In what looks like a belated end to the totalitarian, autocratic rule of Syria by the Assad dynasty through half a century, the largely hated regime of President Bashar-al-Assad has crumbled and the dictator reportedly “fled” the country. Some reports suggest he perished in bombing by rebel forces which, after taking control of several urban centres, finally stormed capital Damascus on Sunday. The fundamentalist streak of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels is all too glaring: they are aligned to Al Qaeda that had been targeting the Syrian regime for the past many years. It is safe to assume that life for the ordinary citizens would only worsen there; and new trouble is in store for the world at large from fundamentalists there.
Syria has long been an epicentre of human rights violations mainly at the behest of the regime on the one side and the Islamic fundamentalist forces on the other. The Assads survived in power through generations with able military support, first from the erstwhile USSR and, after the end of the Cold War, from Russia. President Putin liberally helped Syria face the rebel fighters engaged in a civil war. Curiously, The Assads claimed to be running secular governments through generations after Hafez al Assad seized power through a coup in 1971. He continued his rule till 2000. His death led to a transfer of power to son Bashar al Assad. Bashar too, like his father, kept the nation and its people under an iron grip with able backing from the military. The top ranks of the military remained filled with recruits from the Assads’ own Alawite Muslim minority group forming less than 15 percent of the population. The rest of the population resented the undue importance that the Assads gave to this community in the governance systems. Rebel groups from other Muslim communities continued targeting the regime. This was more so after the Iraq War and infiltration of Sunni fighters from there to Syria. The bloody battles and purges in select provinces took the lives of tens of thousands. The present phase of the rebel offensive started last month.
Notably, Syrian rebels exploited to their full advantage a situation of extreme economic hardship of the people. Bashar’s economic liberalization steps allegedly worsened economic inequalities. The rural populations bore the brunt of this pressure while the Alawite and Assad family units thrived in businesses, commerce and much else. Bashar al Assad perhaps fled to an unknown destination abroad with Russian patronage, but he might not find peace there too. Reportedly an arrest warrant had been issued to the President last year by France at the behest of the International Court of Justice over the regime’s use of chemical weapons against rebels and the civilian population. This hangs like a Damocles’ Sword over his head.
