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Episode: Inside The Fall Of Syria’s Brutal Dictator

Author: The New York Times
Duration: 00:25:09

Episode Shownotes

Syria has been controlled by one family for more than half a century who ruled by repression, devastation and violence.But about two weeks ago, the regime began to falter, and then over the course of one night, it collapsed.Carlotta Gall, a senior correspondent for The New York Times, discusses the

fall of Bashar al-Assad and what comes next.Guest: Carlotta Gall, a senior correspondent for The New York Times, focusing on the human aspect of wars and civil strife.Background reading: Live updates: The rebels who toppled Assad face stark challenges in Syria.With Assad gone, a brutal dictatorship ends. But the new risks are huge.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Summary

In this episode of 'The Daily,' Carlotta Gall examines the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, which had ruled through repression for over 50 years. The fall occurred amid weakened international support as Russia and Iran became distracted by other conflicts. The offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) accelerated the regime's downfall, resulting in mixed emotions of hope and fear among Syrians—joy from the liberation and anxiety about future violence and power struggles. HTS's transformation raises questions about governance and the uncertain pathway ahead for Syria post-Assad.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Inside The Fall Of Syria’s Brutal Dictator) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:03 Speaker_06
My name is Roud Tendeshi. I'm 26 years old. I'm currently in Homs, Syria. There are so many people on the streets, probably all of Syria. I'm not even exaggerating. Everyone's celebrating, they're singing, they're taking pictures, they're taking videos.

00:00:24 Speaker_06
What you're hearing right now are not bullets, actually. They're just more like fireworks. People are just shocked that we actually got rid of the brutal government that we were under. There is just this peaceful feeling that you get that it's OK.

00:00:48 Speaker_06
This is over. It's over. It's the end of a 50-year-old oppression that tortured us, that took away loved ones from us. We're all afraid that if we sleep, this might be a dream. This is a dream.

00:01:14 Speaker_05
From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernissi, and this is The Daily. Syria has been controlled by one family for more than half a century. It ruled by repression, devastation, and violence. But about two weeks ago, the regime began to falter.

00:01:33 Speaker_05
And then, over the course of one stunning night, it collapsed. Today, my colleague Carlotta Gall on the fall of Bashar al-Assad. And what comes next? It's Monday, December 9th.

00:01:58 Speaker_05
So, Carlotta, there's been an absolutely incredible turn of events in Syria. We're talking on Sunday morning. Walk us through what happened.

00:02:10 Speaker_02
It has been the most incredible turn of events. In just 12 days, we've turned from what we thought was really a frozen conflict going nowhere to an uprising in this 13-year civil war.

00:02:30 Speaker_00
Armed groups in Syria have reportedly attacked government forces in the western countryside of Aleppo province.

00:02:38 Speaker_02
It started with a small rebel group come up from the northwest of the country. And very rapidly, in just a matter of days, they took three cities.

00:02:46 Speaker_04
The Syrian army concedes it has lost control of large parts of Aleppo.

00:02:51 Speaker_02
Aleppo in the north, the second biggest city in the country. And then they started to move south.

00:02:56 Speaker_01
Islamist forces are on their fourth day of a lightning offensive through several towns and villages towards Syria's fourth largest city, Hama.

00:03:04 Speaker_02
And then they kept going.

00:03:05 Speaker_03
opposition fighters now on their way going south towards Homs, that then leads to the capital, Damascus.

00:03:12 Speaker_02
This is when suddenly it seemed that they were ambitious enough to actually topple the government. And so by Friday, we knew that the capital was in danger. And Saturday you saw reports of gunfire in the city.

00:03:27 Speaker_03
Syrian rebels are telling media outlets they've entered the capital city of Damascus.

00:03:32 Speaker_02
Then you saw these reports of the army leaving, abandoning the airport, some of them abandoning their uniforms on the roads. And then overnight, Saturday night, suddenly, in a rush,

00:03:49 Speaker_01
With the help of God, the city of Damascus was liberated and the regime of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad was toppled.

