Syria’s revolution has succeeded after 14 years

And so it has come to pass, Syria’s revolution which began 14 years ago, has succeeded in its goal.
President Bashar Assad is president no more, fleeing from the country he ruled leaving behind the blood and tears of his family’s decades in power.
He will now become one of the 13 million Syrians displaced from their homes, forced to seek sanctuary elsewhere for survival.
But what a legacy he leaves behind, from the early days of the revolution when even protesting children were rounded up and murdered, to the chemical attacks on his own people, to the disappeared and detained, to the half million dead and the millions more injured.
The softly spoken ophthalmologist became the face of barbarity and the defiant leader who managed to outlive the fervour of the Arab spring.
He was helped to hold onto power by the support of Russia from the air and Hezbollah and Iran on the ground. When those allies found their own strength sapped, whether by the Ukraine war or Israel’s merciless campaign against its adversaries, his hold on power weakened.
Caught out by the rebel advance just weeks ago, his forces and his allies never regained the ground. After so much bloodshed the final days have been relatively bloodless.
So what comes now?
For so many there is euphoria, that a homeland which seemed lost to them may now be a place for return.
For countless families there is the prospect of being reunited once more.
But once the euphoria abates Syria’s rebels must become leaders and the history of the Arab Spring teaches that is a not a particularly successful path.
There are many factions and many different visions of what a free Syria looks like.
After the lightning advance to the capital the hardest and most consequential work must start now.
It will be watched from inside Syria’s borders and beyond them, as a region and a world waits to see what the consequences are of this long fought for revolution.
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