After 54 years in power, the al-Assad family’s rule in Syria has come to an end. On December 8, Bashar al-Assad fled the country and sought asylum in Russia. The collapse of one of the most brutal regimes in the modern history of the Middle East came after just 12 days of fighting between the Syrian army and a coalition of opposition forces, and put an end to the 13-year Syrian civil war.
The Syrian conflict took the lives of more than 350,000 Syrians and displaced at least 13 million. Brutal repression by the al-Assad regime turned a peaceful revolution into an internationalised civil war with Russia, Iran, Turkiye and the United States as the key players.
