Jeremy Bowen
Function, BBC, Foreign Policy Editor
Reporting from Damascus, Syria
When I left London nearly two weeks ago after the rebel coalition captured Aleppo - a fascinating victory overshadowed by what followed - I thought I would be reporting from the heart of a raging war.
A group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, was cleaning up everything in front of them, but I assumed the regime would fight back, because it didn't stop doing so even as it began to lose ground in the years before the Russians intervened in 2015. years by bombing Syrian villages and cities and turning them into ruins.
Nearly a decade later, it was apparent that Bashar al-Assad's Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies had other wars to deal with.
But while the regime has struggled with reluctant recruits, it has always been able to find Syrians willing to fight and die, even at the height of the post-2011 war, when rebels controlled much of Damascus outside the city center and the road to Beirut.
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I visited many times those people on the front line.
Many of the most effective units were led by officers from Assad's own Alawite community.
In Aleppo circa 2015, an Alawite general passed out glasses of perfectly distilled arrack, poured from bottles that once contained Jack Daniels.
He proudly said that arrack, an anise-based alcoholic drink popular throughout the Middle East, originated in the Assad family's birthplace in the hills beyond the port of Latakia.
In front, his unit was pounding the eastern part of the city under the control of the rebels.
Not all of them were Alawites.
In Jobar, a district on the edge of central Damascus, a Christian officer loyal to Assad from the Syrian Arab Army took me through the tunnels they had dug under the rubble to attack the rebels.
He told how the rebels also dug tunnels and how they would sometimes break into each other's houses, killing each other in the dark.
The young man had a crucifix tattooed on his wrist and another hanging around his neck, and spoke of how he had to fight to protect his community from jihadist extremists on the other side.
My instinct about the fighting spirit of Assad's decimated band of loyalists could not have been more wrong.
On Saturday December 7, I went to sleep after hearing that Homs had fallen.
When I woke up, Bashar al-Assad was already on his way to Russia, and rebel fighters were celebrating in the streets of Damascus.
They fired more bullets into the air in celebration than in anger at Assad loyalists, who were fleeing for their lives.
I saw a convoy of hundreds of cars waiting to leave the country at the border with Lebanon, full of disappointed, defeated people and frightened families.
Soldiers threw away their uniforms and weapons without firing a single bullet and went home.
Assad's regime has crumbled, consumed by corruption, cruelty and brutal disregard for the lives of Syrians.
Even Assad's own Alawite community no longer fought for him.
That's why on Thursday night this week, instead of hiding from shells and bullets on the icy streets of Homs or Hama, as I expected to do, I walked the marble corridors of the presidential palace in Damascus alongside Ahmed al-Shar, the de facto ruler. Syria.
He gave up his uniform and exchanged his wartime pseudonym, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, for his real name.
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Many Syrians doubt his claim that he has also replaced old jihadist beliefs with a more tolerant form of Syrian religious nationalism.
It is true that he crossed paths with Al Qaeda in 2016, after a long career as a jihadist fighter in Iraq and Syria.
But as I discovered in Assad's palace, Ahmed al-Shara, a tall, soft-spoken man in his early forties, is reluctant to go into detail about the kind of Syria he wants.
He gives the impression of an extremely intelligent and politically versed person.
Like many other seasoned politicians, he often does not give direct answers to direct questions.
He denied that he wanted Syria to become the Afghanistan of the Middle East.
The Taliban, he says, “rule a tribal society. Syria is completely different."
Syria's new rulers will respect its culture and history.
When I asked him if women would have the freedoms they are used to here, he said that 60 percent of the students at the universities in Idlib, his stronghold, are women.
But he tried to avoid answering the question about the mandatory hijab for women.
Rumors are circulating in Damascus about bearded HTS fighters ordering women to cover their hair.
I pointed out to him that there was a big fight on social media after a woman asked to take a selfie with him and pulled a hood over her head while taking the photo.
Conservatives criticized Al Shara for agreeing to pose with a woman who is not part of his family.
Liberals saw her hood as a dark foreshadowing of Syria's future.
If he was irritated by this question, he didn't show it.
