What to know as Syrian rebels take charge after forcing Bashar al-Assad from power
Banks and shops in the Syrian capital Damascus were reopening Tuesday as some aspects of normal life appeared to resume in the capital two days after longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad was forced to flee the country amid a stunning rebel offensive.
Crowds gathered at detention facilities, including the notorious Saydnaya jail, to search for anyone who might still be trapped in tunnels or secret rooms. Groups of freed detainees, some emaciated and bearing the scars of apparent torture, walked through the streets of Damascus, according to AFP.
A significant number of people who had fled the war in Syria and became refugees in neighboring nations also started trying to return home. On Syria's border with Turkey, CBS News witnessed dozens of Syrians re-entering the country, many saying they were eager to rebuild their country.
But as celebrations continued over the toppling of Assad's brutal, repressive regime, questions remained about the future of Syria, given that the main rebel group behind the offensive, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is a former regional branch of al-Qaeda.
What comes next from rebel leaders?
Mohammed Jalali, who served as prime minister under Assad but remained in the country after the president fled, agreed on Monday to hand over power to a transitional government being assembled by HTS. HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, quickly appointed another senior rebel leader as interim prime minister.
Mohamed al-Bashir, who has most recently run the HTS-backed Salvation Government in rebel-held Idlib province, said Tuesday that he'd been tasked by al-Jolani with forming a new caretaker government.
Al-Bashir said a meeting was held Tuesday between members of the ousted Assad government and the Salvation Government from Idlib, including Jalali and a-Jolani, to discuss the handover to the new, temporary administration, which he said would manage the country during a three-month transitional period, ending at the beginning of March. He didn't say anything about what would happen beyond that date.
"We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people," al-Jolani said Tuesday, according to the AFP news agency. He said rewards would be offered for information about "senior army and security officers involved in war crimes," and that the transitional authorities would seek the return of wanted officials who had fled abroad.
Reaction to Syria's new de-facto leadership
"Syria is now at a crossroads with great opportunities for us, but also with grave risks. And we need really to look at both," Geir Pedersen, U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, told journalists in Geneva. "We know that, of course, HTS is now the dominant group in control of Damascus, but it's important also to remember that they are not the only armed group in Damascus."
"This is an incredible moment for the Syrian people," Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood said in New York. "We're really focused right now on trying to see where the situation goes. Can there be a governing authority in Syria that respects the rights and dignities of the Syrian population?"
For the U.S. government and its allies, the primary concern appeared to be securing weapons held by the ousted regime, including chemical weapons.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday that, working with international partners, the U.S. military was "making sure those weapons don't fall into the hands of anyone who would want to use them against civilians or against our U.S. forces or partners in the region."
Singh said U.S. officials had "no direct lines of communication with" HTS but that they were communicating through partners on the ground. She noted that HTS was not the only faction involved in the rebellion that toppled Assad, and that the U.S. was "exploring out avenues to communicate" with other groups.
In London, Britain's top diplomat told lawmakers Monday that while HTS had "offered reassurances to minorities" in Syria that they would be treated fairly and "committed to cooperating with the international community over monitoring chemical weapons," the group would be judged "by their actions."
Foreign Secretary David Lammy added that the U.K. and its international partners would be "monitoring closely how they [HTS] and other parties to this conflict treat all civilians in areas they control."
HTS has tried for a number of years to publicly distance itself from its jihadist roots, vowing to respect Syria's diverse population.
What happened in Syria's civil war?
The war in Syria began in 2011 when a pro-democracy uprising calling for the end of Assad's long reign escalated quickly into a brutal civil war. Since then, the conflict has claimed more than 500,000 lives and displaced some 12 million people from their homes across the country.
After a decade of brutal conflict, the war largely stalled after the Assad regime regained control over many major cities — with vital support from Russia and Iran, in addition to the powerful Iranian proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Some northern and eastern areas of the country remained under the control of Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed rebel groups.
In late November, rebel forces in the northwest launched their shock offensive, led largely by HTS. With other conflicts currently occupying Assad's backers Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the rebel forces are believed to have seen an opportunity to renew their fight against his army.
HTS leader al-Jolani told CNN in a recent interview that the goal of the rebel offensive was to remove Assad from power.
"When we talk about objectives, the goal of the revolution remains the overthrow of this regime," he told CNN. "The seeds of the regime's defeat have always been within it… the Iranians attempted to revive the regime, buying it time, and later the Russians also tried to prop it up. But the truth remains: this regime is dead."
How was the Assad regime toppled so quickly?
"Clearly HTS's military and political skills, honed over four years in rebel-held Idlib since the last ceasefire, have been a major factor in their successes. But the weakness of Assad's forces has been the other side of the story," Christopher Phillips, an associate fellow with the Chatham House think tank's Middle East program, said.
Phillips said international factors played a significant role in Assad's inability to maintain power, including Assad's closest allies being weakened or otherwise occupied, but he said there were also a number of important domestic factors.
"Assad has been complacent. His military has melted away because it is deeply demoralized. Assad has focused on winning international recognition rather than consolidating his 'victory' in the civil war at home," Phillips said. "There has been no peace dividend for those who stayed loyal during the war, or for those former rebel areas that opted to reconcile rather than fight the regime. Instead, regime corruption and continuing sanctions, not to mention the regime's characteristic brutality, has meant life for Syrians living under Assad has been grim. In retrospect, it is unsurprising then that, after HTS' advances in the north, former rebellious parts of Homs, the Houran and Damascus rejoined the rebel cause this week, ultimately hastening the regime's collapse."
U.S. and Israel carry out strikes in Syria
The United States has around 900 soldiers on the ground in Syria. The U.S. forces have operated in the country for years as part of the American effort to support the Kurdish-led rebel forces, and to combat the ISIS extremists who seized control of a huge part of Syria and neigboring Iraq in the years after the war began.
The U.S. said it carried out airstrikes against ISIS operatives and camps on Sunday, hitting 75 targets — the heaviest day of bombardment in years.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told journalists during a visit to Japan on Sunday that as the situation in Syria unfolds, "there's a potential that elements in the area, such as ISIS," try to take advantage of "this opportunity" and "regain capability."
Austin said the U.S. was "still evaluating the results" of the strikes but that he believed they were successful in the goal "to keep the pressure on ISIS and to deny them the ability to easily resurge."
Israel has also carried out dozens of strikes on sites linked to Syrian state forces and Iran since Sunday, with the aim of preventing Syrian military equipment from falling into the hands of hostile groups, the Reuters news agency reported. The Israeli military moved tanks into a demilitarized zone along the country's border with Syria in what it said was a bid to prevent any possible spill-over of fighting into Israel, but denied reports that its troops had pushed any further into Syria.
