It all happened so fast. On the night of Saturday, December 7, a crowd gathered in the center of Homs, Syria's third largest city, abandoned by Syrian regime forces. The insurgent coalition, dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, Levant Liberation Organization), a former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria, then entered the capital Damascus. In the morning, heavy gunfire echoed through the air in the capital. Statues and portraits of the Assad clan were toppled or torn down. Political activists who had been languishing in prison for years were released.
No one knows where Bashar al-Assad is, as he has not reappeared since the start of the rebel offensive on November 27. Has he fled the country, as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims? In any case, he is no longer Syria's leader. This marks the end of the Assad family's 50-year reign, imposed with fear on the population of this strategic Middle Eastern country. "After 50 years of oppression under the ruling Baath [party], and 13 years of crimes, tyranny and displacement [since the uprising began in 2011, suppressed in blood], today we announce the end of this dark era and the beginning of a new era for Syria," the rebels announced, inviting exiled Syrians to return to "free Syria."
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said he was preparing for a handover of power as early as Sunday. "We are ready for cooperation [with the new leadership] and to provide it with all possible facilities," he said, in a video posted on his Facebook account.
A few days earlier, analysts were betting on fierce clashes to come in Homs, due to the concentration of army military structures in the country's third-largest city, the presence of Alawite officers (the religious group to which al-Assad belongs), and Homs' geographical location. But this was not the case.
Declarations by the Syrian General Staff on Saturday that the regime was in control of the situation around Damascus and Homs failed to convince the population. By Saturday, a wave of panic had swept through the capital, with residents rushing to stock up on food in preparation for possible chaos. Homs, meanwhile, had witnessed massive departures of its inhabitants in the preceding days.
The fall of Homs and Damascus was facilitated by the Syrian army's withdrawal from many parts of the country. From Friday onwards, it abandoned the south and east of the country. This was not a tactical maneuver, but a rout. Syrian soldiers fled to Iraq while officers crossed the border into Lebanon.
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