Syria's euphoria may be premature

It turned out that there were no speed bumps in the fast lane on the road to Damascus. The incredibly swift demise of the Assad regime appears to have astonished everyone, including the rebel force that led the unexpected charge.

- MAHIR ALI

The subsequent explosion of relief and joy across much of Syria is hardly a surprise, even though it is tempered with understandable anxiety about what might follow. After all, the regional precedents - from Tunisia, Libya and Egypt to Yemen and Iraq - are hardly reassuring.

Bashar al-Assad was the odd one out when the winds of change ushered in the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, and long-standing dominoes tumbled. As a popular uprising rattled the regime, provoking a deadly state response, it was assumed he would share the fate of Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Qadhafi or Saddam Hussein.

As Robert Fisk recalled, any foreign correspondent who dared to accurately predict that the Syrian dictator might not immediately be toppled was dubbed an Assad apologist.

While Fisk never hesitated to describe in detail the ruthless excesses of the Baathist regime, often targeting unarmed protesters or other civilians, he also had the temerity to point out that the state did not enjoy a monopoly on violence. He noted the frustrations of Al Jazeera correspondents, whose visual evidence of attacks on government forces, and of armed insurgents entering Syria from Lebanon, was rejected by their employer.