A year ago today, longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus as rebels took control of the Syrian capital. It was a sudden end to a long revolution and conflict, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands in Syria.
The revolution in Syria began in March 2011 as the Arab Spring brought hope and uncertainty to the Middle East. What started as peaceful protests turned into a violent conflict, as the Assad regime responded by shooting unarmed protesters, and detaining and torturing men, women, and even children.
Assad's Syria became isolated on the international stage, hit by sanctions from the US and Europe, and its membership in the Arab League was suspended. The regime persisted, however, propped up by key backers, Russia and Iran. Between 2016 and 2019, it took over numerous opposition strongholds after imposing brutal sieges and indiscriminately bombing cities.
By 2023, it seemed like Assad had consolidated his position, ruling over the ruins of a devastated country, with rebels - largely confined by now to Idlib province -on the back foot.
Ultimately, however, geopolitical forces brought him down in a way few people expected.
With key Assad ally Hezbollah weakened by Israel's war on Lebanon and Iran's influence in the region waning, the Assad regime was short on allies.
When rebels captured the key cities of Aleppo and Hama, another ally, Russia, was too busy fighting its own war in Ukraine to assist, and the regime's corruption and mismanagement made it an embarrassing client. Russia did, however, offer sanctuary to Assad after he fled Syria. The former optician has spent the past year hiding from the world's gaze in Moscow.
In almost 14 years of war, over 500,000 people were killed, and over 12 million were displaced. In its first year of freedom from Assad's rule, Syria has begun to recover economically and politically. Still, the shared trauma of more than a decade of airstrikes, chemical attacks and torture will take much longer to heal, and questions remain over how democratic the new Syria will be.