Citizens dream of a better future but some are wary of Islamist groups claiming to represent them
Syrians in neighbouring Lebanon celebrate the fall of Assad. In Damascus, celebratory gunfire and car horns echoed around the city.Syrians in neighbouring Lebanon celebrate the fall of Assad. In Damascus, celebratory gunfire and car horns echoed around the city.and dared to dream of a better future after five decades of dynastic rule came to a sudden and unexpected end with the dictator fleeing to Moscow.
Syrian army tanks that were supposed to stop the lightning rebel offensive which started in the north-west of the country just 11 days earlier stood empty in front of checkpoints with posters of the late leader, Hafez al-Assad, his face half torn. Out of habit, a driver stopped and rolled down the window, but there was no one at the checkpoint.
HTS, along with an umbrella of Turkish-backed militias known as the Syrian National Army , correctly assessed that Iran, Hezbollah and Russia were distracted by the wars withand Ukraine: this time, no one came to save Assad, and loyalist Syrian forces fled or collapsed as the rebels moved south, taking city after city.
“I feel as if 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 once more, adding that for years she wouldn’t dare say where she was from when she was in Damascus, for fear that any affiliation with the area in part held by Islamist rebels would provoke retaliation.
Reports also emerged that Israel had launched airstrikes on regime and Hezbollah weapons depots in Damascus and Syria’s southern countryside, apparently afraid that they would fall into the wrong hands. Israel also sent ground forces into areas of the Syria-controlled Golan Heights after the Syrian army’s withdrawal in order to deter rebel forces.
“After 14 years of brutal war and the fall of the dictatorial regime, today the people of Syria can seize a historic opportunity to build a stable and peaceful future,” he said in a statement. “I reiterate my call for calm and avoiding violence at this sensitive time, while protecting the rights of all Syrians, without distinction.”
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