It took just 2 weeks for Syria's 50-year Assad regime to crumble. Here's how it happened
Bashar al-Assad fled the country on Sunday. Analysts say no one thought it could happen so fast
What's happening in Syria right now? Only everything.
The events of the weekend and the weeks leading up to it are being called a seismic political shift. After years in which its 13-year civil war lay seemingly dormant, suddenly it wasn't. If your head is spinning, that's because the events in Syria happened so quickly.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia. The doors to Syria's notorious prisons have been opened, its elated prisoners pouring out. Millions of refugees could finally go home from camps across Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
And people are celebrating around the world.
"It's tough to describe in words. What I'm hearing from my Syrian friends and colleagues is it feels like a dream. No one thought that this could happen so quickly," Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, told CBC's The Breakdown.
"It's simply astonishing. It's mind-boggling ... it's hard to process, in fact," added Steven Heydemann with the Brookings Institute's Centre for Middle East Policy.
So forgive yourself if you're struggling to catch up, and allow CBC News to break it down for you.
What happened this weekend?
Syrian rebels from the south of the country, emboldened by the success of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate that earlier captured Aleppo, Homs and other key cities, reached Damascus over the weekend and together with HTS seized control of the capital.
Assad fled the country on Sunday, bringing to a dramatic close his nearly 14-year struggle to hold on to control as the country fragmented in a brutal civil war that became a proxy battlefield for regional and international powers.
The Kremlin said on Monday that Russia has granted political asylum to Assad.
Assad's overthrow, which appeared unthinkable just two weeks ago, raised hopes for a more peaceful future but also concerns about a potential security vacuum in the country, which is still split among armed groups.
What is the HTS?
The jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, was formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda and known as the Nusra Front. HTS later distanced itself from al-Qaeda, seeking to market itself as a more moderate group. It is classed as a terrorist group by the United Nations, Canada and the U.S.
HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, met overnight with Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, and Vice-President Faisal Mekdad to discuss arrangements for a transitional government, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
Al-Golani, who spent years in U.S. custody as an insurgent in Iraq but later broke with al-Qaeda and ISIS, has vowed to rebuild Syria.
"A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory," he told a huge crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on Sunday.
HTS and Al-Golani have worked to "professionalize" the rebel force, said Broderick McDonald, an associate fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization at the University of Oxford.
That helped prepare them for this moment, McDonald told CBC News Network Sunday. "And then it was just a matter of the right timing and the right opportunity for the group to really break out of its enclave."
What was the civil war?
Remember the Arab Spring?
In 2011, Syria was rocked by anti-Assad protests, inspired by the Arab Spring, anti-regime demonstrations that began in Tunisia and spread across several Arab countries, including Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
Assad and his family had ruled Syria for more than 50 years. Since he took over as president in 2000 after his father's death, the UN says, Assad's forces have killed more than 350,000 opponents, jailed and tortured thousands more and used banned nerve gas on opposition towns to deter any challengers to his rule.
Anti-government protests in 2011 met with a brutal crackdown, escalating into a civil war that has killed more than half a million people and displaced half of Syria's pre-war population of 23 million. Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, gradually regained control of more than two-thirds of Syria, leaving the rebels with a stronghold in the northwest of the country.
And there the conflict remained for years, until late November.
When did the rebel offensive begin?
On Nov. 27, armed opposition groups led by HTS launched a large-scale attack on areas controlled by government forces in northwestern Syria and claimed to have wrested control of over 15 villages from government forces in northwestern Aleppo province.
The government and its allies responded with airstrikes and shelling in an attempt to halt the insurgent advances.
The attack on Aleppo followed weeks of simmering, low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas.
On Nov. 29, the insurgents entered Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, for the first time since being pushed out in 2016. They were met with little resistance. By Nov. 30, the rebels said they controlled Aleppo, raising a flag over the city's citadel and occupying the international airport.
By that evening, the insurgents seized at least four towns in the central Hama province and claimed to have entered the provincial capital. The Syrian government launched a counterattack Dec. 1 but received little support from its allies.
Over the next few days, the insurgents captured Hama and Homs, the fourth- and third-largest cities. As they advanced, Iran, a crucial backer, along with Russia, of Assad's regime, began pulling out its military personnel.
By Sunday, the rebel forces had taken the capital, Damascus.
What's happening in Syria now?
Damascus was quiet on Monday, with life slowly returning to normal. Most shops and public institutions were closed. In public squares, some people were still celebrating. Busy traffic returned to the streets and people ventured out after a nighttime curfew. Rebels milled about in the centre.
Syria's prime minister said Monday that most cabinet ministers are still working from offices in Damascus. Jalali, the prime minister, remained in his post after Assad and most of his top officials vanished over the weekend and has sought to project normalcy.
He said the government is co-ordinating with the insurgents, and that he is ready to meet rebel leader Al-Golani.
It's not clear who is in charge.
"There's a lot of uncertainty about what's coming next," Stephen Sakalian, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria, told CBC News Network.
"Here is Damascus, there is a certain normalcy ... but a lot of questions are remaining among the population."
What about the prisons?
Meanwhile, elated inmates are pouring out of jails. Assad's police state was known for generations as one of the harshest in the Middle East, holding hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.
Just north of Damascus in the Saydnaya military prison, which is known as the "human slaughterhouse," women detainees, some with their children, screamed as men broke the locks off their cell doors.
Tens of thousands of detainees have so far been freed, said Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based pro-opposition war monitor.
"I am feeling extreme joy to see the dictator and his party ... he's gone. He's gone," Omar Alshogre, a former Syrian political prisoner, told CBC News Network Monday.
"Now, it's our responsibility as Syrians to show the world that we actually wanted to have freedom and democracies."
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With files from Chris Brown, the Associated Press and Reuters