The last days of Bashar al-Assad

On the eve of his capital’s fall, Bashar al-Assad climbed into a Russian armoured vehicle with his eldest son Hafez and drove away, leaving relatives, friends and loyalists frantically searching for the man who had promised to protect them.

Not long after, at around 11pm on December 7, longtime associates driving past his home in the upscale Damascus neighbourhood of Malki found abandoned guardposts and largely empty buildings: lights still flickering, coffee cups half-drunk and military uniforms scattered on the street.

By midnight, the then Syrian president was already on his way with Hafez to Russia’s Hmeimim air base on Syria’s north-west coast, according to a rebel military commander, an ex-intelligence officer and people familiar with the Assad family’s escape.

Not until he was outside Damascus did Assad tell his army to fold, giving them orders to burn down offices and documents, according to a member of the rebel military council and a person with knowledge of the events. Russia, one of Assad’s main foreign backers during the 13-year-civil war, had promised safe passage to Hmeimim. An HTS commander denied the group had negotiated Assad’s exit. 

Despite helping the Assads flee the capital, Moscow nonetheless made the father and son wait until 4am on December 8, when they were granted refuge on humanitarian grounds. They soon took off for Russia, bringing the family’s brutal five-decade rule to an abrupt end.

The Financial Times pieced together Assad’s final days and hours in power from more than a dozen interviews, including with regime insiders and people familiar with the family’s movements. The sources requested anonymity to speak freely to discuss sensitive matters. Efforts to reach Assad and his family members in Moscow were unsuccessful.

Very few saw the rebel offensive coming — not least the president, who thought he had won the civil war triggered by his brutal crack down on protesters in 2011. Assad felt he was finally on his way to global rehabilitation. Following the Arab world’s lead, some European countries had also begun to make overtures.

But in the end it took rebels, led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, just 10 days to seize the capital after launching their lightning offensive.

In Moscow, Assad was reunited with his wife Asma, who, people familiar with the escape said, has been there for several weeks undergoing treatment for a second bout of cancer. Also in the Russian capital were her mother and father, Fawaz al-Akhras, who was hit with sanctions by the US Treasury earlier this month. The Assads’ children, including daughter Zein who was studying at the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi, have now joined them, according to people close to the family.

Assad left without so much as a whisper to the people who had pledged fealty to him for decades, leaving many former acolytes stunned and livid at being abandoned. He did not even bother warning relatives — including cousins, siblings, nieces and nephews, as well as his wife’s family — who were left to fend for themselves as the rebels marched on Damascus.

Disillusioned loyalists saw it as final proof of Assad’s overriding self-absorption, a trait that pushed him to unleash brutality on his people and plunder Syria’s resources for his own enrichment.

“He ran away like a dog in the night,” said one person familiar with Assad’s exit from Damascus. “He was telling people around him up to an hour before he fled that everything was going to be OK.”

Then-prime minister Mohammed Jalali told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television last week that he had spoken to his then-president on the phone at 10.30pm on December 7, telling him of panic and horror on the streets, and huge displacement from central Syria towards the coast. “He replied: ‘Tomorrow, we will see’,” Jalali said. “’Tomorrow, tomorrow’, was the last thing he told me.” Assad never picked up Jalali’s next calls at dawn.

The FT has not been able to verify all the passengers on Assad’s escape flight. But regime insiders are convinced that he left with at least two financial acolytes who hold the keys to the assets squirrelled away abroad: Yassar Ibrahim and Mansour Azzam. While unconfirmed, it underscores the belief, even in loyalist circles, that Assad prioritised his wealth over his extended family.

In his first public comments since HTS launched its offensive, Assad this week gave his own version of events, saying he had remained in Damascus until the early hours of Sunday, “carrying out my duties”. He insisted his departure had not been premeditated.

