The early days of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime – which came to a surprise end this weekend after 13 long years of civil war, as rebels entered the capital Damascus and Assad fled into exile – were marked by two famous pieces of graffiti.

The first was written in early 2011 by a group of teenagers on a school wall in the city of Daraa. Inspired by the Arab Spring protests that appeared to be sweeping away the old order in long-standing dictatorships such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, they wrote: “You are next, Doctor,” referring to Assad, who was training to be a man in London in 2009 After becoming an ophthalmologist and working there, he fought in his early years before returning to take over the family business and rule Syria with an iron fist. The boys were subsequently arrested and tortured by the regime’s security forces, an event that many believe sparked the mass protests against Assad.

The message proved overly optimistic: Assad did not flee or compromise, choosing instead to crush the uprising by force, leading to a civil war that would kill up to half a million people and displace millions more.

The second graffiti message was a slogan that pro-government militias across the country had scrawled in the early days of the uprising: “Assad or we burn the country.” The phrase signaled the regime’s complete unwillingness to compromise with its enemies and the efforts to do so would do to stay in power.

Even as rebels captured the ancient city of Aleppo last week on Nov. 30 and began streaming south along the highway toward Damascus, it still seemed far-fetched that the Syrian regime would fall – that a family that In power since Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad staged a coup 54 years ago, he was willing to go so far as to use chemical weapons against his own people and reduce his own cities to rubble lay to maintain this power simply crumble within a few days.

But that’s exactly what happened: As the rebels advanced, there were numerous reports of government troops simply abandoning their positions and removing their uniforms. The Russian government says it has offered Assad and his family asylum. U.S. officials say they have not confirmed that Assad is in Russia but have no reason to doubt it.

Today, footage from Damascus shows the kind of celebrations not seen since the heady beginnings of the Arab Spring. Videos on social media show detained people, including young children and people who have been imprisoned for decades, being released from the regime’s notorious prisons. Last week’s events have raised hope among at least some of the more than six million Syrians who have fled the country, making up the world’s largest refugee population, that they may be able to return home.

After the fall of Aleppo, the White House initially distanced itself from the events in Syria. But on Sunday, President Joe Biden spoke at the White House, calling Assad’s overthrow a “fundamental act of justice” and a “moment of historic opportunity.” In his statement, he also linked the event to US support for Ukraine and Israel in their fight against Russia, Hezbollah and Iran, all key supporters of the Assad regime.

The initial caution about fully embracing the offensive was due in no small part to the fact that the main group leading the opposition, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is a former al-Qaeda affiliate, always is still referred to as a terrorist organization in the USA. In a background briefing on Sunday, a senior U.S. government official said the U.S. “intends to cooperate with (HTS) appropriately and with U.S. interests in mind,” but declined to comment on whether it would approve the group’s terrorist designation would reconsider.

Questions loom over issues such as the fate of Assad’s chemical weapons and the fate of Syria’s religious minorities, including Kurdish forces that have allied with the American military in the fight against ISIS. To seemingly drive this point home, the U.S. carried out dozens of airstrikes against ISIS in Syria on Sunday as part of what U.S. Central Command described as an attempt to “ensure that ISIS does not attempt to exploit the current situation to further its advantage.” to regroup in central Syria.” For American politicians, the scenes in Damascus could bring back memories of Iraq and Libya – countries that toppled longtime dictators only to see their lands engulfed by sectarian violence and terrorism.

A key difference this time is that Assad was toppled by a largely homegrown insurgency rather than a U.S.-led military intervention. Not that the USA was completely absent. American forces carried out an attack on Iranian militia targets in Syria on December 3, although the Pentagon was quick to emphasize that it was in response to a threat to American forces and not support for the rebels.

The rebels also include the controversial Turkish proxy group Syrian National Army (SNA), and it seems likely that Ukraine’s intelligence services may have played some role in supporting the offensive of other opponents of the Russian military. It is worth noting that the fighters who entered Damascus included a new rebel group from southern Syria dominated by veterans of the Free Syrian Army, which had been backed for years by the US and other Western powers.

But as Biden suggested, it currently looks like the biggest role international actors played in supporting the rebels was indirect and took place outside Syria itself: after 14 months of war with Israel, Assad’s ally Hezbollah was unable to do so to intervene on behalf of Assad, as has happened in the past; Since its most important military assets were tied up in Ukraine, the same applied to Russia.

Attention will now turn to Syria’s new rulers and how they will govern. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the HTS leader, said exactly the right thing, calling on his followers to avoid revenge against regime supporters. He is leaving Assad-appointed Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali in office until a transitional government is formed.

On Saturday, hours before Assad’s fall, Vox asked Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the U.S.-based Syrian Emergency Task Force, what an interim government might look like. He suggested that UN Resolution 2254, adopted back in 2015 but never implemented, could offer a roadmap: It calls for a Syrian-led political process, supported by the United Nations, leading to new elections within 18 months .

In the coming months we will see whether Jolani, the former al-Qaeda fighter on whom the US government has placed a $10 million bounty, is truly the pragmatic pluralist he now claims to be, and if we assume he is capable of it It’s about holding together an ethnically and religiously diverse country, riddled with weapons and various armed groups and traumatized by decades of dictatorship and war is.

A big question mark is how the new rulers of Damascus will cope with the Kurdish-ruled northeastern corner of the country, especially if the new Trump administration implements plans from his last term to withdraw U.S. troops from the region. In recent days there have already been worrying reports of clashes between Kurdish forces and the Turkish-backed SNA. On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social that the Syria offensive was “NOT OUR FIGHT” and that America “SHOULD NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT.”

Beyond these questions, Assad’s fall should be a reminder of some important facts. First, governments and analysts remain extremely poor at assessing the strength of non-state militant groups like HTS, their ability to launch large-scale offensives, and the ability of governments to resist them.

Second, authoritarian regimes are often much weaker than they appear. Just-released Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza recently told Vox, referring to his own country: “In these repressive, tyrannical regimes, you don’t know what’s happening beneath the surface… Problems can develop for the regime, but. “Nobody notices them until they come out of the public eye and suddenly everything collapses.”

In recent years, the world had all but concluded that Assad had won the civil war. Regional governments that had tried for years to topple him welcomed him back while the U.S. turned to other priorities. If the last few days have taught us anything, it is that governments like Assad’s are often more fragile than they appear from the outside and that all it takes is a strong push to bring them down.

Despite all the legitimate concerns and caution about the future of Syria, this should give cause for optimism.