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Timing is everything in life, love, and war. The Islamist rebels who have been fighting the regime of Bashar Assad since 2012 recognized their moment had arrived when Israel pulverized one of Assad’s major military backers, Hezbollah.
Soon after Israel had decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the largest and best organized of the Islamist militias in Syria, went on the offensive. With Hezbollah fatally weakened and Syria’s other military ally, Russia, occupied with the war in Ukraine, HTS took advantage of the sorry state of the Syrian regular army and began to roll.
They took Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, after the Syrian army reportedly fled after hardly firing a shot. There were also reports of Syrian troops throwing down their weapons and peeling off their uniforms before fleeing their posts.
No one wanted to fight for the Assad family to maintain control of Syria. Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, took over Syria in 1971 and ruled with an iron fist. Bashar was able to put down the initial uprising against his rule during the «Arab Spring» in 2011 but needed the help of Iran and their proxy Hezbollah as well as the Russian air force to maintain control of most of the country.
The Russian foreign ministry announced Assad’s exit in a brief statement. Syria’s foreign ministry issued a statement that seemed to accept the change in leadership without missing a beat.
