Deceit, betrayal marked final days of President Assad's regime in Syria

After dusk, the president slipped out of the capital, flying covertly to a Russian military base in northern Syria and then on a Russian jet to Moscow, as per reports

As rebels advanced toward the Syrian capital of Damascus on Dec­e­­mber 7, the staff in the hilltop Presiden­tial Palace prepared for a spe­ech they hoped would lead to a pea­ceful end to the 13-year civil war.

 

Aides to President Bashar al-Assad were brainstorming mess­aging ideas. A film crew had set up cameras and lights nearby. Syria’s state-run television station was ready to broadcast the finished product: An address by al-Assad announcing a plan to share power with members of the political opposition, according to three people who were involved in the preparation. Working from the palace, al-Assad, who had wielded fear and force to maintain his aut­h­oritarian rule over Syria for more than two decades, had betrayed no sense of alarm to his staff, accor­ding to a palace insider whose office was near the president’s.

 

The capital’s defences had been bolstered, al-Assad’s aides were told, including by the powerful fourth armored division of the Syrian army, led by the president’s brother Maher al-Assad, the insider said.

 

They had all been deceived.

 

After dusk, the president slipped out of the capital, flying covertly to a Russian military base in northern Syria and then on a Russian jet to Moscow, according to six Middle Eastern government and security officials.

 

Maher al-Assad fled separately that evening with other senior military officers across the desert to Iraq, according to two Iraqi officials. His current location remains unknown.

Al-Assad’s fall brought to a sudden end his family’s 50-year authoritarian grip on Syria, causing jubilation among his victims and enemies, scrambling the strategic map of the West Asia and setting Syria off on a new, uncertain trajectory.

 

During his final days in power,  al-Assad pleaded for foreign military help from Russia, Iran and Iraq to no avail as his milita­ry’s own intellig­ence service docu­m­ented his forces’ collapse in real time, according to secret reports reviewed by The New York Times.

 

Diplomats from a half-dozen countries sought ways to push him from power peacefully in order to spare the ancient city of Damascus a bloody battle for control, according to four regional officials involved in the talks. One proposal, an official said, was that he pass power to his military chief, effectively submitting to a coup.

 

The account of  al-Assad’s fall, much of which has not been previously reported, is based on interviews with Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish officials; Damascus-based diplomats; as well as associates of al-Assad and rebels who participated in his ouster.

 

Now, rebels guard the Presidential Palace. Al-Assad’s home has been picked clean by looters. And Syrians who remained loyal to him through years of civil war fume that he left without a word, abandoning them to their fates.

 

In late November, when rebels from Syria’s northwest launched an offensive aimed at pushing back al-Assad’s forces, the presi­dent was a continent away for a joyous family occasion. His elder son, Hafez al-Assad, was defen­ding his doctoral dissertation at Moscow State University.

 

For 13 years,  al-Assad had been fighting a brutal civil war against armed groups seeking his ouster. The conflict had ravaged the country, killing more than a half-million people and creating millions of refugees. Iran and its ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, had supported his troops, and Russia sent fighter jets whose air raids devastated rebel communities.  (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)