Newspapers covering the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his subsequent flight to Moscow have reflected on the Assad family’s five decades of dynastic rule in Syria, jubilation across the country, and questions over what will happen next.
The Guardian splashed with “Rebels seize Damascus as Assad flees to Moscow”, with a picture underneath of celebrations in Damascus. There was a pointer to Peter Beaumont’s profile of Assad, in which he writes: “Bashar is gone, swept out of power by an offshoot of al-Qaida. And with the dramatic ending of the half-century of Assad rule, a key section of the map of the Middle East has been utterly redrawn.”
Under a headline that said “Syrians hail the fall of Assad”, the Times ran a series of photos captioned “jubilant Syrians topple a statue of Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar, in the coastal city of Latakia before dragging it through the streets.”
Syrians stormed Assad’s palace, walking out with trophies, the paper reported. “In jarring contrast, rebels also broke into the regime’s most feared jails … and broke down the doors of cells crammed with inmates”.
The Daily Express ran a picture of grinning Syrian refugees in Lebanon. “Joy erupted in Syria,” chief reporter Giles Sheldrick wrote. “Thousands poured on to the streets chanting ‘Assad is gone’ as the army collapsed and the former president begged his ally Russia for asylum.”
The rebels’ offensive was “stunning”, according to the Financial Times. It left many jubilant, while “myriad factions” eyed power, and Israel crossed the Syrian border. Raya Jalabi, writing from Damascus, said that the city’s roads were littered with abandoned Syrian army vehicles. “Some so freshly vacant that soldiers’ clothes, blankets, boots and medication were left behind in a hurry,” she wrote.
The Daily Telegraph called Assad the “butcher of Damascus” and outlined his flight to Moscow, where he was granted asylum. There were eight pages of news and analysis, including a front-page piece by Con Coughlin, which said the “humiliating collapse” of Assad’s regime was “a fitting end for a man who was always temperamentally unsuited to the demands made of a modern-day tyrant”.
The Daily Mail ran a special edition, with its main headline asking the question: “Assad is toppled … but is worse to come?”. A second headline pointed to Andrew Neil’s column: “This is a disaster for Iran and the ayatollahs have never been more vulnerable. The smell of regime change is in the Tehran air,” he wrote.
“Syria’s rebels are far from saviours,” the Australian’s headline on its inside story read, accompanied by analysis from Cameron Stewart about the potential for future chaos. “Australia and the western world will welcome the demise of this ruthless dictator … but the story of his remarkable toppling by a coalition of Islamist groups is not a simple case of good versus evil,” he wrote.
The New York Times reported that, for US President Joe Biden, the fall of Assad presented a “fundamental challenge”: “How does the United States make friends with the newly emerging forces taking control in Syria when it has deemed them terrorists? And should it?”
