Bashar al-Assad told almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his rule collapsed. Instead, close aides, officials and even relatives were tricked or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people familiar with the case told Reuters.
Hours before fleeing to Moscow, President Assad spoke at a meeting of about 30 military and security chiefs at the Defense Ministry on Saturday, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity. He assured ground troops that the situation was still in progress and urged ground forces to hold out. To talk about the briefing.
Civilian officials were equally prudent.
After finishing work on Saturday, Assad told his manager in the presidential palace that he was going home but would instead head to the airport, aides said.
He also called his media adviser, Bousaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his home and write a speech, aides said. She arrived and found no one there.
“Assad didn’t even make a last stand. He didn’t even rally his forces,” said Nadhim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, a regional think tank. “He forced his followers to face their fate.”
Reuters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum. Interviews with 14 people familiar with the final days and hours of his regime, before resorting to deception and stealth to plan an exit from Syria early Sunday morning to extend his 24-year rule. It depicts a leader seeking outside help.
Most of the officials, including the former president’s aides, regional diplomats and security officials, and senior Iranian officials, asked not to be named in order to discuss sensitive matters freely.
Three aides said Assad had not even informed his brother Maher, commander of the army’s elite 4th Armored Division, of the withdrawal plan. Maher flew the helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.
Assad’s maternal cousins, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, were similarly left behind when Damascus fell to rebels, according to a Syrian aide and Lebanese security official. The two tried to flee by car to Lebanon, but on the way they were ambushed by rebels, where Ehab was shot dead and Eyad injured. There was no official confirmation of the death and Reuters could not independently verify the incident.
President Assad himself escaped the clutches of rebels storming the capital on Sunday, December 8, by switching off his plane’s transponder and flying off radar, according to two regional diplomats. He fled Damascus by plane on Sunday. The dramatic departure ended his 24-year rule and his family’s half-century of uninterrupted power, and brought an abrupt end to 13 years of civil war.
He flew to Russia’s Hmeimim air base in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, and from there headed to Moscow.
Assad’s immediate family, including his wife Asma and their three children, are already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former aides and a senior regional official.
Videos of Assad’s home, taken by rebels and civilians who flocked to the presidential palace after his escape and posted on social media, suggest that he left in a hurry, leaving the remains on the stove. It is understood that some personal belongings, including cooked food and family photo albums, were left behind. .
Russia and Iran: no military rescue
There will be no military rescue from Russia, whose intervention in 2015 helped turn the tide of the civil war in Assad’s favor, or from Iran, another staunch ally.
The Syrian leader made this revelation in the days leading up to his resignation, as he appealed for help from all sides in a desperate race to cling to power and ensure his security, according to people interviewed by Reuters. It is said that he was
Assad visited Moscow on November 28, a day after Syrian rebels attacked the northern province of Aleppo and torpedoed the entire country, but his pleas for military intervention fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin, which has been reluctant to intervene. three regional diplomats said. .
Hadi al-Bahra, the leader of Syria’s main opposition group abroad, said Assad had not communicated the reality of the situation to his inner circle at home, citing close associates of Assad and regional officials.
“After his visit to Moscow, he told his commanders and colleagues that military support was coming,” Barra added. “He was lying to them. The messages he received from Moscow were negative.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Russia has spent significant efforts to stabilize Syria in the past, but its current priority is the conflict in Ukraine.
Four days after that visit, on December 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi met with President Assad in Damascus. By then, rebels from the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized control of Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, and were sweeping south as government forces collapsed.
A senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters that Assad was visibly distressed during the talks and acknowledged that the military was too weakened to mount an effective resistance.
However, two senior Iranian officials said President Assad never asked Iran to send troops to Syria and that Israel would use such intervention to target Iranian forces in Syria or even Iran itself. He said he understands that there is a possibility of
The Kremlin and Russia’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment for this article, while Iran’s Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.
President Assad faces his downfall
After exhausting his options, President Assad finally accepted the inevitability of his ouster and decided to leave the country, ending his family’s dynastic rule that dates back to 1971.
Three of Assad’s top aides said he had initially wanted to seek refuge in the United Arab Emirates as rebels occupied Aleppo and Homs and were advancing toward Damascus.
He said the accusations were rejected by the Emirates, which feared an international backlash for harboring a person who was subject to U.S. and European sanctions for allegedly using chemical weapons to crack down on rebels. President Assad has denied it as a fabrication.
The UAE government did not respond to requests for comment.
However, a Russian diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity said that while Moscow was reluctant to intervene militarily, it was not prepared to abandon Assad.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who attended the Doha Forum in Qatar on Saturday and Sunday, spearheaded diplomatic efforts to ensure President Bashar al-Assad’s safety and told Turkey and Qatar that Assad’s commitment to Russia Two regional officials said they encouraged them to use their connections with HTS to ensure safe departure. .
One Western security official said Lavrov “did everything he could” to ensure Assad’s safe exit.
Qatar and Turkey are said to have signed a deal with HTS to facilitate Assad’s departure, despite both countries publicly claiming they have no contact with HTS, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. Three sources spoke.
The Russian government also coordinated with neighboring countries to ensure that the Russian plane carrying President Bashar al-Assad leaving Syrian airspace would not be intercepted or targeted, the three sources said.
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to inquiries about Assad’s resignation, and Reuters could not reach HTS for comment. Turkish officials said there was no request from Russia to use Turkish airspace to help Assad escape, but did not say whether the Turkish government cooperated with HTS to facilitate Assad’s escape.
Mohammed Jalali, Assad’s last prime minister, said he spoke by phone with the then-president at 10:30 on Saturday night.
“In my last call, I expressed how difficult the situation is and that there is a mass evacuation (of people) from Homs to Latakia, and that there is panic and fear in the streets. “I told them,” he told Saudi state-run Al Arabiya Television. this week.
“He replied, ‘You’ll find out tomorrow,'” Jalali added. “‘Tomorrow, tomorrow’ were the last words he said to me.”
Jalali said he tried to call Assad again at dawn on Sunday, but there was no answer.
