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NBC News: What to know about Assad's fall and what might happen next in Syria [View all]
NBC News - What to know about Assad's fall and what might happen next in Syria
“There is undoubtedly justified optimism in Syria today," one analyst told NBC News. “What is simultaneously true is that Syria remains fragile and faces an uncertain future.”
Dec. 9, 2024, 10:38 AM EST / Updated Dec. 9, 2024, 10:49 AM EST
By Alexander Smith
For much of its 13 years, the horrors of Syria’s grinding civil war felt unending. Now in just 11 days, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is gone, the dictator fleeing his country in the face of a sensational advance by rebel forces.
/snip/
“There is undoubtedly justified optimism in Syria today after the overthrow of the brutalizing dictatorship of Assad,” said Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “What is simultaneously true is that Syria remains fragile and faces an uncertain future.”
/snip/
The brutality of the Assad regime was illustrated in stark detail Sunday as Syrians began freeing people from the regime’s network of political prisons — essentially dungeons — where rights groups say it disappeared, tortured and executed its own people.
One of these liberated gulags was Saydnaya military prison outside Damascus — known as the “human slaughterhouse” — where Amnesty International says people were executed every week, an estimated 13,000 in total. On Monday it was being searched after survivors reported the possible presence of secret underground jail cells, with families across the country looking for loved ones long held as political prisoners.
/snip/
The rebels are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group that grew from an Al Qaeda affiliate. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, had been previously involved with militants battling American forces in Iraq following their 2003 invasion. And the State Department has a $10 million bounty for information about him.
In recent years he has sought to project a more moderate image, however, cutting ties with al-Qaeda, renouncing international extremism and instead focusing on creating an Islamic republic in Syria. He says he supports religious tolerance and internal debate.
This was echoed in its order via Syria’s state newspaper Monday that there should be no controls on women’s clothing.
/snip
“There is undoubtedly justified optimism in Syria today," one analyst told NBC News. “What is simultaneously true is that Syria remains fragile and faces an uncertain future.”
Dec. 9, 2024, 10:38 AM EST / Updated Dec. 9, 2024, 10:49 AM EST
By Alexander Smith
For much of its 13 years, the horrors of Syria’s grinding civil war felt unending. Now in just 11 days, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is gone, the dictator fleeing his country in the face of a sensational advance by rebel forces.
/snip/
“There is undoubtedly justified optimism in Syria today after the overthrow of the brutalizing dictatorship of Assad,” said Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “What is simultaneously true is that Syria remains fragile and faces an uncertain future.”
/snip/
The brutality of the Assad regime was illustrated in stark detail Sunday as Syrians began freeing people from the regime’s network of political prisons — essentially dungeons — where rights groups say it disappeared, tortured and executed its own people.
One of these liberated gulags was Saydnaya military prison outside Damascus — known as the “human slaughterhouse” — where Amnesty International says people were executed every week, an estimated 13,000 in total. On Monday it was being searched after survivors reported the possible presence of secret underground jail cells, with families across the country looking for loved ones long held as political prisoners.
/snip/
The rebels are led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group that grew from an Al Qaeda affiliate. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, had been previously involved with militants battling American forces in Iraq following their 2003 invasion. And the State Department has a $10 million bounty for information about him.
In recent years he has sought to project a more moderate image, however, cutting ties with al-Qaeda, renouncing international extremism and instead focusing on creating an Islamic republic in Syria. He says he supports religious tolerance and internal debate.
This was echoed in its order via Syria’s state newspaper Monday that there should be no controls on women’s clothing.
/snip
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