Der Tag nach Assad: Wie der atemberaubende Sturz des syrischen Diktators das Kräfteverhältnis im Nahen Osten durcheinander bringen wird

[SS from essay by Natasha Hall, Senior Fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Joost Hiltermann, Middle East and North Africa Program Director at the International Crisis Group.]

For more than half a century, the Assad dynasty appeared to have an impregnable hold over Syria. Relying on a formidable security apparatus, brutal use of force, and powerful allies like Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, it had withstood multiple uprisings, and even a terrible civil war in which hundreds of thousands were killed and for a time the regime lost control of much of the country. In recent years, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose government had been sanctioned and ostracized from regional and international diplomacy since 2011, even regained some of his standing, as the Arab League reinstated Syria and there was talk of sanctions relief.

Yet in the end, the regime was a house of cards. To the surprise of the world, it was felled by the Islamist rebels of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham—the Syrian Liberation Group, or HTS—in a matter of days, without putting up much of a fight. On Sunday, as HTS quickly took control of Damascus, Russia announced that [Assad](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/tags/bashar-al-assad) had taken refuge in Moscow; his former prime minister was escorted to the Four Seasons in the Syrian capital to formally hand over power. The entire affair had taken less than two weeks, with little bloodshed, in contrast to the vast numbers who had lost their lives during the regime’s final years in power.