements of the Middle East and past. The battle in Syria partly contributed to a wave of mass migration into Europe, met by a right-wing backlash throughout the continent that’s nonetheless reverberating at present.
Much of this diaspora has additionally responded to Assad’s downfall with astonished glee, some dashing to return dwelling.
Thousands of individuals rallied throughout European cities reminiscent of London and Berlin, capital of the continent’s largest Syrian inhabitants, Germany, the place greater than 1 million of them dwell. It wasn’t simply the preventing they have been escaping.
The brutality of the Assad regime was illustrated in stark element Sunday as Syrians started releasing individuals from the regime’s community of political prisons — basically dungeons — the place rights teams say it disappeared, tortured and executed its personal individuals.
One of those liberated gulags was Saydnaya army jail exterior Damascus — referred to as the “human slaughterhouse” — the place Amnesty International says individuals have been executed each week, an estimated 13,000 in complete. On Monday it was being searched after survivors reported the potential presence of secret underground jail cells, with households throughout the nation on the lookout for family members lengthy held as political prisoners.
What subsequent for the rebels?
That brutality has been changed with uncertainty.
The rebels are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a bunch that grew from an Al Qaeda affiliate. Its chief, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, had been beforehand concerned with militants battling American forces in Iraq following their 2003 invasion. And the State Department has a $10 million bounty for details about him.
In latest years he has sought to challenge a extra average picture, nevertheless, reducing ties with al-Qaeda, renouncing worldwide extremism and as an alternative specializing in creating an Islamic republic in Syria. He says he helps spiritual tolerance and inside debate.
This was echoed in its order by way of Syria’s state newspaper Monday that there ought to be no controls on girls’s clothes.
Even so, myriad complexities and issues stay.
