Syria: What you need to know
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So hop on to ChumbaCasino.com now and live the Chumba life. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. In Syria, people have been celebrating in the streets. Some are firing guns into the air.

Because Bashar al-Assad's authoritarian regime has come to an end. His family had ruled the country since 1970. But in the last two weeks, the whole regime has come toppling down. On Sunday, the capital Damascus was taken over by the rebel group HTS. Assad is now reported to be in Russia.

There's a lot to unpack here. So in this episode, we are going to focus on who the main figures are and how more than 50 years of dictatorship, including 13 years of civil war, came to an end in just a matter of weeks. I'm Hannah Gelbart, and this is What In The World from the BBC World Service. What In The World

Syria is next to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. And there's been a civil war in Syria since 2011. That means that many Syrians have moved to these neighbouring countries. And one of those is Lina Sinjab, a BBC Middle East correspondent. She's been living in Lebanon since 2011.

Let's find out more about Bashar al-Assad and his regime. I'm speaking to Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent. Hi.

Hi, Frank. Hello. How are you doing? Very well, thank you. So first of all, who is Assad? Well, Bashar al-Assad has ruled Syria for 24 years. I went to cover his inauguration back in 2000 when his father died, Hafez al-Assad, and

And, you know, Syrians were saying to us at the time, this guy is not going to last six months. He's no ruler. He's no leader. He's weak. He's not going to be able to control the country. And he defied that. But I think because he is weak, was weak, he overcompensated for that. And he presided over an absolutely brutal, repressive regime where people were imprisoned in the tens of thousands.

and tortured on an industrial scale. So underneath that veneer of nicely cut suits and quite good English, he trained as an ophthalmologist in London.

and his softly spoken interviews, the man was a monster when he ruled Syria. So it's a great disappointment to people that if he doesn't actually, he's not going to end up in the International Criminal Court to account for his crimes. You're going to hear more context from Frank in a moment. But first, I want to tell you about what has just happened in Syria. Until a few weeks ago, Assad's forces controlled much of the country. The rebels held some territory, including Idlib.

Then they began their surprise offensive. They started by attacking cities in the north of the country and moved south to the capital, Damascus, which they entered in the early hours of Sunday morning. Now they've stormed and looted the presidential palace.

This rebel movement is mostly led by the group HTS. It's been called a terrorist organisation by the UN, US, UK and other countries. Here is the BBC's chief jihadist media specialist, Mina Al-Jawi. The group Hey at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, has been trying to reinvent itself. You know, it's trying to move away from its jihadist past. It used to be known as Nusra Front, which was al-Qaeda's branch in Syria. And

since it severed ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016, it created, you know, a front group called the Salvation Government. So it's a kind of a de facto authority within Idlib and the rebel-held areas. And they created also what they called ministries, Ministry of Health, of Media, of Human Rights. And they've been really trying to project this image that they are the legitimate,

rulers of this area, but also they've been trying to say that, you know, we have no lasting jihadist links. We don't have any global jihadist ambitions. It's really part of the ongoing Syrian revolution. But what they failed to do in the past few years, and this is the difference that we've seen, they failed to

to get other rebel groups to come under their banner and do something together. So they've been trying for years to achieve what they call unity. But of course, the rebel groups have been very wary of HTS because they think actually either they still have jihadist links or they're really trying to kind of spearhead something and then take all the political gains for themselves. So

What really held back the rebel groups or the opposition is the utter fragmentation of these groups. The difference now is that they have managed somehow to come together and to agree on, you know, a certain objective, which is to recapture the areas they lost control.

to the Syrian government. Now let's find out more about HDS's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani. That is not actually his real name. It's Ahmed al-Sharra, and he started to use it as part of a rebrand. Here's Barry Marston from BBC Monitoring. He has this indelible role within the jihadist movement. You could argue that he's the figure

responsible for why Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State split in the first place, when 2013 he took sides, one against the other, giving rise to bloody factional fighting. He's intricately involved with that jihadist background, but in the years since, he went out of his way to distance himself and his movement, HDS, Hayat al-Tahrir al-Sharam,

from jihadism and focused on governing the area of territory that they've carved out in Idlib in northwestern Syria. And that's very much the sort of rhetoric and media material we've been seeing put out by entities around him in recent weeks, focusing on

pragmatic issues like reaching out to minorities, stressing Syria's cultural diversity, human rights, the importance of preserving institutions, diplomatic relations, this very deeply pragmatic language that you may not expect to hear from somebody

that comes from that jihadist background. So how did he manage to oust Assad? Well, previously, Assad has managed to stay in power because of external support. But he's not had that this time because of conflicts elsewhere in the world. Here is Lise Doucette, our chief international correspondent. Almost on a daily basis, we are seeing unprecedented jaw-dropping events, red lines being crossed, old assumptions being shattered.

