Bashar al-Assad fled Syria to Moscow: Putin granted him asylum
Syrian rebels captured Damascus in a lightning offensive on December 8. President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia after 13 years of civil war and six decades of autocratic rule by his family, writes ReutersOn the evening of December 8, Russian state media, citing a source in the Kremlin, reported that Russia had granted political asylum to the ousted leader of Syria.
Photo: Bashar Asad © L9871456 | Dreamstime.com
The fall of the Assad government destroyed the bastion from which Iran and Russia exerted influence over the entire Arab world. Moscow provided asylum to Assad and his family, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, said on his Telegram channel.
Refugees can return home
The lightning-fast overthrow of Assad by rebels, partly backed by Turkey and rooted in jihadist Sunni Islam, limits Iran’s ability to spread weapons and could cost Russia its Mediterranean naval base, allowing millions of refugees who have spent more than a decade in camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan to finally return home.
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For Syrians, it was an unexpected end to a war that had lasted for years, with hundreds of thousands killed, cities reduced to dust and an economy devastated by global sanctions.
"How many people were displaced around the world? How many were living in tents? How many drowned in the sea?" rebel commander Abu Mohammed al-Golani asked rhetorically to a huge crowd at the medieval Umayyad Mosque in central Damascus, referring to the refugees who died trying to reach Europe.
"A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory," he stressed, noting that Syria will become "a beacon for the Islamic nation."
The End of Police Autocracy
Assad's brutal police state, one of the Middle East's harshest with hundreds of thousands of political prisoners since his father seized power in the 1960s, melted away overnight.
Confused and jubilant, the prisoners the rebels had freed poured out of their jails. Reunited families cried with joy. Prisoners ran through the streets of Damascus holding up the fingers of both hands to show how many years they had spent in prison.
Rescue organisation the White Helmets said it had sent five emergency teams to the notorious Sedhai prison to search for hidden underground cells believed to also hold prisoners.
When the sun set for the first time in Damascus without Assad, the roads leading into the city were largely empty except for motorcycles carrying armed men and rebel vehicles covered in mud for camouflage.
Several people were looting a shopping mall on the road between the capital and the Lebanese border. The countless checkpoints along the road to Damascus were also empty.
A thick column of black smoke rose from the Mazzeh area, where the Israelis had previously struck Syrian state security units.
The intermittent gunfire was heard, apparently as a sign of celebration.
Shops and restaurants closed early in line with the rebel-imposed curfew. Shortly before it began, people could be seen walking quickly home with loaves of bread.
Earlier, the rebels said they had entered the capital without encountering any resistance from the army. Thousands of people, waving their arms and chanting "Freedom", gathered in cars and on foot in Damascus's main square.
Rebels were seen inside the presidential palace of al-Rawda, some carrying out furniture. A motorcycle was parked on the patterned parquet floor of one of the palace's gilded halls. The Syrian rebel coalition said it was working to complete the transfer of power to a transitional governing body with executive powers.
Lightning-fast changes and a new source of instability
"The Great Syrian Revolution has moved from the stage of fighting to overthrow the Assad regime to the struggle to build Syria together," the rebel coalition said in a statement.
Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, prime minister under Assad, called for free elections and said he had been in contact with Golani to discuss transitional tasks.
The pace of events has stunned Arab capitals and raised fears of a new flare-up of instability in the region.
US President Joe Biden welcomed Assad's fall in a televised address but acknowledged it was a moment of risk and uncertainty.
“As we all move forward, the United States will work with our partners and stakeholders in Syria,” Biden said.
US Central Command said its forces carried out dozens of airstrikes on December 8 against known Islamic State camps and militants in central Syria.
Later in the day, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he spoke with Turkish National Defense Minister Yasar Guler and stressed that the United States was closely monitoring the situation.
Jubilant supporters of the rebellion have flooded Syrian embassies around the world, taking down the red, white and black flags of the Assad era and replacing them with the green, white and black ones flown by his opponents.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Assad's fall was due to Israeli strikes against Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, once the mainstay of Assad's security forces.
"The barbarian state has fallen," stated French President Emmanuel Macron.
Once the celebrations die down, Syria's new leaders will face the difficult task of trying to bring stability to a country that will need billions of dollars in aid.
During the civil war that began in 2011 as an uprising against Assad, his forces and their Russian allies bombed cities to the ground. The refugee crisis in the Middle East has been one of the largest in the modern world, with a million people arriving in Europe alone in 2015.
In recent years, Turkey has backed some rebels in northwest Syria and along its border. The United States backed a Kurdish-led alliance that fought Islamic State jihadists from 2014 to 2017.
The biggest strategic losers have been Russia and Iran, which helped Assad retake most of the territory and all the major cities. The front lines were frozen four years ago under an agreement that Russia and Iran made with Turkey.
But Moscow's focus on the war in Ukraine and the strikes on Iran's allies since the Gaza war, especially Israel's destruction of Hezbollah over the past two months, have left Assad virtually without support.
Who is Bashar al-Assad
Bashar al-Assad is the President of Syria since 2000, born on September 11, 1965 in Damascus. He is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who served as President of Syria from 1971 to 2000.
At that time, Arab nationalism dominated the political life of many countries in the region, and Syria was no exception, writes Air force.
After a failed attempt at a short-term union between Egypt and Syria (1958–1961), the Arab Socialist Baath Party, which followed pan-Arab nationalist ideas, seized power in Damascus. Like most Arab countries at the time, Syria was not a democracy and did not hold multi-party elections.
