'The army just ran away' How Bashar al-Assad lost his brutal grip on Syria

Under the former president's regime, hundreds of thousands of protesters were imprisoned, tortured and killed. Then on Sunday morning Syrians woke up a new country - and a new reality

- By William Christou in Damascus

One month ago, during a meeting in Beirut, a senior western diplomat was venting his frustration: when would international sanctions be lifted from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad?

Though the dictator had few friends, it seemed that the brutal killing and torture of hundreds of thousands of protesters had succeeded in finally crushing Syria's 13-year revolution.

It was time to face facts, the diplomat said. Assad had won the war, and the world needed to move on.

As diplomats in Beirut talked, rebels in Syria were planning. A year earlier, figures in the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in north-west Syria had sent a message to rebels in the south: get ready.

On 29 November, rebel forces led by HTS captured a number of towns on the outskirts of Aleppo city, the first rebel victory over the Assad regime in five years.

Watching from Damascus, Mohammed, a van driver, said that as soon as HTS took those first towns, he knew what was coming.

"From the very first moment, I knew this was it. The regime would fall," he said as he drove through empty checkpoints and swerved to avoid the abandoned tanks that littered the highway leading into Damascus less than a day after Assad fell.

Rebels fighting on the frontlines were not so certain. "The first line of defence fought hard. They were made up of Hezbollah and Iranian-backed fighters and they resisted, hard," said Abu Bilal, a rebel who fought alongside HTS in north-west Syria. Once they broke through the first line of defence, however, "the army just ran away".

The rebel advance was at first met with silence from Damascus. Then the defence ministry spoke of a tactical retreat designed to spare civilian lives. Syrian state media said that videos of opposition fighters entering formerly government cities were staged photo-ops: rebels were entering towns, asking residents if they could pose for a few pictures and then withdrawing.