Six years ago, I wrote an article about the Rwandan genocide in which I warned that Syria - at the time under the oppressive boot of the Assad regime - seemed headed for a similar fate, with a totalitarian dictator whose penchant for war crimes, mass murder, and crimes against humanity was facing few, if any, consequences from the international community and had a legion of defenders among the western "anti-war" and isolationist movement. At the time, Bashar al-Assad seemed to have beaten the odds with the assistance of Russia, with Syria's then-eight-year-long civil war that once seemed poised to topple his regime having ground to a stalemate, with rebel forces seemingly hopelessly divided along sectarian lines and lacking badly needed western support.
So in late November of 2024, when the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a series of offensives against the Syrian government, it surprised me - and the entire world - how rapidly the Assad regime began to crumble. The city of Aleppo - once the site of a grueling, long, catastrophic siege in 2016 that saw thousands of civilians slaughtered by the regime and its Russian allies - fell within a week, along with the city of Hama. By early December, rebel forces had entered the capital city, where, on December 8th, 2024 - with his army collapsing and Russian support unavailable due to the ongoing war in Ukraine - Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus for Moscow. The Assad Regime - which had ruled Syria under a brutal, forty-year-long totalitarian hereditary dictatorship, and had once seemed invincible - had totally collapsed in less than two weeks.
It was after the Assad regime that some of its worst atrocities came to light, particularly at Sednaya Prison, nicknamed the "Human Slaughterhouse", where some 13,000 civilians were murdered between 2012 and 2017 alone - most without trial and in secret. At Sednaya, detainees had been held for upwards of thirty years in squalid conditions, where they were systematically starved, beaten, tortured, raped, and kept in filthy, overcrowded cells infested with rats and insects. Some detainees had been held for so long that, when they were liberated by Syrian opposition forces, they believed that Saddam Hussein's forces had come to their rescue. Many detainees even still believed that Bashar's predecessor, Hafez al-Assad - who had died in June of 2000, months before I was even born - was still the ruler of Syria.
In the place of the fallen Assad regime, Syria has installed a transitional government with Ahmad al-Sharaa as president. And even with Syria's dreaded tyrant gone and his regime of terror in ruins, Sharaa - a former Al-Qaeda militant who was once one of the United States' most wanted fugitives - now found himself the leader of a nation of twenty-six million people, shattered by thirteen years of war and hopelessly fractured along sectarian lines, with a ruined economy crippled by years of international sanctions - a nation that he would now, somehow, have to find a way to bring back together.
It was, and still is, a rather daunting task, one that likely won't be accomplished for years, if it ever can be. While major fighting in the Syrian Civil War has come to an end, and the threat of the Islamic State has subsided, sectarian violence remains an ever-present problem in Syria despite al-Sharaa's vow to be a president for all Syrians. Earlier this year, members of the Alawite and Druze communities were the targets of horrific pogroms by government forces and pro-government militias, which in turn triggered an Israeli invasion of southwestern Syria. And the issue of Rojava - a Kurdish-led proto-state that currently occupies much of northern Syria, and which found itself in routine conflict with Sharaa's HTS during the civil war - still remains unresolved. Syria may be fortunate in that - having been exhausted by years of fighting - its different warring factions will likely refrain from engaging in major conflict for the near future at least, but the lingering wounds of the civil war remain open and raw.
I was indisposed last year when the Assad Regime dramatically collapsed and was thus unable to cover it at the time. And, despite my interest in foreign policy, I'm no geopolitical expert, least of all one on a subject so complex as Syria. Having followed this war since the beginning, I had grown to loathe Assad for his many atrocities and eagerly prayed for the day when he would eventually be gone. A year ago, that day finally came, and now Syria still faces an uncertain future. Their problems are not yet over - far from it - but with their genocidal tyrant gone, a new transitional government in place, a gradual end to the fighting that has torn the nation apart, and at long last an easing of the crippling sanctions imposed by the international community during the years of war, Syria may finally have a chance to be a prosperous nation free from tyranny and Russian and Iranian influence.
But beyond Syria, and beyond the Assad regime, I also, for what it is worth, want to take time to address the cynics and defeatists - including those in my own government - who believe that capitulation to Russia is the only way to end the war in Ukraine. For years now, western isolationists and non-interventionists have painted the Putin Regime as an unstoppable and invincible force, which can never be defeated militarily and must instead be negotiated with for the sake of "peace".
These same isolationists and non-interventionists once believe this about Assad, and before Assad, isolationists and non-interventionists once believed the same about regimes like Nazi Germany. In the end, they were proven wrong. Dictatorships are not unstoppable. I've often said that fascism and authoritarianism are entirely about aesthetics instead of substance, and that is why authoritarian regimes are often so fragile and unstable. I recall a quote that made the rounds as the Assad Regime began to collapse last year: "Dictatorships are very stable until they aren't, and when they fall, they fall fast."
There was once a time in the not-too-distant past that the Assad Regime seemed invincible, and the notion of the Syrian opposition being able to topple Bashar al-Assad was seen as a fantasy. But a year ago, Assad's spell over Syria was broken violently and rapidly, and the man who once oppressed his people under totalitarian rule now lives in exile in Moscow, while his former victims are now beginning to rebuild and move forward from decades of tyranny.
The Syrian people fought a long and hard war for liberation, and in the end, despite western cynicism and non-interventionism, they achieved liberation in defiance of all expectations. As the day came for Assad, it will one day come for Vladimir Putin, too. Dictators always appear unstoppable until they aren't, and when they are stopped, they collapse quickly and violently. Such is the fate of all who wage war against the free world, and if the Syrian people can do it, Ukraine - with the backing of the west - absolutely can do it too.
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