00:03:56 Speaker_02
The rebels took the state TV and they announced that they'd taken control of the whole of the capital and that President Bashar al-Assad had got on a plane and left the country. Long live free Syria.

00:04:11 Speaker_02
So it's really an incredibly swift movement of events from a total dictatorship to he's gone.

00:04:25 Speaker_05
I mean, it was just unbelievable, really, like that this country suddenly was leaderless.

00:04:33 Speaker_02
Yes. And Syria has had the same leaders, the same family of leaders for 50 years, a very authoritarian family. Bashar al-Assad has been in power now, but his father was in power before him.

00:04:46 Speaker_02
And so they've ruled this country with an iron grip since the 1970s. So it's really a big deal. It is a big deal.

00:04:54 Speaker_05
And I want to unpack it with you. So how did this forever regime in Syria suddenly, shockingly just disappear overnight. Where should we start to explain that?

00:05:06 Speaker_02
Well, this is the culmination of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, when different countries started to rise up against the dictatorships. We saw it in Tunisia, and we saw it in Egypt, and we saw it in Libya.

00:05:22 Speaker_02
And Syria joined that run of protest, people daring to come out onto the streets, asking for freedom, for democracy, for human rights, dignity.

00:05:35 Speaker_02
Syria was the same as the others, but what happened in Syria was the government of Syria under Assad really cracked down, used violence against the protesters, but then did mass arrests, interrogations, torture, disappearances, a lot of executions.

00:05:54 Speaker_02
And then some of the protesters took up weapons and it became an armed insurgency. And a civil war, essentially, the country was fighting each other. And then this sparked the introduction of really radical extremist jihadist groups.

00:06:10 Speaker_02
The most well-known and largest was Islamic State. It got very, very brutal in Syria. It has a brutal past, but this was something on a different scale. And then Assad doubled down.

00:06:24 Speaker_02
He gassed civilians in some of the war to take control back of some of the cities.

00:06:30 Speaker_02
And then, you know, millions were displaced, fleeing the country, fleeing a lot into Turkey and Lebanon and neighboring countries, and, you know, heading for Europe or anywhere they could. It was really a most ghastly civil war.

00:06:45 Speaker_02
And by 2014, hundreds of thousands had been killed and wounded. At this point, who is winning that war? Well, that's the interesting thing. Assad, for all his brutal repression, is actually barely hanging on.

00:06:59 Speaker_02
And that's when we started to see other countries that have stakes in Syria start to get involved. Right.

00:07:06 Speaker_05
OK, so that is also when Syria starts to get really complicated. So lay that out for me, Carlotta. What starts to happen?

00:07:14 Speaker_02
Yes. So ISIS was a huge concern, especially for the West. They were already in Iraq and they were expanding their territory and they were recruiting massively.

00:07:23 Speaker_02
So that's when, in 2014, American troops entered the fray, particularly to fight ISIS and to repress this very, very virulent jihadist group that was obviously interested in attacking Western countries. And so what happened next?

00:07:40 Speaker_02
Who's the next big player that comes on the scene? So there were actually two big players that came in the scene and they came in on the side of Assad. That was Russia and Iran.

00:07:51 Speaker_02
And Russia came in in a very big way with, you know, serious firepower, planes, jets, fighter bombers, weaponry, and a lot of advice and tactics. And they brought ships into the ports and so on. And then Iran had the foot soldiers on the ground.

00:08:07 Speaker_02
There were a lot of them who came in from Iran. But they also had Hezbollah, very experienced, very accomplished fighters who came in from Lebanon. And the Iranians sent in advisors and military advisors who ran the campaign.

00:08:20 Speaker_02
So they really did a great amount of actually retaking territory for the Assad regime.

00:08:28 Speaker_05
And why do Iran and Russia enter the war like that?

00:08:34 Speaker_02
So they, for both Iran and Russia, it was very important to see the Assad regime survive.

00:08:41 Speaker_02
Russia had long had relations with Syria, going back, you know, right through the communist times, and so they wanted to be able to keep their access to the Mediterranean, their trade, their diplomatic influence, and Iran had an equally important

00:08:57 Speaker_02
reason to be involved.

