For more than half a century, the Assad family held such a vampire grip on Syria that it felt as if Bashar al-Assad’s survival was inevitable.
Thirteen years of civil war, the regime’s slaughter of its people, the mesmerising eruption of armed factions born from it, the quagmire of international interference all felt so relentless, so hopeless, so bloody, that it seemed unending.
This was despite the extraordinary signs of the Assad regime’s impending collapse: in early December 2024, rebels led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda militant turned powerful opposition leader, were advancing across major cities. There were reports of Syrian army units evaporating, and there was deafening inaction from Assad’s international allies like Russia.
Even with all this, what happened one year ago today still felt unthinkable.
A confusing alliance of rebel groups stormed the capital. Political prisoners were filmed pouring out of the Saydnaya “slaughterhouse” prison.
Assad himself fled to Moscow before even his speechwriter, reportedly left behind to draft a defiant address he never delivered, knew of it.
His paper empire dissolved and the world inhaled.
One year on, however, it feels as though we are all still holding our breath.
After the bloody aftermath of the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, the signs were worrying.
Transitions after so much violence, after dictators spend decades concentrating absolute power in structures entirely reliant on them, can trigger bloodier or more authoritarian aftermaths.
Absolute breakdown in Syria was a very real prospect: it was a divided nation long exploited by foreign powers and by international and domestic armed factions prowling their fiefdoms.
Many also expected an uncontrollable explosion of retribution after years of murderous rule by a regime that used chemical weapons against its children; that hunted down, detained, disappeared and tortured dissidents; that filled mass graves, and that hurled makeshift barrel bombs from helicopters onto villages.
There were also concerns that Assad had shattered beyond redemption the country’s economy, which had been pummelled by heavy Western sanctions. Swathes of Syria remain in rubble. According to the World Bank, it will cost more than $216bn (£162bn) to rebuild the country. The physical reconstruction costs alone amount to nearly ten times Syria’s projected yearly GDP.
So it is surprising – and welcome – that the total collapse of the state has not been the inevitable outcome.
