What is next for Syria after Assad's fall?

The real test for the country and the Middle East will come when triumphant but disparate rebel factions divide the spoils and jostle for power.

- Andrew England

After more than a year of relentless conflict in the Middle East, the stunning capitulation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime will go down in the region's history as one of its greatest shocks.

In just 12 days, rebels marched from the north and then the south to the heart of Damascus, capturing the capital and ending the Assads' more than 50-year dynastical rule over the nation. In less than two weeks, they achieved what tens of thousands of armed opposition fighters had failed to do in 13 horrendous years of civil war.

Moscow and Tehran, Mr. Assad's main backers, were unable, or unwilling to stem the tide, both caught up in their own conflicts - Russia in Ukraine, Iran and its proxies in their 14-month conflict with Israel.

In many ways, the regime's spectacular fall appears to be one of the inadvertent consequences of Israel's ferocious retaliations against its foes since Hamas' Oct 7, 2023, attack. The following year has upended all previous norms in the region, fostering a combustible, unpredictable environment.

Israeli forces have for months been launching air strikes on Syria, killing Iranian commanders and their proxies, while bombing facilities linked to Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant movement that also supported Mr. Assad's regime during the civil war.

But more than anything, the rebels' lightning offensive underlined the parlous nature of Mr. Assad's broken, corrupt regime.

Mr. Assad, who succeeded his father, Mr. Hafez al-Assad, in 2000, was a brutal despot. He used the cruellest of means to put down his opponents during the civil war: chemical weapons, barrel bombs, siege and starvation tactics, mass detentions, torture and murder.

More than 12 million people - half the population - have been forced from their homes during the decade of war. There are more than 100,000 so-called "disappeared" - people who were taken by the security forces, their whereabouts still unknown.