"I didn't force her. But that's my personal freedom. I want to be photographed in a way that suits me. I didn't force her. It's not the same as having a law that applies across the country. But there is a culture in this country that the law must respect."
Al-Shara referred to the fact that many Syrians, and not only in the majority Sunni Muslim community, are pious.
Many women wear hijab.
The point is, secular Syrians would say, that he can choose.
In the half century of Assad's rule, Syrians have developed survival strategies that often involve hiding their feelings and doing what is expected of them.
Shocked, nervous, secular Syrians showed me phone footage of mass prayers outside the university when students returned there last week.
Was it, they asked themselves, real piety or did the young people do as they were told because it had been like this their entire lives?
All this will be, said Al Shara, a question for the new constitution, which will be decided by the council of legal experts.
Al-Shara's critics point out that as things stand now, he is the one who chooses who will join the committee he says will write new laws, just like the new constitution.
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Ahmed al-Shara mostly wanted to talk about the oppression of the people by the old regime.
"Syrian problems are much bigger than the problems you are asking about. Half of the population was expelled from Syria and forcibly displaced from their homes.
"They were hit with barrel bombs and unguided stupid bombs and with more than 250 chemical attacks. Many Syrians drowned in the sea trying to escape to Europe."
He admits that the Syrians have no chance to begin to stabilize or rebuild the country if the sanctions are not lifted.
Sanctions were initially directed against the Assad regime.
To retain them, he said, would be to treat the victim the same as his oppressor.
He denies that the group is led by a terrorist organization, as is the current position of the UN and most of the world's most powerful countries.
The visits of foreign diplomats indicate that a change in sanctions and terrorist status is possible.
He was exclusive when I pointed out that I knew diplomats had told him that changing that status would depend on evidence that he would keep his promise to respect minority rights and lead an inclusive political process.
"What is important to me is that the Syrian people trust me. We promised the Syrian people that we would free them from this criminal regime, and we did. That is what is first and only important to me.
"I am not very interested in what will be said about us abroad. I am not obliged to prove to the world that we are working seriously to respect the interests of our people in Syria."
In the past two weeks, I have heard many Syrians say they want to be left alone while they try to rebuild the country.
That sounds like a pipe dream.
The war destroyed most of the country, but it also deprived Syria of its sovereignty.
Bashar al-Assad became a client of Iran and Russia, and fled the country when they stopped supporting him.
The US is in the northeast to hunt down the remnants of the Islamic State and to protect Kurdish allies.
Turkey controls much of the northwest and has its own Arab-led militia.
There are hints that the Turks, who have close ties to HTS, are preparing new attacks on the Syrian Kurds, who have close ties to Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
Israel, currently more aggressive than it has been in years, has made the most explicit use of the power vacuum it has observed in Syria.
He continues to bomb the remnants of the state's military infrastructure and seize new Syrian territory to add to the Golan Heights, which he has occupied since 1967.
The Israelis, as always, justify their actions as self-defense.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Syria, Geir Pedersen, told me that Israel's actions were "irresponsible".
He says Israel must not behave in a way that could "destabilize this very, very fragile transition process."
Ahmed al-Shara knows that he cannot stand up to the power of Israel, which is supported by the US.
"Syria is exhausted from war whether Israel is strong or not. Syria must strengthen and develop. We have no plans for aggression against Israel. Syria will not pose a threat to Israel or anyone else."
Ahmed al-Shara's agenda is overcrowded.
Syria is in ruins, and he says he wants his country to heal and revive, but it is fraught with challenges that could make his task impossible.
HTS is not the only armed group in Syria, and there are those who want to destroy its fledgling administration.
Enemies of HTS from the Islamic State network could attempt destabilizing attacks.
Syrians' desire for revenge against Assad's killers - and the former president himself - could explode into destructive public anger if HTS fails to show that justice will be served to the people who have kept the boot on Syria's throats for so long.
Ahmed al-Shara rightly sees Syria as a fulcrum in the heart of the Middle East.
"Syria is an important country with a strategic location, very influential in the world, just look at how America is present in it on the one hand, Russia on the other, and regional countries such as Turkey, Iran and Israel on the third."
He says this is why the outside world should help Syria recover.
This is also the reason why powerful countries may not allow this to happen.
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