00:08:58 Speaker_02
They couched it in religious terms, but it was very clearly a geopolitical desire to have good relations with Syria and influence, but also to have a very important land bridge through Syria to their allies, Hezbollah, the militia in Lebanon.

00:09:16 Speaker_02
So for those reasons, they also wanted to see Assad survive.

00:09:20 Speaker_05
So bottom line, Syria becomes this kind of cauldron of geopolitical rivalries.

00:09:27 Speaker_02
Absolutely. And those two powers, Iran and Russia, are propping up Assad. He's in power, but he's got all these rebel groups around the country pushed to the edges. And it's since 2016, it's been like locked.

00:09:43 Speaker_05
So how do we get from that deadlocked civil war to the rapid toppling of Assad that everybody just watched unfold?

00:09:53 Speaker_02
So the biggest change, of course, was the two main backers of Assad, Russia and Iran, became massively distracted by other events and weakened. It was the wars in other countries. that caused this.

00:10:10 Speaker_02
Russia is engaged in a really tough war in Ukraine, and they've had to move troops out of Syria, deploy them in Ukraine. They've expended all their efforts and men and money and weapons on that war.

00:10:26 Speaker_02
And then the second war is obviously Israel's fight first in Gaza, but then in Lebanon against Hezbollah and the attacks that Israel has meted out on Iran in Syria.

00:10:38 Speaker_02
They've done a large number of airstrikes on Iranian elements, but also particularly Hezbollah, who had been the foot soldiers for Iran to help Assad's Syrian army.

00:10:51 Speaker_02
They were really hit hard in the recent months, and that was very debilitating for the Iranian effort to shore up Assad. And so the moment those things were happening, the Syrian rebels were obviously watching and noticing.

00:11:11 Speaker_02
They could see that the resistance was weak, that Russia and Iran were distracted and struggling, in fact, in both their wars. And that's when they pounced.

00:11:28 Speaker_05
We'll be right back.

00:11:46 Speaker_02
So who are these rebel forces who just toppled Assad? Tell me about them.

00:11:49 Speaker_02
So there are a hodgepodge of lots of different groups, but the main mover and the main group behind this offensive is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, it's called, HTS for short in the West.

00:12:04 Speaker_02
Its name means the Organization for the Liberation of Syria or the Levant. It's a very Islamic very strict, actually, organization, comes from the jihadi tradition.

00:12:17 Speaker_02
And it's designated by many countries in the West and the United States as a terror group. And who leads it? Who's in charge? It's led by a Saudi-born Syrian. He's in his 40s. He's called Abu Muhammad al-Jolani.

00:12:32 Speaker_02
That's his nom de guerre, his chosen name for the war. He lived in Saudi, then he grew up in his teens in Syria. He was a student when he then left to join the fight against America in Iraq. And he joined Al-Qaeda. And then he got arrested by the U.S.

00:12:55 Speaker_02
forces in Iraq, and he spent several years in Bukha jail, which is a famous prison camp where a lot of

00:13:03 Speaker_02
The al-Qaeda and Islamist militias were detained and kept and of course it became a great meeting place for them all because they were all in there together for many years. So that is his history.

00:13:17 Speaker_05
That's really interesting because it probably means he had some pretty serious jihadist credentials. But he clearly got out of prison. What did he do next?

00:13:27 Speaker_02
What we know is that he eventually returned to Syria, and he set up an al-Qaeda-affiliated group at the beginning of the civil war.

00:13:37 Speaker_02
And then he was among the groups that were gradually pushed back as the Russians and the Iranians helped the Assad government take control.

00:13:45 Speaker_02
The rebels were pushed back into the northwestern corner of Syria in Idlib province, and that's where he ended up in 2016. And then something really interesting happened. They're down and out. They're under bombardment.

00:14:00 Speaker_02
They've really got their backs to the wall. And he, as a leader of his group, he starts reforming. He changes the name of his group. And then gradually, he breaks from al-Qaeda. And he turns himself into a Syrian nationalist leader.

