Syrians roam around ousted Assad’s Damascus palace
DAMASCUS—Roaming the opulent Damascus home of ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad, Abu Omar felt a sense of giddy defiance being in the residence of the man he said had long oppressed him.
“I am taking pictures, because I am so happy to be here in the middle of his house,” said the 44-year-old, showing photographs he took on his mobile phone.
He was among the dozens an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent saw entering Assad’s home after Assad fled the country—to Moscow according to Russian news agencies—as rebels took control of the capital in an 11-day lightning offensive.
The swift campaign by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies ended more than five decades of brutal rule by the Assad family.
“I came for revenge. They oppressed us in incredible ways,” Abu Omar added from the compound of three six-story buildings in the upscale al-Maliki neighborhood.
Jubilant men, women and children wandered the home and its sprawling garden in a daze, the rooms stripped bare except for some furniture and a portrait of Assad discarded on the floor.
Residents in the Syrian capital were seen cheering in the streets, as the rebel factions heralded the departure of “tyrant” Assad.
The government fell more than 13 years after Assad’s crackdown on antigovernment protests ignited Syria’s civil war, which has drawn in foreign powers, jihadists and claimed more than half a million lives.
On Sunday, video circulating online showed crowds peeking into the bedrooms in the Assad residence, which was previously off limits to ordinary citizens.
They could be seen snatching clothes, plates and whatever belongings they could find including a Louis Vuitton cardboard shopping bag.
‘Sale! Sale!’
In one video, a man could be heard yelling that everything was on “Sale! Sale!”
Umm Nader, 35, came with her husband from a nearby district to tour the residence that once inspired fear and awe, and which one visitor now described as a “museum.”
“I came to see this place that we were banned from, because they wanted us to live in poverty and deprivation,” she told AFP.
Nader said the former inhabitants of the residence had left without cutting off the heating and electricity, “meanwhile our children are getting sick from the cold.”
Daily power outages that last for hours have been a fact of life in Syria, reeling from successive economic crises after more than a decade of war and Western sanctions.
Most of the population has been pushed into poverty, according to the United Nations.
An AFP correspondent also saw a charred reception hall at the Damascus presidential palace a couple kilometers
As he moved from room to room, Abu Omar said he felt overjoyed.
“I no longer feel afraid. My only concern is that we unite (as Syrians) and build this country together,” he said, full of emotion.
It took just 11 days for Syrian rebels to force Bashar Assad to flee the country and impose a new revision of the strategic map in the Middle East.
The Syrian strongman had for nearly 14 years held off an uprising that many believed had been exhausted. But his downfall followed a series of battlefield convulsions for other allies of Iran.
Israel has all but decapitated the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon since September, while the killing of Hamas figureheads has dealt major blows to Assad’s key backer Tehran.
Andreas Krieg, a security specialist at King’s College London, said that Iran and other “Axis of Resistance” members would now have to concentrate on their “home turf.”
“And so the axis will lose its transnational flavor and its regional strategic depth.”
The lightning speed at which the rebels, dominated by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, took Aleppo and then the country stunned the whole world.
No one in Syria, or in the capitals that opposed or supported Assad, had expected Damascus to fall so quickly. Attention had been focused on the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas and Israel’s strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The 59-year-old Syrian leader long seemed secure with the backing of his Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah allies.
Some Arab neighbors had even started moves to normalize relations, strained since the civil war started with the repression of antigovernment protests in 2011.
But HTS, which originated from Al-Qaeda before severing ties, smashed that outlook in just a few days when cities fell and statues of Assad’s feared father Hafez Assad were toppled.
The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, drew Iran and its “Axis of Resistance” allies into a conflict that has exposed their weaknesses.
Hezbollah’s military power has been undermined and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has been killed by Israel.
Israel had already been attacking Hezbollah’s military and financial supply lines from Iran through Syria.
That support faces a fresh threat from the new masters of Damascus who will point to Hezbollah’s crucial role in keeping Assad in power for so long.
Iran’s remaining supporters in Yemen and Iraq, while harassing the United States and its allies in the region, remain a nuisance but appear unable to effect major change.
Russia, embroiled in a resource-sapping war with Ukraine, also faces high stakes decisions as it biggest Middle East naval base is at Tartus on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
“They are likely going to lose that,” said Krieg. “I can’t see how the new regime or the new socio-political order will allow the Russians to remain after everything the Russians have done to prop up the Assad regime.”
Turkey, a key supporter of the rebels, is the big regional winner from Assad’s fall, Krieg added.
But while it has influence, it does not control the rebels, he said.
‘Game over’
With conflict being fought on several Middle East fronts, the region will also have to handle the new US administration of Donald Trump.
“In a moment of complete uncertainty, this transformative event makes everything so unpredictable,” said Aron Lund, a specialist at the Century International think tank.
“It is not just Assad’s regime falling, it is also the question of what comes in its place? And how long does it take to crystallize? So you could easily have various types of regional contests play out in Syria,” Lund told AFP.
Various countries in the region had been backing different anti-Assad factions in Syria since 2011.
But the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states had recently restarted relations with Assad, after over a decade of his isolation.
Many states have been fearful of Sunni Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. They will face even greater challenges from the new Damascus rulers, said Lund.
“This is the Muslim Brotherhood on steroids, something much more militant and hostile to them,” he said.
But Israel, and its friends and enemies, expect the front lines to shift again when Trump returns to the White House in January.
From Morocco to Saudi Arabia and Israel, countries will be hoping to secure Trump’s backing through his renowned deal-making diplomacy.
He had said in the past that the United States should not be involved in Syria’s war. But Trump will also have to deal with a new Middle East.
Krieg said events in Syria should also be a warning to the leaders in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia that also saw uprisings during the Arab Spring.
“It is game over for the myth of ‘authoritarian stability,’” he said. “Game over for the counter-revolutionaries in Russia, UAE and Iran.”
