The Syrian people celebrated the fall of Bashar al-Assad and dared to dream of a better future after five decades of dynastic rule came to a sudden and unexpected end with the dictator’s flight to Moscow.

Crowds waved the Syrian revolutionary flag and tore down statues and portraits of the president and his father Hafez, while celebratory gunfire and car horns were heard in Damascus on Sunday as a stunning rebel advance reached the capital.

In photos and videos of families reuniting with loved ones long lost in the darkness of the regime’s notorious prison system, people cried and clung to one another in disbelief at their newfound freedom. Others happily browsed the presidential palace, marveling at the abundance of luxury goods and designer cars in a country where 90% of the population lives below the poverty line.

Just a few hours earlier, it was announced that Assad had fled the capital on a private plane and his regime had fallen. On Sunday evening, Russian state news agencies reported that the president and his family were in Moscow and had received asylum.

The main road connecting the Lebanese city of Beirut with Damascus was lined with discarded army uniforms on Sunday. Panicked Syrian army soldiers stripped in the streets in the early hours of the morning as they realized their leader had abandoned them after his family’s 54-year rule over Syria.

Syrian army tanks, tasked with stopping the rebels’ lightning offensive that had begun just 11 days earlier in the country’s northwest, stood empty in front of checkpoints bearing posters of late leader Hafez al-Assad with a half-torn face. Out of habit, a driver stopped and rolled down the window, but there was no one at the checkpoint.

“No more checkpoints, no more bribes,” Mohammed remarked with a smile as he sped toward the capital.

The deadliest war of the 21st century erupted in Syria, complicated by the interests of foreign powers, when the Assad regime began a brutal crackdown on the peaceful pro-democracy protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Assad was saved from the advance by his Iranian and Russian allies. The number of rebels backed by Qatar and Turkey as well as the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2015 forced the opposition to retreat to the northwest of the country.

Map of Syria

The Assad Axis and the northeast-based Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fought between 2014 and 2019 to defeat the self-proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State (IS), another theater of the war that has drawn neighboring states moved Iraq.

Since 2011, at least 300,000 people have been killed and 100,000 disappeared. Half of the country – around 12 million people – were driven from their homes, and around 5.4 million sought refuge abroad.

The fronts had remained largely calm since a ceasefire between the regime and the opposition negotiated in early 2020, but reportedly came back to life less than two weeks ago with a push on Aleppo by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in an expected offensive of the regime.

HTS, along with a group of Turkish-backed militias, the Syrian National Army (SNA), correctly assessed that Iran, Hezbollah and Russia were distracted by the wars with Israel and Ukraine: This time no one came to save Assad, and Loyalist Syrian forces fled or collapsed as rebels moved south, taking town after town.

In a state television broadcast from the capital on Sunday afternoon, a rebel spokesman said: “To those who bet on us and to those who did not, to those who one day thought we were broken, we declare the victory of.” ..” the great Syrian revolution after 13 years of patience and sacrifice.”

Damascus was still in a state of disbelief: the smoke of the previous night’s battles hung over the city like a mist. Windows shook from the occasional explosions, the target and warring party unknown.

“I feel like I’m in a dream, I haven’t slept and I can’t understand what happened,” said Fatimeh, originally from northwest Idlib, long a bastion of opposition, as it approached Damascus after entering Lebanon had left. “I am from Idlib,” she said again, adding that for years she did not dare say where she was from when she was in Damascus for fear that a connection to the area partly controlled by Islamist rebels would provoke retaliation would.

As of Sunday evening, it was still unclear whether Latakia and Tartus, Assad’s coastal strongholds, had fallen to the rebels, and fighting was reported between Turkish-backed Arab rebels and Syrian Kurdish groups in Manbij on the Turkish border.

Separately, U.S. forces said they had carried out dozens of airstrikes on IS troops in central Syria, adding that they would not allow the jihadist group to “take advantage of the current situation to regroup.” U.S. Central Command said it struck more than 75 targets, without specifying the location.

Reports also emerged that Israel had carried out air strikes on regime and Hezbollah weapons depots in Damascus and southern Syria, apparently fearing that they would fall into the wrong hands. Israel also sent ground troops into areas of the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights to deter rebels after the Syrian army withdrew.

There are still many questions and challenges ahead of us for the future of Syria and the entire region. HTS chief Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who led the rebel offensive, announced that Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali would remain in Damascus in the coming months to lead an interim government.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the end of Syria’s “dictatorial regime” and called on the country to rebuild.

“After 14 years of brutal war and the overthrow of the dictatorial regime, today the Syrian people 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.”

US President Joe Biden called the overthrow of the Assad government a “fundamental act of justice” but also a “moment of risk and uncertainty”. The US would work with Syrian stakeholders to bring about a peaceful transition of power, he added.

Jolani arrived late in the capital: fighters from the southern province of Deraa, not HTS, were the first to reach the gates of Damascus. HTS forces were busy securing Homs in the north and cutting off Assad’s last lifeline to Tartus and Latakia.

The rebel leader was filmed on Sunday afternoon at the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus’s Old City in his first public appearance since the fall of the Assad government, a sight unthinkable just days earlier. For Syrians, the message was clear: Assad was gone and the rebels were in control.

Some residents expressed reservations about the Islamist group and were wary of revolutionary factions that claim to represent the Syrian people – particularly Islamist ones – after years of bitter civil war. HTS and SNA both have records of human rights abuses and authoritarian rule in the areas they control. But for most people, caution was postponed for another day – today it was time for celebrations.

“The feelings are indescribable,” said Mohammed Ahmad, a resident of Kafr Halab in northern Syria. “I’m angry, I’m happy and I’m sad. But now that the regime has fallen, I can rest.”