(Reuters) – Syria’s Bashar al-Assad used Russian and Iranian firepower to beat again insurgent forces throughout years of civil warfare however by no means defeated them, leaving him weak to their breathtaking advance when his allies have been distracted by wars elsewhere.

President for twenty-four years, Assad flew out of Damascus for an unknown vacation spot early on Sunday, two senior military officers advised Reuters. Rebels declared town “free of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad”. A half-century of Assad household rule was over, military command advised officers, based on a Syrian officer.

Statues of Assad’s father and brother have been toppled in cities taken by the rebels, whereas footage of him on billboards and authorities places of work have been torn down, stamped on, burned or riddled with bullets.

Assad turned president in 2000 after his father Hafez died, preserving the household’s iron-fisted rule and the dominance of their Alawite sect within the Sunni Muslim-majority nation and Syria’s standing as an Iranian ally hostile to Israel and the U.S.

Formed in its early years by the Iraq warfare and disaster in Lebanon, Assad’s rule was outlined by civil warfare, which spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets, to be met with lethal power.

Branded an “animal” in 2018 by U.S. President Donald Trump for utilizing chemical weapons – an accusation he denied – Assad outlasted most of the international leaders who believed his demise was imminent within the early days of the battle, when he misplaced swathes of Syria to rebels.

Helped by Russian air strikes and Iranian-backed militias, he clawed again a lot of the misplaced territory throughout years of navy offensives, together with siege warfare condemned as “medieval” by U.N. investigators.

Together with his opponents largely confined to a nook of northwestern Syria, he presided over a number of years of relative calm, although giant elements of the nation remained out of his grasp and the financial system was shackled by worldwide sanctions.

Assad re-established ties with Arab states that after shunned him however remained a pariah to a lot of the world and by no means managed to revive the shattered Syrian state, whose armed forces swiftly retreated within the face of insurgent advances.

He has not delivered any public remarks since insurgents took Aleppo per week in the past however mentioned in a name with Iran’s president that the escalation sought to redraw the area for Western pursuits, echoing his view of the revolt as a foreign-backed conspiracy.

Justifying his response to the insurgency in its early phases, Assad in contrast himself to a surgeon. “Do we say to him: ‘Your hands are covered in blood?’ Or do we thank him for saving the patient?” he mentioned in 2012.

Early within the battle, as rebels seized city after city, Assad oozed confidence.

“We will hit them with an iron fist and Syria will return to how it was,” he advised troopers after taking again the city of Maaloula in 2014.

He delivered on the primary pledge, however not the second. Years later, giant elements of Syria remained outdoors state management, cities have been flattened, the loss of life toll topped 350,000 and greater than 1 / 4 of the inhabitants had fled overseas.

RED LINES

Assad was backed by these Syrians who believed he was saving them from hardline Sunni Islamists.

As al Qaeda-inspired rebel teams gained prominence, this worry resonated amongst minorities. Insurgent forces sought to guarantee Christians, Alawites and different minorities they might be protected as they superior this week.

Assad clung to the thought of Syria as a bastion of secular Arab nationalism even because the battle appeared ever extra sectarian. Talking to International Affairs in 2015, he mentioned Syria’s military was “made up of every colour of Syrian society”.

However to his opponents, he was fuelling sectarianism.

The battle’s sectarian edge was hardened by the arrival of Iranian-backed Shi’ite fighters from throughout the Center East to help Assad, and as Sunni Muslim-led states together with Turkey and Qatar backed the rebels.

Assad’s worth to Iran was underscored by a senior Iranian official who declared in 2015 that his destiny was a “red line” for Tehran.

Whereas Iran stood by Assad, the USA didn’t implement its personal “red line” – set by President Barack Obama in 2012 in opposition to the usage of chemical weapons.

U.N.-backed investigations have concluded Damascus used chemical weapons.

A sarin fuel assault on the rebel-held Ghouta in 2013 killed a whole lot, however Moscow brokered a deal for Syria’s chemical weapons to be destroyed, averting a U.S. response. Nonetheless, poison fuel continued to hit insurgent areas, with a 2017 sarin assault prompting Trump to order a cruise missile response.

Assad has denied accusations the state was responsible.

He equally denied the military had dropped barrel bombs full of explosives that induced indiscriminate destruction. He appeared to make gentle of the accusation in a BBC interview in 2015, saying: “I haven’t heard of the army using barrels, or maybe, cooking pots.”

He additionally dismissed tens of hundreds of images exhibiting torture of individuals in authorities custody as being a part of a Qatar-funded plot.

As preventing died down, Assad accused Syria’s enemies of financial warfare.

However whereas he remained a pariah to the West, some Arab states that after backed his opponents started opening doorways to him. A beaming Assad was greeted by leaders of the United Arab Emirates throughout a go to there in 2022.

EYE DOCTOR

Assad typically offered himself as a humble man of the individuals, showing in movies driving a modest household automotive and in pictures along with his spouse visiting warfare veterans of their houses.

He took workplace in 2000 after his father’s loss of life, however had not at all times been destined for the presidency.

Hafez had groomed one other son, Bassel, to succeed him. However when Bassel died in a 1994 automotive crash, Bashar was reworked from an eye fixed physician in London – the place he studied as a postgraduate – to inheritor obvious.

Upon turning into president, Assad appeared to undertake liberal reforms, painted optimistically as “the Damascus spring”.

He launched a whole lot of political prisoners, made overtures to the West and opened the financial system to personal firms.

His marriage to British-born former funding banker Asma Akhras – with whom he had three kids – helped foster hopes he might take Syria down a extra reformist path.

Excessive factors of his early dalliance with Western leaders included attending a Paris summit the place he was a visitor of honour on the annual Bastille Day navy parade.

However with the political system he inherited left intact, indicators of change shortly dried up.

Dissidents have been jailed and financial reforms contributed to what U.S. diplomats described, in a 2008 embassy cable launched by WikiLeaks, as “parasitic” nepotism and corruption.

Whereas the elite did nicely, drought drove the poor from rural areas to slums the place the revolt would blaze.

Tensions constructed with the West after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned the Center Jap energy steadiness on its head.

The assassination of Lebanon’s Rafik al-Hariri in Beirut in 2005 prompted Western stress that pressured Syria’s withdrawal from its neighbour. An preliminary worldwide probe implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese figures within the killing.

Whereas Syria denied involvement, former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam mentioned Assad had threatened Hariri months earlier – an accusation Assad additionally denied.

Fifteen years later, a U.N.-backed court docket discovered a member of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah responsible of conspiring to kill Hariri. Hezbollah, an Assad ally, denied any position.