00:14:18 Speaker_02
And it's been a steady thing since then, over the last eight years. And we're all watching to see, is it a big PR push or is it really serious?

00:14:39 Speaker_05
Yeah, that's what I want to know. I mean, can one be former al-Qaeda? Like, how does that even work?

00:14:46 Speaker_02
Well, I think it is interesting in Syria, I think, you know, I followed jihadi groups all over the world and a lot of them, they talk tough talk for several reasons to look strong and to look aggressive, but also because they think it ticks some boxes where they can get support and financing and so on.

00:15:04 Speaker_02
And I think the Syrian groups were just the same. I've never met Jolani, but I've asked many people who have met him, and some will say he's a diehard. Others say he's more pragmatic.

00:15:17 Speaker_02
And I actually went four years ago on an embed with HTS to their stronghold in Idlib. Wait, Claudia, you went on an embed with HTS? I did, several times, in fact, because there were some things they decided they needed to tell the Western world.

00:15:33 Speaker_02
So they invited journalists like me, I was based in Istanbul, to come and see. And the trip includes always a long lunch and a sort of long political discussion.

00:15:44 Speaker_02
I mean, it's not quite a long diatribe, but where they explain what they're about and what they believe in. So what was it like there, Carlotta? They are super Islamic and you could feel they are authoritarian. They controlled everything.

00:15:59 Speaker_02
They controlled where we went. We could talk to whoever we want, but they were very cautious to be in charge. And of course, between the lines, we could understand that these guys rule it, but they are of their society.

00:16:16 Speaker_02
There's not much freedom of speech, certainly in the media. But there were other things that I think people felt they were running quite a good ship.

00:16:27 Speaker_05
And how were they for women? How is life for women? They're often an indicator with Islamic regimes.

00:16:33 Speaker_02
To tell you the truth, when you go to Idlib, most people are destitute. So quite frankly, they won't talk to you about Islamist rules. They'll talk to you about they haven't got enough food for their kids.

00:16:44 Speaker_02
But we did reporting on some of the women who felt very threatened by this group and felt they had to leave. There are people who were arrested. There were people who were beaten. There's possibly some people who were who were disappeared.

00:16:58 Speaker_02
So it's a pretty ruthless group who were set at first on gaining complete control. And now they're trying to reform themselves and appear softer. But their first years when they were establishing control, they were pretty ruthless.

00:17:16 Speaker_05
So it sounds like not quite Taliban-like, but some hard edges. Yes, I would say that. Exactly that. So in other words, very unclear what this group could mean for the future of Syria, or even really if it's going to be the future of Syria.

00:17:29 Speaker_02
Absolutely. It's very fluid. We know that Assad has left the country, and we've seen that Jolani has arrived in Damascus. He's made a statement to the nation. He's called on his troops to behave, not to pursue people, not to destroy things.

00:17:44 Speaker_02
But I think it's very clear that for him, this it's the liberation from the Assad regime that was the main aim, and he's achieved that. So now, what does he do next?

00:17:56 Speaker_02
There are a lot of different groups, they're sort of under an umbrella of his, but of course, you know, in these sort of events, you often see different groups turning on each other for power. So that's the 64

00:18:11 Speaker_02
million dollar question of what happens further. But he does seem to be someone who has the sternness and the charisma, possibly, to manage that. But we'll have to see. And he's really not been out there a lot all these years.

00:18:28 Speaker_02
He hasn't done a lot of interviews. So we don't even know how much the Syrians will like him and accept him. So everything's up in the air at the moment.

00:18:38 Speaker_05
So that's Jelani, but of course there's this geopolitical earthquake that this is causing, right? That is happening at the same time.

00:18:46 Speaker_02
Absolutely. And this is, you know, a very powerful, important country in the Middle East, a crucial place on the map if you look at it. All the countries around are going to be deeply concerned and want to influence.

00:18:58 Speaker_02
You've got Turkey in the north involved already. with troops inside Syria. You've got Iran, of course, hurting and pushed out, but already saying it wants a role in Syria in the future. And then you've got Israel actually taking action.

