Syria has exchanged a vile dictator for an uncertain future

Some prisoners had been there for decades, long enough that they forgot their names and their families had declared them dead. From one cell in the women’s section emerged a young boy, a toddler who may have spent his whole life in jail. Those who found their loved ones alive could not believe their fortune. Those who did not grew desperate. A rumour spread of even ghastlier horrors beneath Saidnaya: thousands of additional prisoners alive but trapped in underground cells hidden behind concealed doors.

It was a perverse sort of false hope. A group that represents Syrian detainees eventually issued a statement refuting the claim. The prison was empty, it said; there were no more hidden cells, no more survivors. But even false rumours contain some truth. Bashar al-Assad, the longtime dictator, was brutal enough that Syrians found it plausible that he had built a dungeon beneath a dungeon. It was hard to imagine a depth to which he would not sink.

Last stand and deliverance

Syria is finally free of Mr Assad’s brutality. A rebel offensive that began in the north-west on November 27th progressed with lightning speed. By December 8th insurgents had reached Damascus, the capital, and Mr Assad had fled to Russia, ending his family’s 53-year rule. What comes next is uncertain, but will certainly have profound implications for the region. Most Syrians doubt it can be worse than what came before.

The rebels were able to topple Mr Assad in 13 days because of the steady decay of the previous 13 years. After he decided in 2011 to suppress calls for democracy with violence, hundreds of thousands of young Syrian men lost their lives in the ensuing civil war. Millions more fled to neighbouring countries, or to Europe. In recent years, as the regime reasserted control over much of Syria, stability brought those who remained little benefit. A small circle of profiteers grew rich amid the ruins.

The rebels, led by an Islamist group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), had spent years training for their offensive. They looked like a modern army, with drones and special forces and a centralised command structure. But their most important weapon was motivation: they wanted to topple the regime, whereas the Syrian army no longer had the will to preserve it. Senior officers left the front lines in order to move their families to safer parts of the country. The rank and file abandoned their posts. The regime’s foreign backers—Iran, Russia and Hizbullah, a Lebanese militia—seeing how incapable it was of defending itself and beset by problems of their own, declined to come to its aid. It was not a bloodless coup, but it was close: only a few hundred people died in the final days of a war that had killed half a million.

Damascus was euphoric. Locals broke into the presidential palace, where they rifled through Mr Assad’s DVD collection (he was apparently a fan of Borat) and his wife’s Louis Vuitton bags. Many shops swiftly reopened. A long queue snaked out of a Syriatel outlet, of returning refugees keen to buy new SIM cards.

Some government employees reported for work as usual. Outside the Four Seasons hotel a municipal worker swept up rubbish. Staff at the post office were not entirely sure who they were working for or whether their salaries would be paid. A group of them smoked and gossiped about Mr Assad’s flight. It was unclear if any letters would be delivered that day.

Elation and division

Not everywhere was peaceful, though. In the north the Syrian National Army (SNA), a Turkish proxy force, attacked several towns controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mainly Kurdish militia backed by America. That was a reminder that the country remains divided between several different groups (see map).

HTS was not the first militia to reach Damascus—rebels from the south were—but it is now the strongest faction in the capital. Its forces have been setting up checkpoints and controlling access to government buildings. Their leaders have also told rebels to stop firing guns in the air in celebration, which had become a nuisance.

Until now HTS has governed only Idlib province, a rebel-held pocket in the north-west, where it proved to be competent but authoritarian. On December 10th the group named Muhammad al-Bashir, its chief administrator in Idlib, as a caretaker prime minister. His cabinet is meant to maintain security and provide basic services until March, although it is not clear what happens then. In practice, real power will rest with Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, the leader of HTS, who has recently started using his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, instead of his nom de guerre.

Syrians worry that HTS might try to impose its vision of Islamic rule or seek to monopolise power. With good reason: HTS emerged from al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, though it cut ties with the jihadists in 2017. Moreover, it is one thing to govern rural, conservative Idlib and another to run the whole country, with cosmopolitan cities and big religious and ethnic minorities.

HTS has said the right things so far. On December 9th it forbade its fighters from “interfering in women’s dress". Statements directed at the Christian and Druze minorities stress that their rights will be respected. A message to the Kurds declared “Diversity is our strength". In addition to adopting woke rhetoric, Mr Sharaa has neatly trimmed his once-grizzly beard and discarded his turban and camouflage gear in favour of sober fatigues.

