Assad’s Fall Followed Years of Bloodshed and Division

Syrians celebrate the arrival of opposition fighters as they step on a picture of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024. (AP)
Syrians celebrate the arrival of opposition fighters as they step on a picture of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024. (AP)
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Assad’s Fall Followed Years of Bloodshed and Division

Syrians celebrate the arrival of opposition fighters as they step on a picture of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024. (AP)
Syrians celebrate the arrival of opposition fighters as they step on a picture of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syria, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024. (AP)

The sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad's rule over Syria marks the culmination of a nearly 14-year uprising and a key moment in a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced half the population and drew in outside powers.

This is how it unfolded:

* 2011 - The first protests against Assad quickly spread across the country, and are met by security forces with a wave of arrests and shootings.

Some protesters take up guns and military units defect as the uprising becomes an armed revolt that will gain support from Western and Arab countries and Türkiye.

* 2012 - A bombing in Damascus is the first by al-Qaeda's new Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, which gains in power and starts crushing groups with a nationalist ideology.

World powers meet in Geneva and agree on the need for a political transition, but their divisions on how to achieve it will foil years of UN-sponsored peace efforts.

Assad turns his air force on opposition strongholds, as the fighters gain ground and the war escalates with massacres on both sides.

* 2013 - Lebanon's Hezbollah helps Assad to victory at Qusayr, halting opposition momentum and showing the Iran-backed group's growing role in the conflict.

Washington has declared chemical weapons use a red line, but a gas attack on opposition-held eastern Ghouta near Damascus kills scores of civilians without triggering a US military response.

* 2014 - The ISIS group suddenly seizes Raqqa in the northeast and swathes more territory in Syria and Iraq.

The opposition figters in the Old City of Homs surrender, agreeing to move to an outer suburb - their first big defeat in a major urban area and a precursor to future "evacuation" deals.

Washington builds an anti-ISIS coalition and starts air strikes, helping Kurdish forces turn the extremist tide but creating friction with its ally Türkiye.

* 2015 - With better cooperation and more arms from abroad, opposition groups gain more ground and seize northwestern Idlib, but extremist militants are taking a bigger role.

Russia joins the war on Assad's side with air strikes that turn the conflict against the opposition for years to come.

* 2016 - Alarmed by Kurdish advances on the border, Türkiye launches an incursion with allied opposition groups, making a new zone of Turkish control.

The Syrian army and its allies defeat the opposition in Aleppo, seen at the time as Assad's biggest victory of the war.

The Nusra Front splits from al-Qaeda and starts trying to present itself in a moderate light, adopting a series of new names and eventually settling on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

* 2017 - Israel acknowledges air strikes against Hezbollah in Syria, aiming to degrade the growing strength of Iran and its allies.

US-backed, Kurdish-led forces defeat ISIS in Raqqa. That offensive, and a rival one by the Syrian army, drive the extremist group from nearly all its land.

* 2018 - The Syrian army recaptures eastern Ghouta, before quickly retaking the other opposition enclaves in central Syria, and then the opposition’s southern bastion of Daraa.

* 2019 - ISIS loses its last scrap of territory in Syria. The US decides to keep some troops in the country to prevent attacks on its Kurdish allies.

* 2020 - Russia backs a government offensive that ends with a ceasefire with Türkiye that freezes most front lines. Assad holds most territory and all main cities, appearing deeply entrenched. The opposition holds the northwest. A Türkiye-backed force holds a border strip. Kurdish-led forces control the northeast.

* 2023 - The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 triggers fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, ultimately reducing the group's presence in Syria and fatally undermining Assad.

* 2024 – The opposition launches a new assault on Aleppo. With Assad's allies focused elsewhere his army quickly collapses. Eight days after the fall of Aleppo the opposition fighters have taken most major cities and enter Damascus, driving Assad from power.



Syrians Return to Homes Devastated by War

"We came back in the hope that our home would be different to this," Syrian grandfather Omar Kafozi said - AFP
"We came back in the hope that our home would be different to this," Syrian grandfather Omar Kafozi said - AFP
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Syrians Return to Homes Devastated by War

"We came back in the hope that our home would be different to this," Syrian grandfather Omar Kafozi said - AFP
"We came back in the hope that our home would be different to this," Syrian grandfather Omar Kafozi said - AFP

When Syrian grandfather Omar Kafozi returned to his house near Damascus after Bashar al-Assad's ouster, he saw unfathomable destruction.

Now, cushions and plants brighten the wreckage that he is determined to call home again.

"As soon as we found out that... the regime was gone and that people were coming back... we sorted our things" and packed the car, said Kafozi, 74, standing in the wreckage of his home in a former opposition bastion near the capital.

"I had to come home and stay by any means," he told AFP. "We came back in the hope that our home would be different to this."

Plastic sheeting covers windows in what remains of the home where he and his family are living with no electricity, running water or even a proper bathroom, in the town of Hammuriyeh.

Syria's war began in 2011 when Assad unleashed a crackdown on democracy protests, prompting soldiers to defect from the army and civilians to take up weapons.

When Eastern Ghouta, where Hammuriyeh is located, fell out of Assad's control, the government imposed a siege and launched a ferocious air and ground assault.

Assad's forces were accused of conducting chemical attacks on opposition areas of Eastern Ghouta.

In 2018, tens of thousands of fighters and civilians were bussed to opposition-held northwest Syria under evacuation deals brokered by Assad backer Russia.

Among those who left the area at the time were Kafozi and his family.

His granddaughter Baraa, now eight and carrying a bright pink school bag, "was an infant in our arms" when they left, he said.

Fast-forward to December 2024, Assad was ousted in an offensive spearheaded by opposition militants, allowing displaced Syrians to return to their homes.

Kafozi said that when Baraa first saw the damage, "she just stared and said, 'what's this destroyed house of ours? Why did we come? Let's go back.'"

"I told her, this is our home, we have to come back to it," he said.

- No regrets -

Until their return to Hammuriyeh, his family sought refuge in the northwest and survived a 2023 earthquake that hit Syria and neighbouring Türkiye.

Despite the damage to his home, Kafozi said: "I don't regret coming back."

Outside, children played in the dusty street, while a truck delivered gas bottles and people passed on bicycles.

Next door, Kafozi's nephew Ahmed, 40, has also returned with his wife and four children, but they are staying with relatives because of the damage to their home.

From the shell of a bedroom, the day worker looked out at a bleak landscape of buildings crumpled and torn by bombing.

"Our hope is that there will be reconstruction in the country," he said.

"I don't think an individual effort can bear this, it's too big, the damage in the country is great."

Syria's 13-year-war has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions more and ravaged the country's infrastructure and industry.

Local official Baibars Zein, 46, said bus transport had been arranged for people displaced from Hammuriyeh.

"We've taken around 106 families -- the total number of families that want to come back is around 2,000," he said near a mosque with a damaged minaret.

- 'Oppression is gone' -

Among those who returned was Zein's brother Saria, who left his wife and five children in northwest Syria to try to make their flat inhabitable before they return.

"This damage is from the battle that happened and regime bombardment -- they bombed us with barrels and missiles," said Saria, 47, pointing to cracked walls.

Rights groups documented the extensive use during the war by Assad's army of so-called barrel bombs, an improvised explosive dropped from planes.

To Saria, the devastation was a grim reminder of a 2015 strike that killed his seven-year-old daughter.

His wife narrowly missed being hit by shrapnel that took a chunk out of the wall, he said.

His children "are really excited, they call me and say 'Dad, we want to come back,'" he said.

"We are very very optimistic -- the oppression is gone," he said. "That's the most important thing."