THE FALL OF ASSAD
Words and Photography
by Collin Mayfield
On the morning of 9 December 2024, Umayyad Square in Damascus swelled with thousands of Syrians celebrating the fall of the old regime. Adults and children climbed atop one regime tank that sat abandoned by the roundabout. Civilians greatly outnumbered militants. Celebratory gunfire was near constant — bursts from Kalashnikovs, pistols and the occasional heavier weapon rang across the city.
A group of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militiamen, fresh from toppling Syria’s half-century dictatorship, fired a belt-fed machine gun from the back of their technical into the sky. A ‘technical’ is a light truck with a mounted gun — usually a belt-fed machine gun but
sometimes a small autocannon or artillery piece. Syria’s longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia in his private jet the evening before. The Assad family rule, which started in 1970, was finished. In Umayyad square, revelers tore down a fiberglass statue of Hafez al-Assad, the father and predecessor of the deposed Bashar. Hafez had a noose around his neck and was
dragged behind a truck through Umayyad’s roundabout.
The Sunni Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led the offensive against the Ba’athist regime and captured the capital, Damascus. Many Syrians welcomed the end of the Assad family rule. However, some privately expressed reservations, even fear, about their new Salafist rulers. HTS was formed from a merger of several Salafi-jihadist groups, most notably Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria.
By late 2024, it appeared Bashar al-Assad had largely secured control in the civil war, which began in 2011. Syria was readmitted to the Arab League in May 2023, and various rebel factions remained far from Damascus in an uneasy détente with
the regime. This gave the Syrian Army a misplaced confidence. In late November, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham launched a renewed offensive from its stronghold in Idlib. Regime troops were unfit or unwilling to stop the HTS advance, and other opposition groups quickly joined in. Assad’s ally Hezbollah was too weak from its recent war with Israel to offer any help, and Russian airstrikes made no difference.
First Aleppo fell, then Homs and Hama. Along the way, HTS freed political prisoners and opposition fighters held in Ba’athist prisons. Syria’s other opposition groups realised that now was the time to strike the regime. Assad’s forces were then under attack from multiple armed groups and multiple directions.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which contain the famous YPG and YPJ, seized Ba’athist enclaves in Qamishli before capturing Deir ez-Zor and other cities. The US-backed Syrian Free Army (SFA) launched an offensive from the al-Tanf “deconfliction zone” and captured the ancient city Palmyra. Meanwhile, Southern Operations Room (SOR) took Daraa and Suwayda in southern Syria. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu later claimed that the Israeli Air Force diverted Iranian planes that were allegedly carrying troops to aid Assad.
Opposition forces had encircled Damascus by 7 December, sparking anti-Assad protests in the city. Assad fled the capital on an overnight flight to Russia’s Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia, Syria, before flying to Moscow the next morning. The capital fell with little resistance. Despite more than a decade of civil war, Assad’s grip on Syria evaporated after just 11 days of the HTS offensive.
Already in Lebanon, two colleagues and I arrived in Damascus that first night. Lebanese border guards provided exit visas. Syrian customs buildings and checkpoints were empty and abandoned; Assad’s border guards hastily fled their posts. The road to Damascus was dotted with more deserted checkpoints, and burnt-out or abandoned military vehicles.
We had no plan, no translators, no fixers — just a desire to witness the ruins of the old regime and the turbulent political transition. That, and a car to get us there. I drove.
Our lack of planning led us to the only hotel we knew about, the Golden Mazzeh.
The luxury hotel hadn’t yet filled with journalists, and after checking in we went to the hotel bar for a drink. Several beers later, hotel staff started moving tables together to form one long table. The manager came over, informing us that we needed to leave the bar because the hotel was hosting a private event. I found it odd that an event remained scheduled even though the government had just collapsed. I didn’t pay it much mind.
A colleague and I stepped outside through the hotel’s main entrance for a cigarette, then another, and another. Eventually, the purpose of the ‘private event’ became clear as HTS commanders started leaving the hotel. HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, previously known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, exited the hotel. He looked at us before calmly stepping into a black SUV. I hastily stubbed out my cigarette and went inside to the hotel concierge.
“Was that who I think it was?” I asked.
“Yeah, that was Julani,” the concierge said.
