Light on the last hours of its deposed dictator Syria, Bashar al-Assad drops Reuters. Bashar al-Assad trusted almost no one – not even his family – with his plans to leave Syria as his reign collapsed. Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were duped or kept in the dark.
Apparently Bashar Al-Assad fooled everyone that Russian military aid was arriving while he was sneaking it out of Syria to Russia, not even informing his brother.
Hours before fleeing to Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 military and security chiefs at the defense ministry on Saturday (07.12.2024) that Russian military support was on the way and urged ground forces to hold on, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity to speak on the matter.
Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work, that he would return home, but instead headed to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle. He also called his media adviser and asked her to come to his house to write a speech for him, the aide said. He arrived and found no one there.
“Assad didn’t even make a last move. He didn’t even rally his own troops.” said Nadim Houri, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative think tank. “Let his supporters face their fate”.
Based on a series of interviews with 14 people familiar with his final days and hours in power, Reuters portrays a leader who sought outside help to extend his 24-year tenure before relying on deception and secrecy to engineer his sudden exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.
Most of the sources, who include close aides to the former president, regional diplomats, security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked not to be named to discuss sensitive matters freely.
In the dark and his family
Assad didn’t even inform him his younger brother, Maher, commander of the Army’s elite 4th Armored Division, about his exit plan, according to three of his aides. Maher flew a helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.
The Assad’s cousins on his mother’s side, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, they also stayed behind as Damascus fell to the rebels, according to a Syrian aide and a Lebanese security official. The couple tried to escape by car to Lebanon, but were ambushed on the road by insurgents who shot Ehab and wounded Eyad. There was no official confirmation of the death and Reuters was unable to independently verify the incident.
Assad himself left Damascus by plane on Sunday, Dec. 8, flying under radar with the plane’s transponder disabled, two regional diplomats said, escaping the clutches of rebels who stormed the capital.
The secret, dramatic escape ended his 24-year rule and the Assad family’s half-century of unbroken power and brought the 13-year civil war to an abrupt halt.
He flew to the Russian air base Hmeimim in the coastal city of Latakia and from there to Moscow. Assad’s close family, his wife Asma and their three children, were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former close associates and a senior regional official.
Videos from Assad’s home taken by rebels and civilians thronging the presidential compound after his flight and posted on social media suggest he made a exit rush, showing cooked food in the oven and many personal items left behind, such as family photo albums.
“No” from Russia and Iran to save him
There would be no military bailout from Russia, whose intervention in 2015 had helped turn the tide of the civil war in Assad’s favor, or from his other staunch ally, Iran.
That was made clear to the Syrian leader in the days leading up to his departure, when he sought help from various quarters in a desperate bid to cling to power and stay safe, according to the people who spoke to Reuters.
Assad visited the Moscow on November 28a day after Syrian rebels attacked the northern province of Aleppo and blitzed across the country, but his calls for military intervention to the Kremlin fell on deaf ears as Moscow was unwilling to intervene, three regional diplomats said.
Hadi al-Bahra, head of Syria’s main opposition abroad, said Assad had not conveyed the reality of the situation to his aides back home, citing a source close to Assad and a regional official. “He told his commanders and associates after his trip to Moscow that military support was coming,” Bahra added. “He was lying to them. The message he received from Moscow was negative.”
The representative of the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Russia had gone to great lengths to help stabilize Syria in the past, but its priority now was the conflict in Ukraine. Four days after that trip, on December 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghtsi met with Assad in Damascus.
By then, rebels from the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had captured Syria’s second-largest city of Aleppo and were advancing south as government forces collapsed.
Assad was clearly distressed during the meeting and admitted that his military was too weakened to mount an effective resistance, a senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters.
But he never asked Tehran to deploy forces to Syria, according to two senior Iranian officials who said he understood that Israel could use any such intervention as a reason to target Iranian forces in Syria or even Iran itself. .
The last call and the run
After exhausting his options, Assad finally accepted inevitability of his downfall and decided to leave the country, ending his family’s dynastic rule dating back to 1971. Three members of his inner circle said he initially wanted to seek refuge in United Arabic Emirateas the rebels captured Aleppo and Homs and advanced towards Damascus.
They said his request was rejected by the Emirates who feared an international backlash for hosting a figure subject to US and European sanctions for allegedly using chemical weapons in a crackdown on rebels, charges which Assad has dismissed as fabricated.
The UAE government declined to comment on the matter.
But Moscow, while unwilling to intervene militarily, was unwilling to abandon Assad, according to a Russian diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrovwho attended the Doha Forum in Qatar on Saturday and Sunday, led the diplomatic effort to secure Assad, pledging Turkey and Qatar to use their connections with HTS to ensure Assad’s safe exit to Russia, two said regional officials. A Western security source said Lavrov was doing “everything he could” to ensure Assad’s safe departure.
The Catarrh and the Turkey agreed with HTS to facilitate Assad’s exit, three of the sources said, despite both countries’ official claim that they had no contact with HTS, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the US and the UN.
Moscow also coordinated with neighboring states to ensure that a Russian plane leaving Syrian airspace with Assad was not intercepted or targeted, the sources said.
Assad’s last prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, he said he spoke to his then chairman on the phone on Saturday night at 10.30pm.
“In our last call, I told him how difficult the situation was and that there was a huge movement (of people) from Homs to Latakia … that there was panic and horror in the streets,” he told Saudi Al Arabiya television this week.
“He replied: “Tomorrow, we’ll see”, Jalali added. “Tomorrow, tomorrow,” was the last thing he said to me.”
Jalali said that tried calling Asad again as Sunday dawned, but received no response.