Many Syrian Christians are cautiously optimistic. Mr Assad’s Alawite sect is more worried. Many have withdrawn to their ancestral villages along the coastal plain. HTS sounds less benevolent when it addresses them, demanding they cut ties with the old regime. The community has made some conciliatory gestures: religious leaders in Qardaha, the Assad family’s hometown, say they accept HTS’s rule and will remove statues of the former president.

There have been few reports of reprisals. On December 9th HTS announced an amnesty for soldiers who were conscripted into the army. That is sensible: most were drafted against their will. At the same time, Mr Sharaa promised to hunt down senior security officials. But so far, sources say, that has meant confiscating their weapons and uniforms and sending them home: demobilisation, not firing squads.

It has been even more pragmatic with the bureaucracy, telling the foreign ministry, for example, to keep diplomats in their posts. That edict has made for surreal scenes. Bashar al-Ja’afari, Syria’s ambassador in Moscow, was one of Mr Assad’s most fawning loyalists. But in an interview with a Russian television channel on December 8th he denounced the “corrupt mafia" that had been running Syria.

For several years HTS was arguably better at providing basic services than the central government: electricity was more reliable in Idlib than Aleppo, for instance. But the group knows that it lacks the capacity to administer all of Syria and needs help from the existing civil service. “He’s being smart in terms of continuity of state institutions," a diplomat says of Mr Sharaa. “The issue is the top level, the cabinet ministries, the actual power."

Mr Bashir’s cabinet is full of HTS members: ministers from Idlib have been given the same jobs in Damascus. Other militias are grumbling. The SNA, the SDF and an alliance of southern rebels all want a say in the new regime. Some of these groups have a reputation for crime and thuggery. HTS, although the strongest faction, is not powerful enough to control the entire country or to forcibly disarm rival militias.

Some rebels also complain about the deference being shown to certain members of the ousted regime, which they see as a betrayal of the revolution. Mr Assad has holed up in Russia, but the whereabouts of many of his henchmen is a mystery. No one knows what happened to Mr Assad’s brother, Maher, a ruthless army commander, for example. Some Syrians think he fled to the coast, others to Iran. Foreign diplomats fret about the prospect of Alawite militias taking up arms.

The Syrian diaspora has spent years making detailed plans for how they might govern after Mr Assad’s fall. One group of opposition activists published a “Syria Transition Roadmap" with a draft provisional constitution. Another group, called The Day After, released a transition plan in 2012 with timelines for everything from transitional justice to central-bank reform. There was also a UN-led effort to bring together the regime and the opposition to write a new constitution. It was pointless: Mr Assad was only feigning interest in reform. But some of its members have good ideas about a new national charter.

The problem is that many of these activists are outside the country—and none of them has any guns. A source close to HTS thinks democracy will not be high on Mr Sharaa’s agenda. His government in Idlib became dictatorial enough to spark protests earlier this year. Still, many Syrians treated it with forbearance: it was far better than Mr Assad. “With the regime’s collapse, people may no longer afford it the same tolerance they did," says Haid Haid of Chatham House, a think-tank.

In the short term, Mr Sharaa’s popularity may depend on whether he can attract aid and investment. Syria’s needs are enormous. GDP has fallen by 87% since the war began, from $68bn in 2011 to just $9bn today. The cost of reconstruction is thought to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The country is still under strict Western sanctions, even though Mr Assad’s departure seems to make such measures obsolete. Syrian businessmen abroad are waiting to see if HTS does away with the detritus of Mr Assad’s rule—a state-directed economy, capital controls, cronyism—before deciding whether to invest.

Many Syrians bristle at the idea that they might end up like other countries in the region that overthrew repressive regimes. They see few parallels with Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which were invaded by outsiders who set up new governments with the help of exiles. Syria is almost the opposite: a home-grown uprising against a regime that was propped up by foreigners. Unlike Libya or Yemen in 2011, Syria has already been through a civil war. Optimists hope that the bitter memory will spur its various militias to compromise. That may be wishful thinking. For now, though, Syrians are feeling a rare emotion: hope.

One of the Assad regime’s slogans was qaidna lil abad, “our leader for ever". It seemed true: no matter how much damage they did, the Assads endured. Until, suddenly, they did not. As the rebels closed in on Damascus, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a dissident who spent 16 years in jail, knew that many challenges lay ahead. But that was a matter for tomorrow: “For ever is over," he wrote, “and history begins."

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