Hassan was standing pensively on the edge of a cliff in the mountains above Damascus. With his hands in his pockets, he scanned the capital stretching as far as the eye could see, struggling to believe that just two weeks ago, Bashar al-Assad still reigned there.

"It all happened so fast," noted this former Syrian army soldier in a neutral tone. Enlisted in 2012, he served for 12 years as a driver and bodyguard for a state security officer.

At dawn on Sunday, December 8, when it was announced that the dictator was on the run, Hassan got rid of his uniform and returned to his home in Ash Al-Warwar, in the north of the capital, an Alawite neighborhood, the religious minority descended from Shiism to which the Assad clan belongs. "From Saturday onward, there was a strange atmosphere. A whole branch of our service had withdrawn from Ghouta [on the outskirts of Damascus]. At 5 pm, we regrouped inside our headquarters in Kafr-Sousa [in the center of the capital]. There were 200 to 300 of us. Our superiors told us: 'The first one to run away, we'll smoke him,'" said the 32-year-old.

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