The term ‘reformed jihadist’ was often used to describe both Sharaa and HTS over those initial few months. Sharaa now acts as Syria’s unelected ‘transitional president’, but he holds an impressive jihadist résumé. He joined al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003, then joined the Islamic State in 2006, fell out with ISIS, then realigned with al- Qaeda.
Sharaa was authorised by al-Qaeda to form Jabhat al-Nusra, or al-Nusra Front, in 2011. Al-Nusra merged with other Salafi-jihadist groups to form Hay’at Tahrir al- Sham in 2017. Several countries designated HTS a terrorist organisation because of its al-Qaeda links, though Sharaa appeared on PBS Frontline to challenge this designation and distance himself from his past.
Since he became Syria’s de facto ruler, most of those terrorist designations have been revoked. Last January, Sharaa formally dissolved HTS — at least on paper — and its former fighters now make up the bulk of the new Syrian Army.
Broadly speaking, popular opinion mostly falls along sectarian lines. Of the Sunnis I’ve spoken with, most support Sharaa and the new government. Meanwhile, religious minorities like Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Christians mostly fear what they view as a new theocratic regime.
A Catholic man I met in the Old City of Damascus named Yusef put it bluntly: “The new regime is ISIS.” However, the Islamic State has repeatedly condemned Sharaa (and his government) as apostates.
Assad’s crimes were laid bare after his ouster. The security forces ruled through fear, arresting and disappearing tens of thousands of Syrians. Some of those detained had committed “crimes” as petty as having anti-regime memes on their phones. Under Assad, the victims’ families remained silent, but they searched openly for their loved ones after the regime fell and its prisons were emptied. Thousands of missing persons posters hung across Damascus and other major cities.
The regime’s most infamous prison, Sednaya, was a torture and death camp. Nicknamed the “human slaughterhouse”, it was opened under Hafez in 1986 and operated until Bashar’s fall. I visited the prison two days after its liberation.
Sednaya held tens of thousands of prisoners, men and women alike. Inmates included Assad’s political opponents, anti-government fighters and regular citizens. Torture was widespread, as was rape.
In one guard barracks near the women’s wing, a colleague and I found abortion pills — a clear indicator that female inmates were being raped by prison guards. Survivors testify to being raped by guards, and male inmates were forced to rape one another for the guards’ amusement.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), more than 136,000 people were imprisoned in Sednaya between March 2011 and December 2024. Nearly 3,700 were children.
Nooses lay scattered across the prison floors. Hanging was the regime’s preferred method of execution, though other means were also used. Torture, beatings, disease
and neglect killed many more inmates. In one prison chamber, I saw the infamous ‘pancake machine’ — a hydraulic press allegedly used to crush inmates as a means of execution or body disposal.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated that up to 30,000 prisoners may have been killed in Sednaya — either directly by prison guards or from the prison’s brutal conditions. Hanging was a common means of execution. Almost certainly an underestimate, Sednaya’s true death toll may never be known.
Thousands of civilians flocked to the newly opened prison, combing through its corridors in search of those previously arrested or disappeared by the old regime. Rumours spread of hidden chambers beneath Sednaya. Impromptu search parties used shovels and pickaxes to tear up the prison floors and the earth outside its walls. Desperately clinging to hope, many believed that if underground cells were found, they could save potential survivors still trapped.
No hidden chambers were ever uncovered, and a search by the White Helmets found nothing. Many inmates were never found; they likely reside in mass graves near the prison. Other bodies were likely cremated.
Corpses recovered from Sednaya were moved to hospital morgues for better preservation and potential identification. Bodies were stored in the Damascus public hospital’s morgue. Some victims were recently deceased, while others had been decomposing for weeks or months. Sednaya’s survivors reported that the deceased were left to rot in overcrowded cells for days or weeks before being removed.
Numerous bodies in that hospital morgue bore signs of torture. One man appeared to have had sections of his skin flayed off. Many corpses were missing their eyes. Another man was castrated. Often, the remains were decomposed or mutilated beyond recognition.
Civilians came to the morgue hoping to recognise their missing loved ones. Among them was elderly Amina Nassar, who searched for the body of her son Mohammad. He was arrested about a decade earlier. Amina showed his picture and documents to anyone who would listen. She was allowed to visit Mohammad once while he was in prison, but the regime forbade her from returning. Amina hoped to find her son after Assad’s fall, but has been unable to find him. I doubt she ever will.
