With music blaring from his car speakers, Abdallah, a resident of Damascus, drove along a palm-lined road to Bashar al-Assad’s palace in the Syrian capital on Sunday morning. He reached the entrance, turned off the music and walked into the heart of power of the dynasty that had ruled his country with an iron fist for more than 50 years.
Inside the marble halls, Syrians wandered in jeans and hoodies, looking at surreal scenes of ornate furniture smashed and piled in corners. “I still can’t believe it,” said Abdallah, who spent the night in fear amid heavy bombardment until the rebels announced shortly before dawn that they were in full control of the capital. prelude to the fall of the Assad regime.
“No one has suffered as much as the Syrian people,” he told the Financial Times in a telephone conversation, sharing videos of his trip. “The whole city rose up with joy – everyone is on the streets, shouting, shooting.”
During the 13 years of civil war, Damascus was Assad’s stronghold, from where the army and intelligence maintained brutal control over the country’s citizens. But in the early hours of Sunday morning, euphoria swept over the capital as residents awoke to the sudden fall of a dictator who survived more than a decade of war but was ousted in a stunning two-week rebel offensive.
The squares were filled with celebrations on Sunday morning, as many like Abdallah flocked to buildings that were once symbols of Assad‘s rule, tearing down portraits and stealing everything from luxury perfumes to board games.
Along with the unbridled joy, however, was chaos. Rebels and ordinary Syrians trampled over symbols of the Assad regime. And the takeover of power by rebel factions, led by the powerful group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is pushing the country into a new era of uncertainty amidst the unresolved questions of who will rule and how.
Many of those linked to the Assad regime could not be seen on Sunday. The Prime Minister was filmed being escorted from his office down the red velvet stairs by the rebels. He was apparently supposed to be taken to the Four Seasons Hotel, which was owned by a regime loyalist but was now reportedly being used by rebels as a symbol of the stunning coup d’état.
“The army has given up, television has given up, the palace, the security branch, government buildings,” said one Damascus resident. “Soldiers surrender their weapons. The situation is very tense, they opened all the prisons.”
Abdallah tried to enter the posh residence of the Assad family but was rebuffed by rebel guards who wanted to control the looting. Videos shared by Damascenes with the FT and on social media show ordinary people wandering around the luxury flat, in disbelief at the opulence their leaders lived in, giggling as they methodically pack away everything from designer handbags to ceramic plates from inside the house. “Woof! Elevator in the apartment!” one girl exclaimed.
Abu Sakhr al-Karak, a souvenir shop owner from the southern province of Daraa, where the Syrian revolution began in 2011, did not sleep all night. When the news of the fall of the regime broke before sunrise, he made his way to Damascus with his brothers and friends.
The former activist, who gave up protesting when the revolution turned violent, came to the capital every week, but he had not visited her for 14 years. So much time had passed that he couldn’t remember the names of the main streets.
“The first moments were pure luck. All of Syria is celebrating,” he said, speaking from one of Damascus’ most famous squares as celebratory gunfire rang out around him. “The only thing is that it’s a little tempered by the state of chaos. We just hope no one gets hurt.”
Locals told the FT that while armed rebel forces guard public institutions and banks and try to control looting, chaos still reigns. In a statement on Sunday morning, the rebels urged residents not to shoot in the air or steal.
Al-Karak said widespread looting was the only reason for hesitation and saw HTS’s head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as a good leader. HTS was once linked to al-Qaeda and the US and is considered a terrorist organization by others, although Jolani has sought to present the Islamist group as a more moderate force in recent years.
The fall of the regime means that thousands of Syrians in exile — inside the country and abroad — can return after more than a decade. “It’s like my soul has returned – we’ve been waiting 50 years for this moment,” said Youssef Shoghr, who crossed into Damascus from Lebanon in a convoy full of fireworks and rebel flags.
Shafiq Abu Talal, who is originally from Damascus but has lived in the HTS stronghold of Idlib for years, planned to return to his city immediately.
“My city was the last city that was free. The feelings are indescribable – he said. He said his parents lived near a detention center in the capital that opened in the early hours of Sunday morning, a scene repeated across the country as political prisoners were released.
“Events have accelerated dramatically,” Abu Talal said. “The revolution lasted 13 years, and the regime fell in less than 13 days.”
After the palace, Abdallah went to the embassy of Iran, an Assad ally that along with Russia helped prop up the regime against a popular uprising.
After hours of wandering around his city, Abdallah’s phone rang. He stopped to fill it inside a ransacked military security building, a place he said he was never even allowed to walk past.
He explained that he chose that location because, unlike the rest of the population, the regime’s military buildings have an uninterrupted supply of electricity. “It never cuts it for them, it never comes for us,” he said.
But Abdallah was still in disbelief: “I am still afraid that this is a dream — that I will wake up. Or that it turns out that they are just pretending and will come back and kill us all.”
Additional reporting by Raya Jalabi in Beirut and Chloe Cornish in Dubai
