People celebrate the fall of the Assad regime at Umayyad Square in Damascus on Dec. 8, 2024. (Credit: Louai Beshara/AFP)
The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, marks the end of one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. The regime was perhaps best characterized by the title of an article by sociologist Michel Seurat, assassinated by his captors in Lebanon in the mid-1980s, likely under orders from Damascus. The title, “The State of Barbarism,” was later used for a collection of Seurat’s works, a fitting descriptor for Assad’s rule.In the coming hours and days, details will gradually emerge about the circumstances that enabled this dramatic acceleration of history — a moment still clouded with unanswered questions. The swiftness of this upheaval, after 54 years of an unrelenting regime — shaken, to some extent, during the peak of the Syrian uprising in 2011 — feels like a seismic jolt so immense it’s hard to fully...
The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, marks the end of one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. The regime was perhaps best characterized by the title of an article by sociologist Michel Seurat, assassinated by his captors in Lebanon in the mid-1980s, likely under orders from Damascus. The title, “The State of Barbarism,” was later used for a collection of Seurat’s works, a fitting descriptor for Assad’s rule.In the coming hours and days, details will gradually emerge about the circumstances that enabled this dramatic acceleration of history — a moment still clouded with unanswered questions. The swiftness of this upheaval, after 54 years of an unrelenting regime — shaken, to some extent, during the peak of the Syrian uprising in 2011 — feels like a seismic jolt so immense it’s hard...