President Bashar al-Assad's long and brutal reign in Syria has ended. After 13 years of civil war, Syria's rebel fighters have stormed the capital, Damascus, and claimed victory.
The government's forces fled without significant resistance as rebel fighters poured into the city. Assad resigned and left Syria, Russia said, but his location could not be confirmed. The rebels appear to have taken over the state television, and they announced Syria to be "free of the tyrant."
The country's prime minister, who remains in Damascus, said he would work on a transition government. The rebels called on their forces to stay away from public institutions until they could be formally handed over.
The rebels said they are now continuing their advance into the east. Below, we explain what has happened and what may come next.
What we know
The rebels' rapid advance over the past two weeks was a dramatic end to a yearslong stalemate. (Read The Morning's explanation of the war.)
Until recently, a coalition of rebel groups had been stuck, pinned into a corner of Syria's northwest. Then they blazed through the country and took its major cities, including Aleppo, Hama and Homs. They freed people inside many of the Assad regime's prisons, where he had for decades tortured and executed political prisoners. This weekend, the rebels poured into Damascus.
As rebels entered the city, Syrian government troops reportedly peeled off their uniforms and fled their posts. Gunfire sounded in the city overnight as the rebels celebrated, witnesses said. People left their homes to join them.
Residents stomped burning images of Assad and attempted to topple a statue of his father. (The Assad family has ruled Syria for five decades.) They were unsuccessful in taking down the statue, but left a trash can on its head. As some celebrated, others mourned all they had lost during years of war.
"No one should shed any tears over the end of the Assad regime," Daniel Shapiro, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said.
What comes next
It's unclear how the rebels' victory could reshape the Middle East.
Syria's neighbors are bracing for instability. Israel's military said it had entered a demilitarized buffer zone in territory it controls next to Syria. Iraq has secured its border with Syria, according to the official Iraqi News Agency.
The collapse of the Assad family's long rule could create a dangerous vacuum, The Wall Street Journal reports, and outside powers may maneuver for influence. Assad contained rebel forces for more than a decade with Iranian and Russian backing. But in recent days, Iran and Russia withheld significant military support.
The rebels' victory could cause some of the millions of Syrian refugees who fled during the past decade to return home.
It's also unclear who may govern Syria -- or what that rule could look like. The leading rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is a Sunni Muslim organization once affiliated with Al Qaeda. It has since renounced Al Qaeda, but the U.S. government classifies it as a terrorist group.
Inside the country, Syria's foreign ministry has issued a statement that appears to hail the shifting balance of power: "A new page in Syrian history is being written."
For more
The Biden administration is concerned that the rebels could replace Syria's brutal autocracy with something worse, The Washington Post reports. Still, some experts say the rebels have changed.
"Our freedom has returned": As the rebels advanced into Damascus, many Syrians remembered what has been lost in the long war.
Read a guide to the civil war.
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THE SUNDAY DEBATE
Should President Biden have pardoned his son Hunter?
No. Biden threw democratic institutions under the bus when he painted the charges against his son as illegitimate. He "promotes the toxic idea that figures like Trump and Bolsonaro -- and Hunter Biden -- aren't subject to the rules we plebeians answer to," Tim Padgett writes for The Miami Herald.
Yes. Not only was Biden right to extend mercy to his son, but he should also extend it to Trump's enemies beyond Hunter. "Protecting the potential targets of a wrathful president would serve the interests of democracy, effectively short-circuiting Trump's revenge agenda," The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin writes.
FROM OPINION
Running the government like a business is a popular idea, but some crucial roles of the government -- like counterterrorism -- are by their nature inefficient, Ray Fisman writes.
Criminals judge risk by the likelihood of getting caught, not the potential punishment. That's why we need more police and fewer "tough on crime" policies, Jennifer Doleac writes.
Here is a column by Ross Douthat on JD Vance and Elon Musk.
MORNING READS
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Dairy: How the messy process of milking cows can spread bird flu.
Most popular: The most read story in The Morning this week was about a woman who met Hunter Biden in a nightclub -- and fell in love.
Routine: How Catherine Russell of Off Broadway's "Perfect Crime" spends her Sundays.
Vows: At the top of her bucket list: saying "I do."
Lives Lived: Miho Nakayama was a reigning J-pop star as a teenager who later became a critically acclaimed actress, gaining international attention for her starring role in the Japanese drama "Love Letter." She died at 54.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
By Elisabeth Egan
"Rental House," by Weike Wang: There's something about Wang's spare, elegant prose that feels like an appropriate counterweight to the glitz and chaos of the holiday season. In her third novel, we follow a New York couple on two vacations several years apart -- first to a humble cabin on the Cape, then to a tricked out bungalow in the Catskills. Keru and Nate's visitors, menus, outings, even the behavior of a beloved sheepdog tell you everything you need to know about the state of their relationship, which comes with more baggage than an airport carousel. Thankfully, none of it is heavy enough to cancel out the humor and humanity of this intelligently escapist tale.
More on books
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THE INTERVIEW
By David Marchese
This week's subject for The Interview is the Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton. We talked about, among many other things, a creeping meanness in the world as well as the intersection of art, life and political action.
I used to feel as if consuming art was sufficient when it came to forming a political identity and political engagement. Now I think I should have spent more time and energy out in the street and less time and energy in the theater or with headphones on. I'm rambling, but these are things I've been thinking about.
I'm liking everything you're saying, and I'm surfing the wave of it. It's not a ramble at all. The real question is: Who are we and how must we live? I don't necessarily want to designate one thing as political activism and another as artistic practice and another as living your life. For me, there ain't no walls between any of them. Does that explain the attitude?
The life came first.
The life always comes first, and the work comes out of the life. Here's another thing that I wanted to say: this is a huge thing, this is a bombshell I'm going to lay down.
Go for it.
I wonder whether art isn't a call to our innate goodness -- an opportunity to connect with the empathy machine that cinema is. Since we've talked about the rise of the meanness of right-wing politics -- let's use a word that is appropriate here: meanness. What oil might get through that grease? I don't want to assume that anybody else believes in innate goodness, but I'm declaring that I do. I do believe we were all little children, scared little animals once, including all of those people that we're thinking about. I don't know what happened to them to make them this mean, but we have to contact them somehow.
Read more of the interview here.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
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THE MORNING RECOMMENDS ...
Decorate your mantel for the holidays.
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MEAL PLAN
After a heavy week of post-Thanksgiving eating, some lighter meals are in order, Emily Weinstein writes in her Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter. Her picks include maple-miso salmon with green beans and lemon chicken breasts with herbs.
NOW TIME TO PLAY
Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was meditative.
Can you put eight historical events -- including the development of pasteurization, the spread of universal education, and the release of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- in chronological order? Take this week's Flashback quiz.
And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands.
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