Name: Syria marks one year since fall of Assad regime
Uploaded: 2025-12-08T00:38:10.743Z
Duration: 2 min 31 s
Description: A year ago, Ahmad al Sharaa led Islamist rebels in a lightning offensive to drive dictator Bashar Assad from power. A 14-year civil war seemed to have stagnated, and the operation caught the regime off-guard.

A year ago, Ahmad al Sharaa led Islamist rebels in a lightning offensive to drive dictator Bashar Assad from power. A 14-year civil war seemed to have stagnated, and the operation caught the regime off-guard.

Damascus

Syria is observing one year since the fall of the Assad regime, which ended after a swift offensive by Islamist rebels led by Ahmed al-Shara in late 2024. The collapse followed a series of military defeats for Assad's forces, compounded by weakened support from international allies such as Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah.

The regime's downfall concluded a 14-year conflict that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions displaced. After Assad and his family fled to Moscow, Ahmad al-Sharaa emerged as the new de facto leader, promising a new era for Syria.

Syria marks one year since fall of Assad regime

These scenes, playing out in the Syrian city of Aleppo in November 2024, would have been unthinkable even just weeks before. Ahmed al-Shara's Islamist rebels swept into the city and forced government troops to retreat. It was the start of an offensive that would astonish not just Syria, but the whole world. In less than two weeks, Assad's dictatorship would have collapsed, and a 14-year rebellion costing hundreds of thousands of lives and displacing millions would have ended. Initially the regime tried to push back, launching airstrikes with the help of its Russian allies on the rebel stronghold of Idlib and other places. But Assad's days were numbered. He was no longer able to count on the same level of support from his international allies. Moscow, for one, was bogged down in Ukraine. And Iran, whose foreign minister visited Assad as Aleppo fell, had suffered setbacks of its own after being bombed by Israel in October 2024 in connection with the Hamas conflict. Still worse for Assad, though, was the weakening of his military ally Hezbollah after its confrontation with Israel in Lebanon, also towards the end of 2024. As Assad's vulnerability grew, the rebels pressed on, taking another big prize, Hama, a strategic city in western Syria that the regime had held for a decade. And after that, on to Homs in the south. Then on December the 8th, 2024, the announcement that all opposition forces were waiting for. The capital had fallen, with almost no resistance. By the grace of God Almighty, the city of Damascus has been liberated, the tyrant Bashar al-Assad has been toppled, and all the unjustly detained persons from the regime's prisons have been released. After 50 years of iron-fisted rule by the Assad family, it was a moment that some thought would never happen. By this point, Assad and his family had already fled to Moscow. His supporters and members of his Alawite sect, left behind, were suddenly facing a new reality. But others pinned their hopes on the new de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda boss with a bounty on his head, but one who was promising inclusivity and a new dawn for the country.

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