On December 8, 2024, the streets of Damascus were a tapestry of jubilation. Rebel fighters danced in the streets, women waved Syrian opposition flags, and civilians toppled statues of the late Assad presidents. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, filled with displaced Syrians finally making their way back to their homes, lined the roads. At the same time, government soldiers and employees huddled together on the sides of the road while insurgents watched, wielding guns. 

Syrians around the globe were celebrating the fall of Damascus to opposition forces earlier that day, which marked the end of the totalitarian Assad regime. The opposition constituted of an alliance between numerous rebel groups led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). In an astonishingly rapid rise to power, HTS swept across Syria in just 11 days. On November 30, they seized Aleppo, the largest city in Syria and one that had been plagued with violence due to the Syrian Civil War. Nine days later, after besieging other crucial cities such as Hama and Homs, the rebel coalition marched into Syria’s capital and took control of Damascus. A spokesperson for the Syrian opposition officially declared Damascus’s independence on state television.

As the rebel coalition approached Damascus, it was reported that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, where he and his family were granted political asylum. The Russian Foreign Ministry later confirmed al-Assad’s circumstances and released a statement of the president’s resignation. 

The Assad regime emerged in 1971 with Hafez al-Assad’s rise to power. The Syrian government was officially designated a republic; in reality, it has functioned as a dynastic dictatorship, manipulating all “democratic” proceedings through rigged elections and systematic corruption. As president, Hafez al-Assad cultivated a cult of personality and established a precedent of ruling with an iron fist. His son, Bashar al-Assad, inherited the presidency in 2000. Bashar al-Assad’s rule proved to be more authoritarian and violent than his father’s. The second Assad destroyed Western hopes of a less extreme Syria when he strengthened Syrian ties with Iran as well as terrorist and extremist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. 

Bashar al-Assad is best known for his brutality and widespread human rights violations during the Syrian Civil War, which stemmed from the Arab Spring protests. In 2011, Assad authorized the Syrian Army to use force and open fire against unarmed pro-democracy protestors, some of whom were simply demonstrating for the release of political prisoners and greater freedoms. The army responded with mass arrests, targeting even men and boys who did not engage in protests, tortured and executed detainees, besieged cities, and bombed and killed innocent Syrian civilians. These actions escalated into the Syrian Civil War, which would continue for the next thirteen years, leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of rebels and civilians alike. With the civil war came the formation of several Islamist extremist groups, like the Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS). According to the United Nations, Bashar al-Assad has also used nerve gas and chemical weapons against Syrian civilians during the war; the Syrian government has constantly denied accusations of crimes against humanity.

Until now, Syria was stuck between the autocratic Assad regime and Islamist extremist groups, both of which have relentlessly targeted civilians and used violence to assert control. The widespread destruction of cities across Syria has led to the second largest forced displacement in the world and the largest refugee crisis since World War II, with 14 million individuals forced to leave their homes. Although the fall of Damascus and the end of the Assad regime to the HTS is a victory for Syrian civilians, within the jubilation lies uncertainty for the future of the country. While it has severely weakened Iran, the end of the Assad regime leaves a power vacuum in Syria, one that could be filled by an extremist, radical group. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, has claimed that the new Syrian government will be defined by the people, hinting towards the initiation of an actual democratic republican system of government. However, HTS is still designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, and many countries are skeptical of Jolani’s claims. Analysts have drawn parallels of HTS’s shocking take-over to the Taliban’s actions in Afghanistan in 2021, which raises questions of what the new sectarian government might bring. Ultimately, Syria is now faced with a crossroads: a choice between continuing the legacy of brutality left by Assad or seizing the monumental opportunity to create a better future for the nation. 

Information retrieved from CNN, NPR, Council on Foreign Relations, and Civil Rights Defenders.