Syria falls to the rebels

December 8, 2024 – DAMASCUIS, SYRIA – the Syrian capital of Damascus fell without a fight after longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, along with his wife and three children, got on a plane and left the country for Moscow. The Russians say that he has left the country and left instructions with them on the transfer of power.

The Assad family rose to power in Syria on November 11, 1970, when Hafez al-Assad seized power in a coup over other factions of the Ba'ath party and ruled with an iron fist. Bashar Assad inherited power from his father.

The country became destabilized when the United States defeated Al Qaeda of Iraq. Those forces sought sanctuary with Sunni Syrian villages. The Syrian Civil War began in 2011 during the "Arab Spring" when Democracy supporters began a series of uprisings against the Assad dictatorship – which quickly erupted into civil war. Al Qaeda soon was involved in the conflict seeking to create a more Islamic state. The Iranian backed Hezbollah militia – which rules vast swathes of southern Lebanon supported the Assad regime.

Assad brutally moved to suppress the rebels. Assad had received weapons of mass destruction from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein prior to an American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Assad used some of those chemical weapons on rebel elements.

Then President of the United States Barack H. Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton moved to support the rebels. The U.S. was still occupying Iraq and Afghanistan at the time and had just toppled the Libyan government – a war that ended disastrously for the Libyan people – and many in Congress pushed back against U.S. forces getting involved in toppling Assad. Pro-Democracy forces were soon crushed and the U.S. support realigned with Syrian Kurds.

Ultimately the Obama administration did not intervene in the Syrian conflict. The Al Qaeda forces in Syria splintered. The most powerful and most radical faction became the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). ISIS then invaded Iraq. The Shiite dominated Iraqi Army was easily bested by the battle hardened ISIS forces and the U.S. was forced to confront the advancing ISIS armies in Central Iraq.

President Trump assembled a broad coalition of American, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces that ultimately pushed ISIS out of Iraq and back into Syria where the war continues to this day. Meanwhile Turkish forces crossed the border into Turkey on behalf of ethnic Turks in Syria and to do battle with the Kurds – who want their own homeland of territory comprising parts of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.

Iran increased their support of Assad particularly as they needed to continue to move supplies to their Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. The Russians intervened on behalf of Assad as Russia has important naval and air bases in the region. The U.S., Russia, ISIS, Turkey, Iran/Hezbollah, and the Kurds all have military forces in parts of Syria to the present day. The U.S. and our allies have killed over 269 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq in an offensive that began on August 29.

The rebel group that ultimately brought down Assad were originally a faction of Al Qaeda that rejected the teachings of the founder of ISIS. The rebels – while still listed as a terrorist group – emphasizes that they are more moderate than ISIS. In November the rebels retook Aleppo (Syria's second largest city which has changed hands multiple times in the conflict) and then pushed on to Homs. After 13 years of war, Assad was unable to find an army to reenforce Homa or defend the Alawite homeland that has been his family's center of support thus Damascus fell shockingly rapidly after Homa.

The rebels took Syria shortly after Homs fell. The new leader of Syria is Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani. Can he unite the long divided country and what does that mean for Syria and the larger Middle East are questions the world is only beginning to answer.

President-elect Trump reacted to the news on Sunday.

"Assad is gone," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. "He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever."

Original reporting by the Hill, Fox News, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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