He did so as the rebels entered and captured Damascus, apparently without much resistance from Assad’s government forces. Their lightning advance only began on November 27 and quickly overran the cities of Aleppo, Hama and then the capital itself.

The rebels appear to be capitalizing on the fact that Syria’s supporters have been distracted elsewhere: Russia in Ukraine and Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, which is fighting Israel. However, many experts did not expect this. And Moscow was no different.

“What happened surprised the whole world, and we are no exception,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Syria dominated the international consciousness for almost a decade. The civil war erupted after Assad crushed peaceful protests across the region during the 2011 Arab Spring.

It soon developed into a breathtaking, complex conflict, with Iran, Russia and Hezbollah lining up behind Assad and the US, Turkey and others supporting various rebel groups, who in turn were fighting not only each other but also the Islamic State terrorist group on a large scale Parts of Syria and Iraq captured and then handed over.

But until last month the conflict was largely at a stalemate after Assad’s forces regained control of much of the country.

The Syrians celebrate – and search

As rebels swept through Damascus, celebratory gunfire echoed through the streets as people wrapped themselves in the Syrian opposition flag and toppled statues of the former ruler.

According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, more than 13 million people fled their homes during the war. Some 7 million of them have been displaced within the country and 6 million abroad – scattered across Turkey, other parts of the Middle East and beyond. The conflict in Syria contributed in part to a wave of mass migration to Europe, which was met with a right-wing backlash across the continent that continues to reverberate today.

A large part of this diaspora also reacted with astonished joy to Assad’s fall, and some rushed back home.

Thousands of people demonstrated in European cities such as London and Berlin, the capital of the continent’s largest Syrian population, Germany, where more than a million of them live. It wasn’t just the fighting they escaped.

The Assad regime’s brutality became clear on Sunday as Syrians began freeing people from the regime’s network of political prisons – essentially dungeons – where human rights organizations say the regime has disappeared, torturing and executing its own people .

One of those liberated gulags was the Saydnaya military prison outside Damascus – known as the “human slaughterhouse” – where people were executed every week, an estimated 13,000 in total, according to Amnesty International. It was raided on Monday after survivors reported the possible presence of secret underground prison cells where families across the country searched for relatives long held as political prisoners.

What’s next for the Rebels?

This brutality was replaced by insecurity.

The rebels are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group that emerged from an al-Qaeda offshoot. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, was involved with militants fighting American forces in Iraq after their 2003 invasion. And the State Department has put a $10 million bounty on his head for information about him.

In recent years, however, he has tried to project a more moderate image by cutting ties with al-Qaeda, disavowing international extremism and instead focusing on creating an Islamic republic in Syria. He says he supports religious tolerance and internal debates.

This was confirmed on Monday in the Syrian state newspaper’s order that there should be no checks on women’s clothing.

Yet countless complexities and problems remain.