Most people who lost family have gained little closure. The corpses pulled from Assad’s prisons were wholly unrecognisable, and the majority of those executed by the regime were dumped into mass graves. When I returned to Syria in August 2025, the hundreds of missing persons posters that glittered across Damascus were gone, mostly weathered away and not replaced. Most people have given up on finding their missing family members..
Those who survived imprisonment under Assad are irrevocably scarred. Outside Damascus, at the Ibn Sina Psychiatric Hospital, we met two former Sednaya inmates who were receiving psychiatric care — a woman named Fatima and a man named Mohammad. Their surnames are withheld, as neither patient was capable of giving consent.
Fatima behaved in a playful, childlike manner. She was seemingly happy to meet reporters and new friends. Mohammad was disoriented and skittish, eyes wide and fearful. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. Mohammad had welts on his wrists from being handcuffed and suspended for extended periods of time, along with various cuts and abrasions on his arms. He was visibly distressed when hospital staff pulled up his sleeves to display his wounds. Some appeared to be cigarette burns.
After taking power, Sharaa’s government moved to consolidate control across Syria.
The Syrian Free Army (SFA) integrated into the state apparatus last May. Patrols near the Lebanese border have targeted Hezbollah and its smuggling routes. Syria has avoided confronting Israel over occupied territory since December 2024 (let alone the Golan Heights seized in 1967). Meanwhile, Druze factions in the Southern Operations Room formed a “National Guard” and maintain de facto autonomy with Israeli backing. Sharaa appears keen to avoid direct conflict with Israel. In Beirut, I heard Lebanese refer to him as “Jewlani”, a play on Julani.
Attention instead shifted north-east to the oil-rich Kurdish region widely known as Rojava. Self-governing since 2012 as the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), the region relied on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US’s main anti-ISIS partner, for security. After Assad’s fall, however, Washington backed reintegration of the region into the Syrian state, effectively abandoning the Kurds. As US envoy Tom Barrack put it, the SDF’s original anti-ISIS role had “largely expired.”
Turkey, a NATO member, has long targeted Rojava, arguing the SDF is indistinguishable from the PKK. While overlap exists, they remain separate groups, though ideologically linked through Abdullah Öcalan. A proposed merger between the Syrian government and SDF collapsed when Damascus demanded full integration and dissolution of Kurdish command structures.
Damascus has offered limited concessions such as citizenship recognition, Kurdish language status and vague political inclusion, but most Kurds see them as insufficient compensation for lost autonomy. Fighting resumed in early 2026, with Syrian forces capturing much of Rojava amid reports of abuses against Kurdish fighters.
The advance destabilised detention sites holding ISIS prisoners. Hundreds escaped from facilities including al-Aktan prison in Raqqa, while al-Hol camp, once holding thousands of ISIS families, largely emptied. Damascus and Kurdish forces blame each other. ISIS activity has since resurged. During my 2023 visit to al-Hol, ISIS-aligned children threw stones at me, shouting “kafir” and “kalb.”
Fearing further escapes, the US transferred more than 5,700 ISIS detainees from Kurdish prisons in Syria to Iraq at Baghdad’s request. Those accused of crimes there will face Iraqi courts.
A US-brokered ceasefire in January outlined SDF integration into the Syrian military, widely viewed by Kurds as a betrayal. The deal also transferred control of Rojava’s oil fields, once the backbone of Kurdish finances, to Damascus. Most of the region now lies under government control, with only two Kurdish enclaves remaining, including besieged Kobanê.
Some Kurdish officials remain cautiously optimistic. Hebûn, a YPG internationalist I met in Qamişlo, told me narratives that “Rojava is over” do not match realities on the ground, even as Kurds face what he described as a choice between Turkish military pressure and uneasy accommodation with Damascus. Even if integration holds, Kurdish autonomy will likely shrink. Security forces such as the Asayish may persist locally, but an independent SDF and its women’s wing, the YPJ, are unlikely to survive in their current form.
Syria’s future looks less like renewal than rearrangement. Damascus’s new rulers did not rise by promising democracy, whatever they now claim. Western governments will adapt, regional powers will recalibrate and attention will drift elsewhere. For Syria’s minorities, Shiites, Alawites, Druze, Christians and Kurds, the calculation remains stark: survive the new order or risk being crushed beneath it.
