The street to Damascus was lined with discarded military uniforms. In a panic, Syrian military troopers stripped down within the streets within the early hours of Sunday morning, realising their chief, Bashar al-Assad, had deserted them after 54 years of his household’s rule over Syria.
Syrian military tanks, which had been alleged to cease the lightning insurgent offensive which began simply 11 days earlier, stood empty in entrance of checkpoints with posters of the late chief Hafez al-Assad, his face half torn. Out of behavior, a driver stopped and rolled down the window, however there was nobody on the checkpoint.
“No extra checkpoints, no extra bribes,” Mohammed remarked, smiling as he sped in direction of the Syrian capital metropolis.
Damascus was nonetheless in a state of disbelief, smoke from battles the night time earlier than hung over town like a fog. Home windows shook from the occasional explosion, the goal and the warring social gathering unknown. Simply hours earlier than, it was introduced that Assad had fled the capital and that his regime had fallen.
The top of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Mohammed al-Jolani – probably the most distinguished of the insurgent leaders in Syria – introduced that the previous Syrian prime minister Mohammed Gaza al-Jalali would lead a transitional authorities within the coming months.
Residents of Syria had been dazed by the day’s occasions. “I really feel as if I’m in a dream, I haven’t slept and I can’t take up what’s occurred,” stated Fatimeh, a Syrian initially from Idlib, as she approached Damascus. “I’m from Idlib,” she stated as soon as extra. For years she wouldn’t dare say the place she was from when she was in Damascus, for worry that any affiliation with the province held by Islamist rebels would provoke retaliation.
Al-Jolani, who this week dropped his nom de guerre in favour of his beginning title – Ahmed al-Shaara – was additionally chasing after insurgent forces. It was fighters from the southern province of Deraa, not HTS, who reached the gates of Damascus. HTS fighters had been preoccupied with securing Homs, Assad’s final lifeline to his coastal strongholds of Tartus and Latakia.
The insurgent chief arrived on the landmark Umayyad mosque within the outdated metropolis of Damascus in his first public look on Sunday after the autumn of the Assad authorities. Seeing the insurgent chief within the mosque, positioned within the former heartland of the federal government, would have been unthinkable only a few days earlier. To Syrians, the message was clear: Assad was gone, and rebels had been in management.
With the president ousted, the dominion of silence had out of the blue come alive. A whole lot of individuals gathered in Umayyad Sq., the place the bottom was plagued by bullet casings – not from preventing, however from celebratory taking pictures. Fighters handed households AK-47s, which they fired into the air with glee, the tracer rounds’ pink glow fading within the distance.
Jolani had forbidden the firing of weapons into the air, for worry a stray bullet may damage somebody – however his instruction was shortly forgotten amid the jubilation. “The tears had been falling by themselves, my father, my brothers, so many individuals had been killed,” a girl stated within the sq., declining to present her title. Her daughter chimed in: “Now we all know our father didn’t die for nothing.”
Amid the celebration, a girl rolled down her window to ask a passerby, was anybody from Sednaya right here? The jail, about 20km from the capital metropolis, was maybe probably the most infamous of all the Syrian authorities’s detention centres. Rebels had opened its doorways on Sunday morning and 1000’s of prisoners left abruptly, every heading in a special course.
Driving by way of Damascus, Mohammad Abu al-Zeid, a commander from the insurgent group Operations Room to Liberate Damascus, together with two different fighters from southern Syria, identified the embassies that lined the swanky Mezzah district in Damascus, most of them now empty however undamaged.
“We’re not touching any of the general public establishments – these are for the brand new state to return,” Abu al-Zaid stated.
Abu al-Zeid had began his day by storming the headquarters of Syrian state tv. He led a squadron of fighters who commandeered the printed – studying from a bit of paper as he declared the tip of the Assad regime.
“My children noticed me on TV and began crying, ‘what’s Baba doing there,’” the insurgent commander stated, laughing.
Now, he was occupied with navigating town he had simply helped seize. He stored getting misplaced, making U-turns and squinting at Google maps. It was the primary time he had been within the capital metropolis in years.
Not even the rebels appeared to anticipate having taken Damascus so shortly – they travelled across the capital metropolis seemingly in a daze. Their weapons, which that they had been firing simply hours earlier than, now sat within the boot of the automotive untouched.
“We didn’t wish to must combat for 13 years, we shouldn’t have needed to. We wished change, to not must convey down a regime,” stated Wassim al-Khatib, one of many fighters underneath Zaid’s command, as he appeared over the strains of damaged army tools which littered the streets of Damascus.
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