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Assad’s Final Hours in Syria: Deception, Despair and Flight

A man walks on a poster of Bashar al-Assad, after Syrian opposition fighters announced that they have ousted Assad, in downtown Damascus, Syria December 10, 2024. (Reuters)
A man walks on a poster of Bashar al-Assad, after Syrian opposition fighters announced that they have ousted Assad, in downtown Damascus, Syria December 10, 2024. (Reuters)
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Assad’s Final Hours in Syria: Deception, Despair and Flight

A man walks on a poster of Bashar al-Assad, after Syrian opposition fighters announced that they have ousted Assad, in downtown Damascus, Syria December 10, 2024. (Reuters)
A man walks on a poster of Bashar al-Assad, after Syrian opposition fighters announced that they have ousted Assad, in downtown Damascus, Syria December 10, 2024. (Reuters)

Bashar al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his reign collapsed. Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were deceived or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events told Reuters.

Hours before he escaped for Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 army and security chiefs at the defense ministry on Saturday that Russian military support was on its way and urged ground forces to hold out, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity to speak about the briefing.

Civilian staff were none the wiser, too.

Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work that he was going home but instead headed to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle.

He also called his media adviser, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his home to write him a speech, the aide said. She arrived to find no one was there.

"Assad didn't even make a last stand. He didn't even rally his own troops," said Nadim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative regional think-tank. "He let his supporters face their own fate."

Reuters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum. Interviews with 14 people familiar with his final days and hours in power paint a picture of a leader casting around for outside help to extend his 24-year rule before leaning on deception and stealth to plot his exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.

Most of the sources, who include aides in the former president's inner circle, regional diplomats and security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked Reuters for their names to be withheld to freely discuss sensitive matters.

Assad didn't even inform his younger brother, Maher, commander of the Army's elite 4th Armored Division, about his exit plan, according to three aides. Maher flew a helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.

Assad's maternal cousins, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, were similarly left behind as Damascus fell to the opposition fighters, according to a Syrian aide and Lebanese security official. The pair tried to flee by car to Lebanon but were ambushed on the way by fighters who shot Ehab dead and wounded Eyad, they said. There was no official confirmation of the death and Reuters was unable to independently verify the incident.

Assad himself fled Damascus by plane on Sunday, Dec. 8, flying under the radar with the aircraft's transponder switched off, two regional diplomats said, escaping the clutches of the opposition storming the capital. The dramatic exit ended his 24 years of rule and his family's half century of unbroken power, and brought the 13-year civil war to an abrupt halt.

He flew to Russia's Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, and from there on to Moscow.

Assad's immediate family, wife Asma and their three children, were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former close aides and a senior regional official.

Videos of Assad's home, taken by the opposition and citizens who thronged the presidential complex following his flight and posted on social media, suggest he made a hasty exit, showing cooked food left on the stove and several personal belongings left behind, such as family photo albums.

RUSSIA AND IRAN: NO MILITARY RESCUE

There would be no military rescue from Russia, whose intervention in 2015 had helped turn the tide of the civil war in favor of Assad, or from his other staunch ally Iran.

This had been made clear to the Syrian leader in the days leading up to his exit, when he sought aid from various quarters in a desperate race to cling to power and secure his safety, according to the people interviewed by Reuters.

Assad visited Moscow on Nov. 28, a day after Syrian opposition forces attacked the northern province of Aleppo and lightning drive across the country, but his pleas for military intervention fell on deaf ears in the Kremlin which was unwilling to intervene, three regional diplomats said.

Hadi al-Bahra, the head of Syria's main opposition abroad, said that Assad didn't convey the reality of the situation to aides back home, citing a source within Assad's close circle and a regional official.

"He told his commanders and associates after his Moscow trip that military support was coming," Bahra added. "He was lying to them. The message he received from Moscow was negative."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Russia had spent a lot of effort in helping stabilize Syria in the past, but its priority now was the conflict in Ukraine.

Four days after that trip, on Dec. 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met with Assad in Damascus. By that time, the opposition from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group had taken control of Syria's second-largest city Aleppo and were sweeping southwards as government forces crumbled.

Assad was visibly distressed during the meeting, and conceded that his army was too weakened to mount an effective resistance, a senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters.

Assad never requested that Tehran deploy forces in Syria though, according to two senior Iranian officials who said he understood that Israel could use any such intervention as a reason to target Iranian forces in Syria or even Iran itself.

The Kremlin and Russian foreign ministry declined to comment for this article, while the Iranian foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.

ASSAD CONFRONTS OWN DOWNFALL

After exhausting his options, Assad finally accepted the inevitability of his downfall and resolved to leave the country, ending his family's dynastic rule which dates back to 1971.

Moscow, while unwilling to intervene militarily, was not prepared to abandon Assad, according to a Russian diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, attending the Doha forum in Qatar on Saturday and Sunday, spearheaded the diplomatic effort to secure the safety of Assad, two regional officials said.

One Western security source said that Lavrov did "whatever he could" to secure Assad's safe departure.

Moscow also coordinated with neighboring states to ensure that a Russian plane leaving Syrian airspace with Assad on board would not be intercepted or targeted, three of the sources said.

Assad's last prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, said he spoke to his then-president on the phone on Saturday night at 10.30 pm.

"In our last call, I told him how difficult the situation was and that there was huge displacement (of people) from Homs toward Latakia ... that there was panic and horror in the streets," he told Al Arabiya TV this week.

"He replied: 'Tomorrow, we will see'," Jalali added. "'Tomorrow, tomorrow', was the last thing he told me."

Jalali said he tried to call Assad again as dawn broke on Sunday, but there was no response.

