After decades of brutal dictatorship in Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad fell in a matter of days. WSJ’s Yaroslav Trofimov reports on the rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani and how regional players are responding to political change in Syria. Further Listening: - What the Ceasefire in Lebanon Means for the Middle East - Ten Days That Shifted Power in Syria Further Reading: - The 11-Day Blitz by Syrian Rebels That Ended 50 Years of Assad Rule - Assad’s Downfall Marks a New Realignment in the Middle East - How a Syrian Rebel Went From an American Jail to Seizing Aleppo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Yesterday, in Syria, after nearly 13 years of civil war, rebel forces took control of the capital, Damascus. For decades, the country had been under the dictatorship of the Assad family. Here's our chief foreign affairs correspondent, Yaroslav Trofimov.
Well, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has collapsed in a matter of days, in a stunning collapse of a system that was built on murder, torture, brutality, and repression that had few parallels in the modern world. So really, this closes the chapter on some of the darkest periods in the history of the Middle East.
Footage showed Syrians celebrating in the streets, prisoners walking out of confinement, and residents standing on a toppled statue of Assad's father. At the same time, it remains unknown how the fall of Assad could reverberate across the Middle East and the world. What are the big questions you have today about the future of Syria?
Well, the question is obviously, what next? There are two ways it can end. It can either end in a relative peace with the rebels agreeing to basically cooperate and avoiding another round of civil war, or they could go at each other again and plunge the country into a new round of disaster.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, December 9th. Coming up on the show, a historic moment for Syria and a realignment of power in the Middle East. The largest of the rebel groups that stormed the Syrian capital over the weekend is called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, also known as HTS. The group's leader is Abu Muhammad al-Jolani.
When did you first encounter the name Abu Muhammad al-Jolani?
He became reasonably well-known about 10 years ago when he was leading an affiliate of al-Qaeda called the Nusra Front. As a young man in 2003, he boarded a bus from Damascus to Baghdad and became an insurgent against American forces in Iraq at the time. There he joined the nascent Islamic State.
Jolani later returned to his homeland, Syria, with the blessing of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Jolani's mission was to establish ISIS there.
But then once in Syria, he broke with al-Baghdadi because he didn't share some of his murderous ideas, such as the need to slaughter all the Shiites. And so he decided to move to a slightly more moderate al-Qaeda. I see. OK. Then he traveled further and further along this road to moderation.
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