December 8, 2024 · Damascus Theater
December 8, 2024
In the early hours of December 8, 2024, opposition columns — the Southern Operations Room advancing from Deraa, HTS from the north — entered Damascus essentially unopposed. Bashar al-Assad had already fled by aircraft to Moscow, where Russia granted him asylum; his own army and government learned of his departure from the news. Crowds pulled down statues of Hafez al-Assad, and the gates of Saydnaya prison were opened, releasing thousands of detainees and exposing the machinery of a carceral state that had disappeared tens of thousands of Syrians. Fifty-four years of Assad family rule, and thirteen years of civil war fought to preserve it, ended in eleven days.
Commanders