BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian government appeared to have fallen early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a lightning rebel offensive.
The head of a Syrian opposition war monitor said President Bashar Assad had left the country for an undisclosed location, fleeing ahead of insurgents who said they had entered Damascus after a remarkably swift advance across the country.
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and hand over its functions to a transitional government.
Unconfirmed reports that Assad’s plane has been shot down:
This is develping, so take it with a grain of salt.
RIP BOZO
Gotta say, its good Assad’s gone, but HTS does not sound much better.
The statements their leader have made seems promising. Cooperation with the UN, peaceful overhanding of power etc. But they stem from Al-Qaeda so let’s hope this doesn’t age like milk…
The statements their leader have made seems promising.
He is making the right noises, but then again so did the Taliban when they took control of Afghanistan.
The taliban had no allies, resources or much established that was at stake, thus no real incentive to follow through. They were just testing the waters to see if the world actually cared that much about those things or it was just a lot of noise. Turns out they were right, no country reciprocated on their statements, and so they just went back to their old ways.
HTS does actually have incentive to follow through here I think
Yeah, they’re saying all the right things right now but their past associations with al Qaeda and ISIS doesn’t bode well.
Are they really saying the correct things?
I’ve seen plenty of interviews where where they say that “God is great” on repeat. Thats not what you want to hear from your potential governing body.
Can’t tell if this is edgy Atheism or Islamophobia.
In the unlikely event you actually want to get out whichever bubble you’re in, that phrase is extremely common in that part of the world. It’s a nothing burger, calm down.
Not sure if I would have preferred al-Assad having to live out the rest of his life in exile and constantly look over his own shoulder… Or seeing him imprisoned in Syria and/or publicly hanged for his crimes against humanity. But I guess with him having fled via plane, we’ll all have to accept the former.
…15ft/s drop at the mysterious end of his flight path in the mountains: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/yk-ata#3844aec1
That’s a rumor that’s going around. The flight path makes no sense for a VIP (for example, flying over the city center of occupied Homs), and while it was pretty clearly a crash of a military plane, that doesn’t at all imply it was al-Assad’s. We don’t know the destination, just that he boarded a plane, but I’m guessing we’ll see him turn up soon enough.
Yeah, we’ll have to see. Sucks for whoever was actually on this plane though.
Not that Assad isn’t a massive cunt, but I do wonder what might happen next.
For reference here is a news article about a certain group taking Afghanistan in 1996, and the tone about today’s news seems oddly familiar.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/27/newsid_2539000/2539973.stm
The PM may call for free elections all he wants, but a group that has spent the last decade shedding blood for this moment my not see things quite the same way.
Still, the Syrian government and Hezbollah were in cahoots, so I can think of at least one Syrian neighbour that will be celebrating this. It’s one less route for weapons to end up in the West Bank.
Practical result - Israel is already hard at work annexing more Syrian territory: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-moves-capture-syrian-held-golan-heights-following-assad-overthrow ofc Netaniahu swears that it’s “temporary”, I guarantee you - this is a permanent.
Not that Assad isn’t a massive cunt, but I do wonder what might happen next.
Given the track record of violent revolutions throughout history, nothing good. Still, seeing how low the “better than Assad” bar is it might be a slight improvement.
It’s one less route for weapons to end up in the West Bank.
Only true if the revolution was Israeli sponsored.
Another route would be an independent source of water and power and a trade route and free association and free movement about their own country. But sure, choose violence to end violence, because that works.