00:19:14 Speaker_02
Just this morning, we learned that they've moved in troops and taken control of a buffer zone on its border with Syria. And then Russia is also saying it still wants a role, although that remains to be seen if the jihadis would accept that.

00:19:29 Speaker_02
And then of course the United States, which has 900 troops still in Syria and has made some strikes just to remind opponents not to come and attack them.

00:19:39 Speaker_02
So it's a huge, as we mentioned before, a huge cauldron of geopolitical rivalries and that's going to be something to try and work out and decipher in the coming days and weeks. It's like all of the cards have just been thrown up into the air.

00:19:56 Speaker_02
I think you're right. Yeah. And that's also for the Arab world, this was so interesting and important because they were steadily moving towards acceptance of Assad staying in power. And now that's been completely turned upside down.

00:20:13 Speaker_05
Carlotta, I want to just pause for a moment and think about what just happened from the perspective of Syrians. I mean, as we said, this place has literally been under this regime for about half a century. That's just changed.

00:20:29 Speaker_05
That's an incredible moment for the Syrian people. It's like an entire country just suddenly gets to wake up from this long sleep or something.

00:20:40 Speaker_05
And I would guess that while that is potentially hopeful, it's also a really perilous moment because as you and I both know, when dictators collapse, violence and chaos can ensue.

00:20:55 Speaker_02
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, and for a lot of the Syrians I've been talking to in the last week and a half, it's the sense of liberation, the relief, the excitement.

00:21:06 Speaker_02
And the most compelling has been the release of people from prisons all over the country. There have been extraordinary scenes of people staggering out and some of them barely able to walk, but so happy.

00:21:20 Speaker_02
And some of them have been in prison for more than a decade. including children who've been imprisoned with their mothers. So that's a huge release for the entire country. And that's why they're all celebrating on the streets at the moment.

00:21:33 Speaker_02
But of course, the Syrians are saying, this is a great relief lifted, but we're also very fearful. I think for Syrians, you know, we've had 400,000 people die in this 13-year civil war. 14 million people left the country as refugees abroad.

00:22:00 Speaker_02
And the fear, of course, is everyone that it's going to go back to that or more or different ethnic groups, God forbid, start fighting each other, you know, whether it's for power in a city or in a whole region or over oil fields or wealth.

00:22:18 Speaker_02
So that's what the Syrians fear. They're telling me, we're celebrating today, but just for one day, then we're very worried. So we have to see what goes forward. We don't know what's going to come next. Carlotta, thank you. Thank you.

00:22:45 Speaker_05
On Sunday night, President Assad surfaced in Russia. Russian state media said that Assad and his family had been granted political asylum there. Meanwhile, the U.S.

00:22:57 Speaker_05
military carried out one of the largest series of airstrikes in Syria in months, saying that it would not allow ISIS to take advantage of the collapse of government there to regroup.

00:23:11 Speaker_06
We'll be right back.

00:23:25 Speaker_05
Here's what else you should know today. In his first sit-down broadcast network interview since winning re-election, President-elect Donald Trump outlined an aggressive plan for the early days of his second term.

00:23:38 Speaker_06
You promised to end birthright citizenship on day one. Is that still your plan? Yeah, absolutely.

00:23:43 Speaker_05
Speaking on Meet the Press on NBC, he said he would try to end automatic citizenship for children of immigrants.

00:23:51 Speaker_03
We'll maybe have to go back to the people, but we have to end it.

00:23:54 Speaker_05
And he said he would pardon supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He said that members of Congress who investigated his role in that attack on the Capitol, like Republican Liz Cheney, should be put in jail.

00:24:16 Speaker_05
He said he would not direct his new attorney general or FBI director to pursue the matter, but indicated that he expected them to do it on their own.

00:24:26 Speaker_05
Today's episode was produced by Claire Tanasketter, Carlos Prieto, and Rochelle Bonja, with help from Lindsay Garrison.

00:24:34 Speaker_05
It was edited by Patricia Willans, with help from Ben Calhoun, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

00:24:51 Speaker_05
Special thanks to Yara Bayoumi. That's it for the daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernissi. See you tomorrow.