Behind the scenes, Assad’s last hours in Syria included farce, despair and escape

Bashar al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his regime collapsed.

Instead, aides, officials and even relatives were deceived or kept in the dark, more than a dozen people with knowledge of the events told Reuters.

Hours before fleeing to Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 army and security officials at the Defense Ministry that Russian military support was on the way and called on ground forces to resist, according to a commander who was present. and requested anonymity to speak.

Civil officials were also left unaware.

Assad told his chief of staff on Saturday when he finished work that he would go home, but instead he went to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle.

He also called his press secretary, Buthaina Shaaban, and asked her to come to his house to write a speech for him, the publicist said. She arrived and found no one there.

“Assad didn’t even make a last stand. He hasn’t even raised his own troops,” said Nadim Houri, executive director of the regional think-tank Arab Reform Initiative. “He left his supporters to face their own fate.”

Reuters was unable to contact Assad in Moscow, where he has been granted political asylum.

Interviews with 14 people familiar with his final days and hours in power paint a portrait of a leader seeking outside help to extend his 24-year rule before resorting to lies and stealth to plot his exit from Syria in the early hours of Sunday.

Most of the sources, which include aides from the former president’s inner circle, regional diplomats, security sources and senior Iranian officials, asked that their names be withheld to freely discuss sensitive matters.

Assad has not even informed his younger brother Maher, commander of the army’s elite 4th Armored Division, of his exit plan, according to three aides.

Maher flew by helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.

Assad’s maternal cousins, Ehab and Eyad Makhlouf, were similarly left behind when Damascus fell to the rebels, according to a Syrian aide and a Lebanese security official.

The pair tried to flee by car to Lebanon, but were ambushed en route by rebels who shot Ehab and wounded Eyad, they said. There was no official confirmation of the death and Reuters was unable to independently verify the incident.

Assad himself fled Damascus by plane on Sunday, December 8, flying in the dark with the aircraft’s transponder turned off, two regional diplomats said, escaping the clutches of rebels attacking the capital.

The dramatic exit ended his 24-year rule and his family’s half-century of uninterrupted power, and brought the 13-year civil war to an abrupt end.

He flew to the Russian Hmeimim air base in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia and from there to Moscow.

Assad’s inner family circle, wife Asma and their three children, were already waiting for him in the Russian capital, according to three former close aides and a top regional official.

Videos of Assad’s home, recorded by rebels and citizens who occupied the presidential compound after his escape and posted on social media, suggest he made a hasty exit, showing cooked food left on the stove and various personal belongings left behind, such as photo albums. family photos.

Russia and Iran did not come to Assad’s rescue

This time, Russia and Iran would not come to the rescue. In 2015, Russian and Iranian military intervention in Syria helped turn the tide of the civil war in Assad’s favor.

That was clear to the Syrian leader in the days leading up to his departure, as he sought help from multiple quarters in a desperate race to cling to power and ensure his security, according to the people interviewed by Reuters.

Assad visited Moscow on November 28, a day after Syrian rebel forces attacked the northern province of Aleppo and swept across the country, but his calls for military intervention were not echoed by the Kremlin, which was unwilling to intervene, three said. regional diplomats.

Hadi al-Bahra, head of Syria’s main opposition abroad, said Assad had not conveyed the reality of the situation to aides, 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.”

Find out who the Syrian rebel leader is and the group that overthrew Bashar al-Assad

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that Russia had tried hard 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 Araqchi met with Assad in Damascus.

By that time, rebels from the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had taken control of Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, and were advancing south as government forces collapsed.

Assad was visibly distressed during the meeting and admitted his army was too weakened to mount an effective resistance, a senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters.

Assad never requested that Tehran send forces to Syria, according to two senior Iranian officials who said he understood that Israel could use any such intervention as an excuse to attack Iranian forces in Syria or even Iran itself.

The Kremlin and Russia’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment for this report, while Iran’s Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

How did Assad face his own downfall?

After exhausting his options, Assad finally accepted the inevitability of his downfall and decided to leave the country, ending his family’s dynastic rule that dates back to 1971.

Three members of Assad’s inner circle said he initially wanted to seek refuge in the United Arab Emirates as rebels seized Aleppo and Homs and advanced toward Damascus.

They said he was shunned by Emiratis, who feared an international backlash for harboring a figure subject to US and European sanctions for allegedly using chemical weapons to crack down on dissent, charges Assad dismissed as a fabrication.

The UAE government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

However, Moscow, while unwilling to intervene militarily, was not prepared to abandon Assad, according to a Russian diplomatic source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov led the diplomatic effort to ensure Assad’s security, engaging Turkey and Qatar to leverage their connections with HTS to ensure Assad’s safe exit to Russia, two regional officials said. .

Who is the family of Bashar al-Assad, who ruled Syria for more than half a century

A Western security source said Lavrov did “everything he could” to ensure Assad’s safe departure.

Qatar and Turkey made deals with HTS to facilitate Assad’s departure, three sources said, despite both countries’ official assertion that they had no contacts with HTS, which is designated by the US and UN as a terrorist organization. .

Moscow also coordinated with neighboring states to ensure that a Russian plane leaving Syrian airspace with Assad on board was not intercepted or targeted, three sources said.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to questions about Assad’s departure, while Reuters was unable to reach HTS for comment.

Assad’s last prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, said he spoke to his then-president by phone on Saturday night at 10:30 p.m.

“In our last call, I told him how difficult the situation was and that there was a huge movement (of people) from Homs towards Latakia… that there was panic and horror in the streets,” he told Saudi Al Arabiya TV this week. week.

“He replied, ‘Tomorrow, we’ll see,’” Jalali added. “‘Tomorrow, tomorrow,’ was the last thing he said to me.”

Jalali said he tried calling Assad again at dawn on Sunday but got no answer.

This content was originally published in Behind the scenes, Assad’s last hours in Syria were farce, despair and escape on the CNN Brasil website.

Source: CNN Brasil