And it just never occurred to anyone that actually Syria might be part of this jigsaw, which was falling apart. But now, of course, it makes sense when Iran was distracted, when its key proxy in the region, what it regarded as its forward defense against Israel, Hezbollah, which had played such a key role in Syria to the point that Syrians had started to

quietly mutter that they felt they were being occupied. Whole areas of the capital, Damascus, had been bought up by Iranians or by Hezbollah. Those forces had been weakened. Russia, of course, was distracted by what was happening in Ukraine. And so this was chipping away at President Assad's defenses. And his own economic difficulties, huge challenges, meant that there was disgruntlement in the army, such that they didn't put up a fight at all.

Syria is home to a large number of ethnic and religious groups, including Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Christians, Druze, Alawite Shia and Arab Sunnis. But the interests of these different groups has led to periods of political instability. Syria's had a civil war for over a decade, so I asked Frank about how it began. If you remember something called the Arab Spring in 2011...

where a lot of populations around the Middle East suddenly rose up saying, we are fed up with the lack of opportunity, with the corruption, the fact that power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny political elite and we can't vote them out of office. And there were uprisings in quite a lot of Arab countries. And that resulted in the overthrow of leaders in Libya, in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Yemen, in

The uprising started in Syria, where 15 schoolboys scrawled some graffiti in Arabic on the wall of their schoolhouse. And they were echoing the cry of a lot of protesters around the Middle East. In Arabic, it said, meaning the people demand the downfall of the regime. For that, they got rounded up, taken off to a police station, and horrendously beaten up, and in one case, mutilated.

And as soon as news of that got out, people took to the streets and protested peacefully. That was met with bullets and more imprisonment. And that morphed into what was initially quite a peaceful uprising. But that then got taken over by an extremist Islamist group called Jabhat al-Nusra or the al-Nusra Front, which then eventually morphed into the current group HTS, which

They have ditched their links with al-Qaeda. They have been ruling a tiny corner of northwest Syria called Idlib for quite some time. And they are now the new rulers in Syria, although they have promised a transition to a representative government for all Syrians. So the initial signs are encouraging.

Let's go back to 2011. You mentioned the Arab Spring, the uprisings across the region. What has been happening in Syria since then? Well, they've had an absolutely horrific civil war in which roughly half a million people have been killed. The vast majority of those have been killed by Assad's forces.

Syria's army was never very good. It could only survive, and his regime was only able to survive in 2015 with the help of the Russian Air Force, which has carpet bombed places like Aleppo. They bombed hospitals, schools, civilian areas, and...

As we know, in 2013, sarin gas, nerve gas, was used by Syria's forces at a place called Ghouta outside Damascus, which was a rebel stronghold. So there's some really appalling human rights abuses. It's a very tragic tale because, let's be clear about this, Syria is...

and could still be again, a great country with a great culture. Anyone who's been there will tell you how friendly and kind the people are that they encounter. But it's been in the grip of this kleptocratic dynasty, the Assads, since 1970, who have plundered the country, enriched themselves. And if you happen to be from their support base, the Alawites, who are Shiites from the

the west of the country, then, you know, you enjoyed a kind of fairly elevated status, which is why the majority of the rebels have been Sunni Muslims. There is now a fear amongst Christians and others, are they going to be persecuted by the victorious Sunnis?

I think the initial signs are no, but every time you see pictures of crowds cheering as statues are toppled in the Middle East and people are beating it with the soles of their shoes, you think, okay, great, but what follows? And where you've got a country that has been so tightly controlled by a brutal security force…

often it can then spin out of control. So the challenge now for the leader of HTS, the challenge for him is going to be to get the balance right between establishing enough discipline, enough law and order to stop looting and revenge killings, but to allow enough political freedom that Syrians are able to express themselves and not go back to living in a country of fear. Frank, thank you so much for taking the time to come and explain that to us. You're welcome.

So what does this massive change mean for people in Syria? Unfortunately, as a woman, I'm not sure whether I will be able to continue living as I want to. I'm not so sure that corruption will end and, you know, dictatorship will end.

And to tell you the truth, it's the first time I'm thinking of leaving the country because I don't want to build again years of work and years of life for my feet and my children. And then, you know, another war will happen and they will fight again. I have no idea where to go. I haven't slept like that.

for years. I haven't had this chance of, you know, having relaxing sleep for 14 years. All Syria is celebrating the table of the Syrian regime. All Syria is happy. All Syria is starting a new time, a new day. All Syria now is turning from darkness into light. As you can hear, some are excited. Others are afraid of what comes next.

Many who had been living in exile in Lebanon and Jordan are now making their way back home. The rebels have said that they are working to transfer power to a transitional government and they want to, in quotes, build a Syria together. This is a fast-moving story. And if you want to find out more about what is happening in Syria, there are loads of articles and analysis from some of the voices you heard today on the BBC News website.

Thank you so much for joining us for today's episode. I'm Hannah Gelbart. This is What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Nicola Coughlan, and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Youngest Heroes.

Rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth. She thought, right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself. 12 stories of extraordinary young people from across history. There's a real sense of urgency in them. That resistance has to be mounted, it has to be mounted now. Follow History's Youngest Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW.

Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply.