The End of Assad? Syrian Rebels enter the outskirts of Aleppo for the first time since 2016

I can't help but feel that the bigger story in all of this is that Russia as we know it is done. The fall of the U.S.S.R. is still playing out, juggernauts as big as what the U.S.S.R. was, take a long time to come to rest when they disintegrate.

As for Syria, far too early to say what is going to happen, that said I think there will be a civil war. Countries tend to experience those not long after gaining independence or throwing off a tyrant.

The other big question kow is what comes of thr Syrian refugees? Can they start to rebuild their country?

I think the Russians have had access to the naval base the whole time since 1971, although it might not have been as well used from the time the Soviet Union fell apart to the time that the Syrian civil war kicked off. I think the airbase is a fairly new addition and I don't know how they could possibly keep that for themselves.

It's possible that a Cuban Guantanamo situation might happen where the naval base is cordoned off and has nothing to do with the rest of Syria, but it's impossible to tell how anything pans out at this stage.

Huge crowds outside Sednaya prison. Can't fathom what it's like to have had a loved one taken and sent to that place, the accounts of mass torture there are insane.

The regime have been burning documents, but with the speed of the collapse hopefully some of these people can get some sort of closure.

Some info on Sednaya for those who don't know. After people were tortured in other prisons this was basically the execution place, often combined with torture. It had it's own crematorium where it's believed they burnt the bodies.

Also Sednaya was just one prison out of a vast network.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/09/inside-sednaya-torture-prison-syria-assad

"On Sunday, people milled around the metal staircase, entering and emerging from different doors, but always returning to the centre. Rebel fighters seemed no better informed. One had finally found a map, and crowds huddled around him as he pored over the half-a-metre wide paper document, its looping scrawl almost illegible.

The cramped cells were littered with blankets and clothes, cast off when prisoners were suddenly freed by rebels earlier in the day. Some had jagged holes in the walls, where additional prisoners had been crammed. Videos showed fighters freeing female prisoners on Sunday, who needed to be encouraged to leave, unable to believe they were truly getting out.

The narrow cells, no more than a few meters across, had been stuffed with more than a dozen people at a time, leaving no space to lie down, according to rights groups. The screams of prisoners being tortured could be heard echoing down the hallways."

According to Amnesty International, up to 20,000 prisoners were held at Sednaya, most of them imprisoned after secret sham trials that lasted no more than a few minutes. Survivors of the prison recounted brutal daily beatings and torture by prison guards that included rape, electric shocks and more. Many were tortured to death.

Survivors said guards enforced a rule of absolute silence within the prison. If the detainees could not speak, they could at least write. Cell walls were covered in scrawled, handwritten messages. Tab, khadni. Enough already, just take me, one message read.

In the chaos of the prison break, records were taken by families searching for relatives. Each ledger, filled with names and other details, were carried out of the prison where groups of people would gather and see if they knew anyone mentioned. Rights groups have cautioned that records need to be preserved in an orderly fashion, so that the fate of about 136,000 people arrested by the Assad regime can be documented."

Some details on the types of systematic torture used

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sednaya_Prison

"The soldiers will practice their 'hospitality' with each new group of detainees during the 'welcome party'… You are thrown to the ground and they use different instruments for the beatings: electric cables with exposed copper wire ends – they have little hooks so they take a part of your skin – normal electric cables, plastic water pipes of different sizes and metal bars. Also, they have created what they call the 'tank belt', which is made out of tyre that has been cut into strips... They make a very specific sound; it sounds like a small explosion. I was blindfolded the whole time, but I would try to see somehow. All you see is blood: your own blood, the blood of others. After one hit, you lose your sense of what is happening. You're in shock. But then the pain comes."[33]

Another former detainee is Samer al-Ahmed who, on a regular basis, was forced to squeeze his head through the small hatch near the bottom of his cell door. It was then straightened out by the prison guards when they, with all their weight, jumped on his head. This required that al-Ahmed's head was pressed against the edge of the hatch. The guards would continue the torture until blood started flowing across the floor.[34]"

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"They had me stand on the barrel, and they tied the rope around my wrists. Then they took away the barrel. There was nothing below my feet. They were dangling in the air. They brought three sticks… [They were] hitting me everywhere… After they were done beating me with the wooden sticks, they took the cigarettes. They were putting them out all over my body. It felt like a knife excavating my body, cutting me apart."

[35]

 Other methods of torture consisted of leaving people in stress positions while beating them or torturing them with electricity.

[35]

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I keep thinking about the actual torturers and murderers who worked in those horrific places. Where are they now? Will they ever see justice for the horrors they inflicted over the years. This went on for decades. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of them.

And more of the same can be expected when the Iranian prisons are opened after the Ayatollah and his Mullahs are dealt with.

Hopefully a lot of them do by themselves especially those in Turkey. It would be nice to see Turkey/UN/EU start a rebuilding program because after what those Russian peace lover's did many town's and cities are badly damaged.

But if that was to happen the benefits in the EU should be cut and travel voucher's home provided. Probably won't happen though because we all know the EU loves a good old brain drain from more vulnerable countries.

The torture and savagery of the o923ttoman empire was famous, even century ago.

ReRemember this is the source of empire and imperialism.

Yes, but I said we shouldn't care as long as it doesn't impact europe.The guys who've overthrown Assad are the ones who want to destroy western civilization yet european leaders bizarrely are celebrating them now.As far as I'm concerned if they want to turn the rest of the middle east into a hellhole as long as europe doesn't have to pick up the tab for it then fair enough, I know it's not a nice thing to say but unfortunately the west trying to help the middle east appears to achieve nothing so we should just leave them be to get on with it.People also tend to forget that the reason western nations are fairly stable (in comparison to countries like Syria) is people fought hard over centuries and in the past 100 years (and currently in Ukraine) to get rid of the kind of people who would ruin western civilization , maybe middle eastern countries need to do this themselves if they want a better life and the west should just stay the hell out of it .

This is so incredibly naive.

The largest destabilising forces again and again in the middle east has been intervention by western countries. Propping up strong men. Sponsoring coups. Protecting hydrocarbon access. Protecting canal access. Outright invasions. The "war against terror". Drawing arbitrary lines on maps creating artificial countries. Protecting sea routes. Funneling arms to one side or other in a civil war.

And on and on and on…

That views smacks of western narcissism, these societies were old before even people in Europe built the first village

Source for this?

May be confusion with the Kurds who have been fighting with different factions in the North

You appear to be countering an argument that I wasn't making.

Just because I'm critical of Western interventions in the middle east doesn't by default make me some kind of Tankie.

Russia and China are two cynical authoritarian regimes more than capable of their own interventions with disastrous consequences for the smaller countries involved. If it weren't for Russia Assad would have been gone long ago and both of them constantly use their UN veto power to protect some of the worst autocrats in the world.

As for Afghanistan (which isn't actually in the middle east but I'm sure you knew that) the Taliban themselves are a direct result of CIA interventions in the Russian war in Afghanistan - one of those unintended consequences of a past intervention.