Bashar had no intention of going into politics. He trained as a doctor, specializing in ophthalmology, and interned in London. According to the 2018 BBC documentary Dangerous Dynasty: The Assads, Bashar attended concerts of his favorite musician Phil Collins in London and generally enjoyed British culture.
It was in London that Bashar met his future wife, Asma al-Akhras. Asma studied computer science at King's College London and was later accepted to Harvard's MBA program. However, her life soon changed.
Bashar's political career began unexpectedly. Bashar's older brother Basil, who was being groomed as Hafez al-Assad's successor, died in a car accident in 1994. After that, Bashar returned to Syria, joined the army and began to actively participate in politics.
After Hafez al-Assad's death in 2000, Bashar became president of Syria with the support of the Syrian parliament. This even required changing the Syrian constitution to lower the minimum age limit of 40 for the presidency.
His rise to power was accompanied by expectations of reform, especially among young Syrians. However, having played enough with liberal democracy, he quickly moved towards a policy of repression. Syria experienced a brief period of relative freedom, known as the "Damascus Spring," but by 2001, security forces had resumed arresting active opposition figures.
The 2003 war in Iraq led to a significant deterioration in relations between Bashar al-Assad and Western countries. The Syrian president opposed the US invasion of Iraq. Washington accused Damascus of turning a blind eye to the smuggling of weapons to rebels opposing the US occupation of Iraq and allowing extremists to cross the border between the two countries.
In December 2003, the United States imposed sanctions against Syria.
Civil war
During his first 10 years in power, Bashar al-Assad strengthened relations with Iran and tried to develop ties with Qatar and Turkey, but this was short-lived. In general, Bashar al-Assad followed his father's foreign policy course, exercising caution and avoiding direct military clashes.
By the tenth anniversary of his rule, the regime could be described as authoritarian, as it continued to suppress opposition voices.
In December 2010, Asma Assad gave an interview to Vogue magazine, where she stated that "democracy reigns" in their home.
Meanwhile, in Tunisia, vegetable vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after being hit by a policewoman. The act sparked a popular uprising in Tunisia that led to the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Unexpectedly, the uprising in Tunisia inspired revolutionary movements across the Arab world, spreading to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.
By mid-March 2011, there were protests in Damascus, and a few days later demonstrations began in the southern Syrian city of Daraa. They were sparked by the arrest of children for writing anti-Assad graffiti on walls. Security forces opened fire on the demonstrators.
Assad waited two weeks, then addressed the Syrian people. Speaking in parliament, he promised to thwart what he called a “plot” against Syria, but acknowledged that many of the people’s needs were not being met.
The shooting of protesters in Daraa sparked even bigger protests in several cities, with calls for Assad to step down. The government responded with violence, blaming the unrest on "saboteurs and infiltrators directed by external forces."
Within months, the situation had escalated into armed clashes between government forces and opposition groups, who had taken up arms across the country. The death toll, according to UN estimates, had risen from tens to hundreds of thousands. Outside forces were increasingly interfering in the Syrian civil war.
Russia, Iran and Iranian-backed militias have sided with Assad's forces, while Türkiye and the Gulf states have begun to support the armed opposition.
Although the anti-Assad demonstrations initially chanted for democracy and freedom for all, they eventually took on a religious dimension. Shiite militias loyal to Iran and led by Hezbollah poured into Syria to support the Assad regime.
In neighboring Iraq, the Islamic State (IS), an extremist group that adheres to the harshest interpretation of Islamic law and is designated as a terrorist group by many countries, has been gaining strength. The group has used the civil war to seize territory in Syria, declaring a “new caliphate” with its “capital” in the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa.
The war became increasingly brutal. UN commissions accused all sides of the conflict of war crimes such as murder, torture and rape.
By 2015, Assad's government seemed particularly close to collapse, having lost control of much of the country. However, Russia's military intervention helped Assad retake key territories.
Between 2018 and 2020, regional and international agreements created a situation in which government forces controlled most of Syria, while Islamist opposition groups and Kurdish militias divided control between themselves in the north and northeast of the country.
These agreements strengthened Bashar al-Assad's position, allowing him to gradually return to the diplomatic arena: in 2023, Syria was restored to the Arab League, and Arab countries reopened their embassies in Damascus.
Despite the deteriorating economic situation in Syria in the third decade of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, he seemed to have overcome the most difficult challenges. However, Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggered the Gaza War, the consequences of which quickly spread to Lebanon and, in particular, to Assad’s important ally, Hezbollah.
The conflict with Israel has taken a heavy toll on Hezbollah, with the group losing key commanders, including its longtime leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
On the day the ceasefire went into effect in Lebanon, Syrian opposition forces, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, unexpectedly captured Syria's second-largest city, Aleppo. The offensive developed rapidly. Within days, the opposition had taken control of Hama and Homs, important cities, and the southern regions were no longer under government control. On December 8, the capture of Damascus was announced.
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I am "not Yanukovych"
Interestingly, in April 2014, Assad said that he was “not Yanukovych, who abandoned his country in a difficult moment,” and would never flee Syria. But when on December 7, Syrian opposition forces announced that they had taken control of the city of Daraa, and a little later announced that they had entered Damascus, President Assad left the country on a plane that soon disappeared from radar.
On December 8, rumors began to circulate about a possible plane crash. But that evening, Russian media reported that Assad and his family had arrived in Moscow. And the rumors about the plane crash were a "cover operation" to get Assad and his family safely to Russia, where he will now join the fugitive former Ukrainian President Yanukovych.
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