AMMAN/BEIRUT/CAIRO: Syria rebel fighters raced into Damascus unopposed on Sunday, overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. For Syrians, it brought a sudden unexpected end to a war that had been in deep freeze for years, with hundreds of thousands already dead, cities pounded to dust, an economy hollowed out by global sanctions and no resolution in site.
“How many people were displaced across the world? How many people lived in tents? How many drowned in the seas?” the top rebel commander Abu Mohammad al-Jolani told a huge crowd at the medieval Ummayad Mosque in central Damascus. “A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory,” he said. It would take hard work to build a new Syria which he said would be “a beacon for the Islamic nation”.
Jolani said there was no room for turning back. “The future is ours,” he said. The rebel coalition said it was working to complete the transfer of power to a transitional governing body with executive powers. “The great Syrian revolution has moved from the stage of struggle to overthrow the Assad regime to the struggle to build a Syria together that befits the sacrifices of its people,” it said in a statement.
Syrian PM Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali called for free elections in a country where Assad’s opponents faced barrel bombs.
Jalali also said he had been in contact with Jolani to discuss managing the transitional period, marking a notable development in efforts to shape Syria’s political future. Assad’s govt – known for generations as heading one of the harshest police states in West Asia with thousands of political prisoners in its gulag – melted away overnight. Bewildered and elated inmates poured out of jails after rebels blasted away the locks on their cells. Reunited families wept in joy. Newly freed prisoners were filmed at dawn running through Damascus streets holding up fingers of both hands to show how many years they had been in prison. “We toppled the regime!” a voice shouted and a prisoner skipped with delight.
