President Bashar Al Assad has left the Syrian capital, after armed opposition groups have conquered large areas of the country and reached Damascus in about ten days, declaring his victory over the regime early on Sunday.
From Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry has confirmed that Al Assad has left the country after negotiating with the rebels. In a statement cited by the EFE Agency, Russia has not revealed where the president is, amid rumors of his possible exile in this country or in one of the Persian Gulf.
The insurgents have managed to enter the capital and take control of strategic facilities, such as the Syrian public radio and television, from which they have promised to safeguard the institutions of the “Free State of Syria.” Images spread on social networks have shown thousands of Damascenes celebrating the dictator’s march in the streets and some of them even They have entered the Al Rawda presidential palace.
The coalition of Islamist groups led by the Levant Liberation Organization (Hayat Tahrir al Sham, in Arabic), which has ousted Al Assad from the presidency after 24 years, declared victory early on Sunday. Its leader, Abu Mohamed al Jolani, has asked his fighters to “protect public institutions and their properties, since they are the property of the people.”
“Enter Damascus with modesty, treat your people and your people well. You must be the best soldiers, as God’s messenger has described to you,” he said in a statement released through his Telegram channel.
Al Assad’s prime minister, Mohamed Ghazi al Jalali, has assured in a video that he extends his hand to “every Syrian who is interested in this country to preserve its institutions.” “I am in my home, I have not abandoned it because I belong to this country and I do not know any other country. “It is my homeland,” he stated, showing his willingness to collaborate with the armed opposition, according to Agencia EFE.
The surprise and effective offensive of the insurgents has caused government forces to withdraw almost without resistance, while the president’s military and political allies – Russia and Iran – have not done enough to stop the opposition advance, which has surprised everyone.
This Sunday the rebels have reached Latakia and Tartus, the bastions of the Syrian regime on the northwest coast and those least affected by the civil war in the past decade. In both towns the statues of Hafez Al Assad, father of Al Assad, who ruled the country with an iron fist between 1971 and 2000, until his son Bashar succeeded him.
It seems that the rapid and easy advance of the Syrian rebels has been possible thanks to the withdrawal, almost without resistance, of a large part of the regime’s armed and security forces, especially in some areas, where they have been offered a “safe exit” in exchange for his surrender. Furthermore, the departure of Al Assad and the seizure of power by the armed opposition with hardly any bloodshed would not have been possible without the agreement between the powers that intervene militarily in Syria and that have decided the fate of the country.
The future of Syria is decided in Doha
The foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey met on Saturday in Qatar, within the framework of the so-called Astana process, through which they have coordinated their respective positions and interests in Syria in recent years, in which Al Assad had reaffirmed his power. Also in Doha are the representatives of several Arab countries involved in the conflict and in the mediation, which a few hours before the fall of Damascus assured in a statement that they were working in favor of “a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria that satisfies the aspirations of the Syrian people for security, stability and justice.”
This weekend the Doha Forum is being held in the Qatari capital, where Syria is present in all talks, official and unofficial. The spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, Majed Al Ansari, assured on Sunday in a round table with some media, among which was elDiario.es, that “the regime has lost all opportunities to dialogue, to reconcile with its people and to re-engage” with the international community, and that its collapse “is the result of its behavior.” “We have to work together to do everything possible to have an open dialogue with all parties on the ground,” said Al Ansari, referring to all the countries gathered in Qatar.
At the Doha Forum, United Nations special envoy Geir O. Pedersen stated late Saturday before the media that “things are changing inside Syria.” “The need for an orderly political transition has never been more urgent” than at the moment, he said in a brief statement after meeting with the Russian, Iranian and Turkish foreign ministers, as well as with representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the European Union. Pedersen said that all interlocutors agree on the call for “urgent political talks in Geneva to implement UN resolution 2254.”
This resolution is the roadmap for a peace process in Syria that the Security Council established in 2015, but which until now has not been implemented, largely due to the Syrian regime’s reluctance to negotiate with its adversaries. “We need an urgent and serious process, fundamentally different from what has been until now,” admitted Pedersen, who has been in office since 2018 without making progress.
The application of resolution 2254 has been repeated this Saturday in Doha like a magical mantra, but to put an end to the Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011 with popular protests against the Al Assad dictatorship (father and son). Analyst Charles Lister explained to elDiario.es that it is “very positive” that all the countries involved have accepted that the Al Assad regime has ended. “If they did not accept this fact, we would be heading towards a much more complicated and violent chapter” in Syria.
After Russia, Iran and Turkey have accepted that “there must be a change in Syria now and that change involves the departure of Al Assad,” now “the rest of the international community, the Syrian people, must come together and understand what that change will be like.” ”Lister added.
After so many years and despite their involvement, the analyst has pointed out that everything indicates that Iran and Russia are “abandoning” their protégé Al Assad. Meanwhile, Turkey has benefited from rapid developments in Syria, which, according to the expert, “it did not plan” and “does not have much control over what is happening on the ground.” After the departure of Al Assad and the seizure of power by the rebels, the Turkish government can obtain what it has sought with its military interventions in Syria and its diplomatic pressures: security along its border with Syria and the return of Syrian refugees to their country, “which now seems inevitable,” in Lister’s opinion.
Most of the refugees come from towns and areas that during the war have been harshly punished for their opposition to the regime – both by its forces and by the Russians – and now see the possibility of returning if their places of origin are conquered by the rebels. In fact, these days many Syrians have begun to return to the homes they left years ago: some have been reunited with their families and neighbors, others with sad news about the fate of their relatives or their properties.
As the rebels have advanced, taking territory and expelling the authorities from Damascus, they have also released prisoners who had been detained for a long time for their political positions, for having participated in the 2011 revolt or for having refused to enlist in the Army. official. In many cases, families did not know if they were prisoners or dead – it is estimated that there are some 130,000 missing people in Syria – and some have finally learned where and how their loved ones are.
Russia’s role
At the Doha Forum, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that he would continue to support the Syrian Army against “the threat of terrorism” and emphasized that Hayat Tahrir al Sham is considered a terrorist group by the international community (in fact, it was created around the former affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, from whose positions it has distanced itself).
In a public intervention at the forum, Lavrov did not reveal whether Moscow could host its ally Al Assad, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The head of Russian diplomacy declared that, together with his Turkish and Iranian counterparts, they support the implementation of resolution 2254. The diplomats “are trying to stop the bloodshed in Syria,” he added.
Without the support of Russia – military in Syria and political in the UN Security Council – Al Assad would not have remained in power until now. Moscow intervened in the fight in 2015, when the regime had lost control of most of the country, a good portion of it to the Islamic State extremists. The Soviet Union, first, and Russia, later, have supported the Al Assad family for decades in exchange for having their only base in this area and an exit to the Mediterranean Sea, from northwest Syria.
It is rumored that Al Assad could have gone into exile in Russia or the United Arab Emirates, one of the first Arab countries to normalize relations with the Syrian regime after years of massacres and horrors committed against its own people. The UN estimates that more than half a million Syrians have died since 2011 and almost six million have taken refuge in other countries.
Several experts have pointed out at the Doha Forum that normalization with Al Assad should never have been the solution and has now been revealed as a failed strategy, and that the international community must admit its failure in that sense and work now to ensure that the demands of the Syrian people become a reality after more than a decade.
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