DAMASCUS, SYRIA – Flag-waving and jubilant Syrians climbed onto abandoned government tanks in the capital’s central square on Monday to take selfies.
Some defaced or tore down portraits of ousted President Bashar al-Assad from government buildings. At the same time, hundreds of Syrian asylum seekers poured in from Lebanon through unprotected border crossings.
And on the outskirts of Damascus, celebrating crowds threw a noose at a towering statue of President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, the dictator who first imposed an iron rule on Syria half a century ago, knocking it to the ground. . Then they chained it to the back of a truck and dragged it down the street in front of cheering crowds.
Everywhere, the celebrations seemed to be accompanied by the sounds of rebels firing AK-47s into the air, honking horns, and Syrians of all ages shouting “Hurriyah! Hurriyah!” Ta. — or “Freedom! Freedom!”
The streets were littered with discarded military uniforms of Assad soldiers. They were disbanded before Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militants entered Damascus, nearly ending a bloody 13-year civil war that tore this ancient land apart.
Assad fled to Russia with his immediate family and was granted asylum by his longtime patron, Vladimir Putin, but within days he was facing his countrymen taking in the HTS rebels who took over Syria. I didn’t see it.
Hours after Assad fled, HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani arrived at a mosque in Damascus wearing military uniform.
In recent years, he has also become accustomed to using his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Mr al-Jolani ordered his men not to harm civilians and to stop looting, but the Syrians removed furniture and other items from Assad’s abandoned palace, and the dictator was forced into a garage. He was seen turning his attention to the group of luxury cars he had stored.
One of the first things al-Jolani’s forces did was break into Assad’s brutal prisons and free thousands of prisoners. Many of the prisoners had been held for decades in horrific conditions, with rampant rape and other forms of sexual torture.
But al-Jolani heads an extremist group that was once al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch and has been designated a terrorist organization by both the United States and the United Nations. And a wary world was watching to see if Syria would replace one tyrant with another.
Still, President Joe Biden declared Sunday that “Assad’s regime has finally fallen.”
“We will work with all Syrian groups, including within the UN-led process, to establish a transition from the Assad regime,” he said.
The US has approximately 900 US troops stationed in northern Syria and is closely monitoring the HTS occupation of Syria.
President-elect Donald Trump issued another message on his Truth Social platform Saturday morning, writing in capital letters that the United States should have “nothing to do” with the situation in Syria.
“This is not our fight. Let it continue as it is,” he wrote.
Al-Jolani has sought to reassure his fellow Syrians, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country, that all faiths will be respected and that there will be no reprisals against lower-level government officials and soldiers who served the Assad regime.
He is also a member of the minority group to which Assad’s family belongs and which runs the army and government and controls the country with a Soviet-style secret police apparatus whose main purpose is to crush dissent in any country. He vowed not to go after anything Alawite. It means necessary.
So far, most Syrians seem to be taking Aljolani at his word.
After the fall of Damascus, Syrian Prime Minister Ghazi al-Jalali said in a statement that he intended to leave “other than in a peaceful manner that guarantees the continued functioning of public institutions and state facilities and promotes the safety and security of our compatriots.” He said no. ”
He said the government was ready to work with “any leader chosen by the Syrian people.”
In the town of Qardaha, the birthplace of the Assad family and where Hafez al-Assad is buried, elders vowed to work with Syria’s new rulers in a statement on Monday.
“The participants are demanding the removal of all statues and statues from public squares and places,” the elders declared, referring to the portraits of the dictator and his son that are ubiquitous in this Syrian coastal city.
Nearly 7 million Syrians have fled the country over the past four years, many to Europe, and the sudden influx has fueled a resurgence of anti-immigrant far-right movements.
With the fall of Assad’s regime, the governments of the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, and several other European countries announced that they would suspend decisions on asylum applications from Syrian nationals.
“Given the political upheaval in Syria that is unfolding before our eyes, we are analyzing different migration scenarios,” said Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk, who assumed Poland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union on January 1. posted on X. Security is key. ”
Richard Engel reported from Damascus and Corky Siemaszko from New York City.
