The Fall of the Regime

On December 8th 2024, Bashar al-Assad boarded a Russian military plane, and flew away into exile. His hasty, ignoble retreat marked the surreal culmination of the most brutal and bloody struggle of the Arab Spring. The fulfillment of a revolutionary demand scrawled by children on the walls of Daraa nearly fourteen years ago: الشعب يريد إسقاط النظام // the people want the fall of the regime. In the wake of that regime’s fall, and the capture of state power by a coalition of rebel forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the world has been forced to come to terms with the distorted legacy of a revolution they never supported. As the scale of the Assad regime’s crimes begin to come to light, and Syrians celebrate the end of a collective decades-long nightmare, much of the Western left continues to subordinate the lived experiences and struggles of Syrians to their own political biases and limited worldviews. This video is a collaboration with the From the Periphery media collective. For