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Lebanese Whose Homes Were Destroyed in the War Want to Rebuild. Many Face a Long Wait

FILE - A man pauses as he looks at destroyed buildings in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
FILE - A man pauses as he looks at destroyed buildings in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
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Lebanese Whose Homes Were Destroyed in the War Want to Rebuild. Many Face a Long Wait

FILE - A man pauses as he looks at destroyed buildings in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
FILE - A man pauses as he looks at destroyed buildings in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

Six weeks into a ceasefire that halted the war between Israel and Hezbollah, many displaced Lebanese whose homes were destroyed in the fighting want to rebuild — but reconstruction and compensation are slow in coming, The Associated Press reported.
Large swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as Beirut’s southern suburbs, lie in ruins, tens of thousands of houses reduced to rubble in Israeli airstrikes. The World Bank estimated in a report in November — before the ceasefire later that month — that losses to Lebanon's infrastructure amount to some $3.4 billion.
In the south, residents of dozens of villages along the Lebanon-Israel border can't go back because Israeli soldiers are still there. Under the US-negotiated ceasefire deal, Israeli forces are supposed to withdraw by Jan. 26 but there are doubts they will.
Other terms of the deal are also uncertain — after Hezbollah's withdrawal, the Lebanese army is to step in and dismantle the militants' combat positions in the south. Israeli officials have complained the Lebanese troops are not moving in fast enough — to which they say the Israeli troops need to get out first.
Reconstruction prospects — and who will foot the bill — remain unclear.
In 2006, after the monthlong Israel-Hezbollah war, Hezbollah financed much of the $2.8 billion reconstruction with ally Iran's support.
The Lebanese militant group has said it would do so again and has begun making some payments. But Hezbollah, which is also a powerful political party, has suffered significant losses in this latest war and for its part, Iran is now mired in a crippling economic crisis.
The cash-strapped and long paralyzed Lebanese government is in little position to help and international donors may be stretched by the post-war needs in the Gaza Strip and neighboring Syria.
Many Lebanese say they are waiting for Hezbollah's promised compensation. Others say they received some money from the group — much less than the cost of the damage to their homes.
Manal, a 53-year-old mother of four from the southern village of Marjayoun has been displaced with her family for over a year, since Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.
Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in southern Lebanon. In July, Manal's family heard that their home was destroyed. The family has now sought compensation from Hezbollah.
“We haven’t received any money yet,” said Manal, giving only her first name for fear of reprisals. “Maybe our turn hasn’t arrived."
On a recent day in southern Beirut, where airstrikes had hit just 100 meters (yards) away from his home, Mohammad watched as an excavator cleared debris, dust swirling in the air.
He said his father went to Hezbollah officials and got $2,500 — not enough to cover $4,000 worth of damage to their home.
“Dad took the money and left, thinking it was pointless to argue,” said Mohammad, who also gave only his first name for fear of repercussions. He said his uncle was offered only $194 for a similarly damaged home.
When the uncle complained, Mohammad said, Hezbollah asked him, “We sacrificed our blood, what did you do in the war?”
Others, however, say Hezbollah has compensated them fairly.
Abdallah Skaiki, whose home — also in southern Beirut — was completely destroyed, said he received $14,000 from Qard Al-Hasan, a Hezbollah-linked microfinance institution.
Hussein Khaireddine, director of Jihad Binaa, the construction arm of Hezbollah, said the group is doing as much as it can. Its teams have surveyed over 80% of damaged houses across Lebanon, he said.
“We have begun compensating families,” he said. “We have also started providing payments for a year’s rent and compensations for furniture.”
Khaireddin said their payments include $8,000 for furniture and $6,000 for a year’s rent for those living in Beirut. Those who are staying elsewhere get $4,000 in money for rent.
Blueprints for each house are being prepared, he said, declining to elaborate on reconstruction plans.
“We are not waiting for the government," he added. “But of course, we urge the state to act."
There is little the government can do.
The World Bank's report from mid-November said Lebanon's infrastructure and economic losses from the war amount to $8.5 billion. And that estimate doesn't take into account the last month of the war, Deputy Prime Minister Saadi Chami told The Associated Press.
“The government does not have the financial resources for reconstruction,” he said bluntly.
The World Bank said 99,209 housing units were damaged — and 18% of them were completely destroyed. In southern Beirut suburbs alone, satellite analysis by Lebanon’s National Center for Natural Hazards and Early Warning identified 353 buildings completely destroyed and over 6,000 homes damaged.
Lebanese officials have appealed to the international community for funding. The government is working with the World Bank to get an updated damage assessment and hopes to set up a multi-donor trust fund.
The World Bank is also exploring an “emergency project for Lebanon,” focused on targeted assistance for areas most in need, Chami said, though no concrete plan has yet emerged.
“If the World Bank gets involved, it will hopefully encourage the international community to donate money,” Chami said.
Ali Daamoush, a Hezbollah official, said earlier this month that the group has mobilized 145 reconstruction teams, which include 1,250 engineers, 300 data analysts and hundreds of auditors — many apparently volunteers.
The compensations paid so far have come from “the Iranian people,” Daamoush said, without specifying if the money was from Iran's government or private donors.
Jana, a 29-year-old architect, is volunteering with Hezbollah teams to survey the damage to her hometown of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon. Much of the city is destroyed, including an Ottoman-era market. Her father’s warehouse was hit by airstrikes, and all the medical supplies stored there were consumed by a fire.
Hezbollah officials "told us not to promise people or discuss reconstruction because there is no clear plan or funding for it yet,” she told the AP. She did not give her last name because she wasn't authorized to talk about Hezbollah's actions.