Assad End in Syria

Excerpt

The Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has collapsed. Sunni rebels, backed by Turkey and Qatar, completed their lightning offensive last night after just a few short days of fighting. Assad’s whereabouts are unknown.

First, a quick salute to the Syrian people. They suffered mightily under Bashar’s father, the brutal dictator, Hafez al-Assad, for 29 years, and experienced a brief moment of hope when Bashar rose to power in 2000 after his father’s passing. But Bashar, a London-trained ophthalmologist, proved to be just as brutal as his father. The Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011 amidst the outbreak of the Arab Spring, spurred Bashar to enlist the help of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah to crack down on his own people. As many as a half million Syrians were killed. Entire towns were reduced to rubble. And millions of Syrians were displaced, thus altering the politics and stability of the European countries that took them in. The Syrian people can finally begin to think about a post-Assad future.

Jonathan Schanzer is the executive director at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Follow him on X @JSchanzer.