Assad’s downfall is cause for celebration

Published by The i paper (9th December, 2024)

Thirteen years ago, seven boys sat around in school swigging soft drinks after a game of football while television reports showed the uprisings that had flared up against dictatorships in Egypt and Libya. As they joked and talked, one suggested they paint similar slogans of protest on their walls.  So later that night 15-year-old Bashir Abazed sprayed “Ejak el door ya Doctor” (It is your turn, Doctor) in big letters – a taunt aimed at their president Bashar al-Assad, who trained as an ophthalmologist in London. 

This teenage prank sparked Syria’s revolution, which descended into a civil war after the regime responded to the graffiti with its trademark savagery, torturing these boys from Daraa and then slaughtering protesters who sought their release.

Now, finally, it is the doctor’s turn. His regime has collapsed, just like those other thieving despots in Cairo and Tripoli. Assad tried to save his skin by turning his country into a charnel house with the aid of friends in Moscow and Tehran – leaving half a million Syrians dead, at least 12 million displaced and impoverishing the rest of his people. 

“If we knew our graffiti would have caused so much trouble, we would not have written it that night,” Bashir told me later. “But we are not to blame. The regime fought back with torture and killing, thinking they could suppress the revolution. They were wrong.”

Given the immensity of their suffering, the Syrian people deserved a day of celebration after waking to news that their despised and feared dictatorship has been defeated. The repulsive Assad clan held the country in its cruel grip for 54 years, leaving behind a bankrupted, bloodstained and brutalised nation. So there was euphoria –- not just in regions dominated by Sunni Muslims, subjected to rule by a minority Shia sect, but also in Christian, Druze and Kurdish areas.

As rebels swept through the country, they threw open detention centres where tens of thousands of citizens were abused and killed. The historic events were symbolised by bemused women and even toddlers being set free in Sednaya military prison, notorious for hangings and the use of rape against detainees.

It is easy to forget, amid the horrors, how this revolution began with a desire for the dignities and freedoms we take for granted in Britain – as I heard from idealistic protesters in Damascus risking lives and liberty for the dream of democracy. 

Assad reacted with repression and by stoking divisions, igniting a civil war that descended into sectarian conflict stirred by other nations. A ceasefire was brokered four years ago, yet Syria’s economic collapse intensified – inflamed by US sanctions – with its pound falling fifteenfold against the dollar. Assad’s security state was corroded by gangsterism both at local level – with militia leaders ripping off communities – and nationally as elite army units focused on production and sale of illegal drugs for hard currency.

In the end, Assad’s fall was astonishingly swift. Rebels began testing the regime in the summer, then launched their big assault a fortnight ago with government forces crumbling in the face of their advance. 

Once again, a dictatorship projected an image of strength when riddled with such deep rot and loathed with such intensity that it collapsed fast. These events deliver a robust rebuke to all the “realists” who promote appeasement with despots, and showing that sanctions can make a difference and regimes can be defeated on the battlefield. 

Some “experts” even assured us Assad had won this war with help of his Russian pals. Meanwhile populist European leaders – led by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni – started making moves to restore diplomatic relations with this monstrous regime so they could deport refugees, jettisoning the human rights and values supposed to be the foundation stone of Europe.

The whoops of joy heard across liberated Syria echoed to Ukraine since this marks a major defeat for Vladimir Putin and his desire to project Russian power. Encouraged by the insipid Western response to his theft of Crimea in 2014 and stung by Barack Obama’s claim that Russia was just a regional power, Putin moved to prop up Assad. He enabled Syria’s army – then close to defeat – to capture the second city of Aleppo in 2016 while his forces inflicted many atrocities on rebel-held areas, hitting hospitals and schools again in recent days in a bid to shore up the regime. 

His prized naval and air bases in Syria were used to extend the Kremlin’s malign influence and send troops to Africa. Now Aleppo has fallen, Assad has fled, Russia’s bases are at risk – and Putin has shown the world how he weakened his country with his idiotic war in Ukraine.

The fall of Assad is also a huge blow for Iran, another key member of the axis of autocracy engaged in a global struggle against democracy. Yet as we saw in Egypt and Libya – where I watched the explosion of delirious joy after Gaddafi’s fall – a dictator’s overthrow can lead to worse bloodshed and repression. 

The West and its allies will be nervous over the leading role played by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group with historic links to al-Qaeda and record of human rights abuse in Idlib. There will be fears over the possibility of reprisals against regime loyalists, sectarian forces stirred up by outside actors, even potential fragmentation of Syria.

The path to peace and prosperity in this beautiful but blighted nation remains hazy. Who knows if this cataclysmic conflict – which can only be solved by its own people – is really over? There may be more agony, more chaos, more uncertainty. 

Yet we can share in any exultation at the fall of a barbaric dictator and the defeat of his grotesque allies. I asked Bashir what he would do when peace returns to his land.  “I want to be an officer in the army so that I will know how to deal kindly and nicely with any future revolutionaries,” he replied. At least there is a fresh flicker of hope for such sweet dreams.

Categorised in: home feature, Syria, World