The Syrian government collapsed early on Sunday, marking an end to the Assad family’s 50-year rule, after a surprise rebel offensive quickly swept through government-held areas and reached the capital in just 10 days.
The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government on Sunday brought to a dramatic close his nearly 14-year struggle to hold onto power as his country was torn apart by a devastating civil war that became a proxy battleground for regional and international forces.
Assad’s downfall came as a stark contrast to his first months as Syria’s unlikely president in 2000, when many hoped he would be a young reformer after three decades of his father’s iron grip.
Only 34 years old, the Western-educated ophthalmologist was a rather geeky tech-savvy fan of computers with a gentle demeanor.
But, when protests against his rule broke out in March 2011, Assad resorted to the harsh tactics once used by his father to try and suppress them.
As the uprising escalated into a full-blown civil war, he relied on his military to bombard opposition-controlled cities, backed by allies Iran and Russia.
International human rights groups and prosecutors accused Syria’s government-run detention centres of widespread torture and extrajudicial killings.
The Syrian war has claimed nearly 500,000 lives and forced half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million to flee their homes. As the uprising escalated into a civil war, millions of Syrians sought refuge in neighbouring countries like Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon, with many continuing their journey to Europe.
His departure brings an end to the Assad family rule, spanning just under 54 years. With no clear successor, it throws the country into further uncertainty.
Until recently, it seemed Assad was close to stabilising his position. The prolonged war had settled into frozen frontlines, with Assad’s government reclaiming most of Syria’s territory. Meanwhile, opposition groups controlled the northwest, and Kurdish forces held the northeast.
Despite crippling Western sanctions on Damascus, neighbouring countries had started to accept Assad’s grip on power.
The Arab League restored Syria’s membership last year, and in May, Saudi Arabia appointed its first ambassador to Syria in 12 years after cutting ties with Damascus.
However, the geopolitical situation changed rapidly when opposition groups based in northwest Syria launched a surprise offensive in late November.
Government forces quickly crumbled, while Assad’s allies, distracted by other conflicts — including Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing wars involving Israel and the Iran-backed militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas — seemed unwilling to intervene forcefully.
Assad’s whereabouts were not clear Sunday, amid reports he had left the country as insurgents took control of the Syrian capital.
Bashar came to power in 2000 by a twist of fate. His father had been cultivating his oldest brother Basil as his successor, but in 1994 Basil was killed in a car crash in Damascus. Bashar was brought home from his ophthalmology practice in London, put through military training and elevated to the rank of colonel to establish his credentials so he could one day rule.
When Hafez Assad died in 2000, parliament quickly lowered the presidential age requirement from 40 to 34. Bashar’s elevation was sealed by a nationwide referendum, in which he was the only candidate.
Hafez, a lifelong military man, ruled the country for nearly 30 years during which he set up a Soviet-style centralized economy and kept such a stifling hand over dissent that Syrians feared even to joke about politics to their friends.
He pursued a secular ideology that sought to bury sectarian differences under Arab nationalism and the image of heroic resistance to Israel. He formed an alliance with the Shiite clerical leadership in Iran, sealed Syrian domination over Lebanon and set up a network of Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups.
Bashar initially seemed completely unlike his strongman father.
Tall and lanky with a slight lisp, he had a quiet, gentle demeanour. His only official position before becoming president was head of the Syrian Computer Society. His wife, Asma al-Akhras, whom he married several months after taking office, was attractive, stylish and British-born.
The young couple, who eventually had three children, seemed to shun trappings of power. They lived in an apartment in the upscale Abu Rummaneh district of Damascus, as opposed to a palatial mansion like other Arab leaders.
When Assad first came to office, he freed political prisoners and allowed more open discussion. During the “Damascus Spring,” salons for intellectuals emerged, where Syrians could talk about art, culture, and politics in a way that had been impossible under his father.
But after 1,000 intellectuals signed a public petition in 2001 calling for multiparty democracy and greater freedoms, and others attempted to form a political party, the salons were shut down by the feared secret police, who arrested dozens of activists.
Instead of a political opening, Assad turned to economic reforms. He slowly lifted economic restrictions, let in foreign banks, threw the doors open to imports and empowered the private sector. Damascus and other cities long mired in drabness saw a flourishing of shopping malls, new restaurants and consumer goods. Tourism swelled.
Abroad, he stuck to the line his father had set, based on the alliance with Iran and a policy of insisting on a full return of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, although in practice Assad never militarily confronted Israel.
In 2005, he suffered a heavy blow with the loss of Syria’s decades-old control over neighbouring Lebanon after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. With many Lebanese accusing Damascus of being behind the slaying, Syria was forced to withdraw its troops from the country and a pro-American government came into power.
At the same time, the Arab world became split into two camps – one of US-allied, Sunni-led countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the other Syria and Shiite-led Iran with their ties to Hezbollah and Palestinian militants.
Throughout, Assad relied largely on the same power base at home as his father: his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam comprising around 10 per cent of the population. Many of the positions in his government went to younger generations of the same families that had worked for his father. Drawn in as well were the new middle class created by his reforms, including prominent Sunni merchant families.
Assad also turned to his own family. His younger brother Maher headed the elite Presidential Guard and would lead the crackdown against the uprising. Their sister Bushra was a strong voice in his inner circle, along with her husband Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat, until he was killed in a 2012 bombing. Bashar’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, became the country’s biggest businessman, heading a financial empire before the two had a falling out that led to Makhlouf being pushed aside.
Assad also increasingly entrusted key roles to his wife, Asma, before she announced in May that she was undergoing treatment for leukaemia and stepped out of the limelight.
When protests erupted in Tunisia and Egypt, eventually toppling their rulers, Assad dismissed the possibility of the same occurring in his country, insisting his regime was more in tune with its people. After the Arab Spring wave did move to Syria, his security forces staged a brutal crackdown while Assad consistently denied he was facing a popular revolt, instead blaming “foreign-backed terrorists” for trying to destabilise his regime.
His rhetoric struck a chord with many in Syria’s minority groups – including Christians, Druze and Shiites – as well as some Sunnis who feared the prospect of rule by Sunni extremists even more than they disliked Assad’s authoritarian rule.
Ironically, on 26 February 2011 — two days after Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was ousted by protesters and just before the wave of Arab Spring protests reached Syria — Assad emailed a joke mocking Mubarak’s stubborn refusal to step down. The joke was later revealed by Wikileaks as part of a 2012 document release.
“NEW WORD ADDED TO DICTIONARY: Mubarak (verb): To stick something, or to glue something. … Mubarak (adjective): slow to learn or understand,” it read.