Video taken by rebels and citizens who swarmed Assad’s private residence following his flight suggest a hasty exit: family photo albums, stocked pantries, and dozens of Hermès shopping bags and boxes in the first lady’s closets. 

That sudden departure happened after days of failed diplomatic overtures to his longtime benefactors Moscow and Tehran. While Russia and Iran’s support had propped up Assad’s regime for nearly a decade, they were now no longer willing nor able to come to his rescue, distracted by their own conflicts with Ukraine and Israel, respectively.

As rebels began their long-planned assault on the northern province of Aleppo, Assad visited Moscow to plead for military intervention. Four days later, after Syria’s second city had fallen and with rebels led by HTS sweeping southwards, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi visited Damascus.

Araghchi left Damascus for Ankara, where Turkish officials expected to receive a message from Assad. Instead, they received nothing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the main backer of Syrian rebels since 2011, had repeatedly tried to restore relations with Assad, most recently in July. The former Syrian president rebuffed the attempts every time.

Assad turned increasingly desperate. According to people familiar with the overture, three or four days before leaving Damascus, he signalled to Moscow that he was willing to meet exiled political opposition in Geneva for talks — something he had long refused to do. But the message does not appear to have been passed on by the Russians.

Since rebels toppled the Assad regime, loyalists and profiteers have streamed out of Damascus — the overwhelming majority of them driving across the border with Lebanon to Beirut, where many holed up in their second homes or luxury hotels, with heavy security outside.

In the plush, sunsoaked breakfast room of Beirut’s Phoenicia hotel, Syrians toting Louis Vuitton handbags ate poached eggs and kiwi and spoke in hushed tones about their country and next steps. On one table, three women traded tales of their night-time escape and debated whether to enrol their children in Dubai schools. One talked about someone she knew who had disappeared since Assad’s fall.

Witnesses say the escapees to Beirut included several of Assad’s bagmen and top aides — people close to the regime who were vital cogs in the machinery that kept the ruling family in power. Assad’s longtime adviser Bouthaina Shaaban was one of them.

But soon, they scattered out of Lebanon: those with foreign passports flew to European countries, others to the United Arab Emirates. Senior military officials went to Russia or Libya, according to people familiar with the matter. Shaaban was later spotted in Dubai, long a haven for exiles and ousted regime acolytes.

Unlike Bashar, his younger brother Maher — the commander of the army’s notorious Fourth Division and a key node in the regime’s centralised corruption schemes — warned his people on Saturday afternoon to flee to Lebanon. But he had to scramble to get out himself, allegedly crossing the border to Iraq. The FT could not confirm whether he remained in Iraq or had gone on to Russia.

Among those Assad left behind were direct relatives: his maternal cousin and intelligence major Iyad Makhlouf, Makhlouf’s twin brother Ihab, and their mother. The trio came under attack on their way out of Syria and into Lebanon, killing Ihab and injuring Iyad and his mother, three sources said.

Iyad was treated at Chtoura hospital in Lebanon according to two hospital employees in the area. He then left for Dubai, a person familiar with the family’s exit said.

His brother Rami Makhlouf was the regime’s most important businessman, at one point believed to control over half of Syria’s economy. But while Rami fell out of favour with the regime in 2020 and was living under de facto house arrest, Syrians with insight into the regime say Iyad and Ihab remained close to Bashar and his wife Asma. Rami’s whereabouts are still unknown.

Ali Mamlouk, Assad’s feared senior adviser and former general intelligence chief, is also missing. Several prominent loyalist Syrian families have holed up in the Russian embassy in Damascus, but the FT could not confirm their identities. The new government has told the Russians not to facilitate the exit of Syrian nationals out of the country.

Four hours before departing Damascus, Assad’s 23-year-old son Hafez was spotted walking around a park near the presidential palace and hanging out with friends. He had recently returned from Russia, where he defended his doctoral thesis in physical and mathematical sciences, Moscow State University records show. 

He later went home to have dinner with his father, according to a witness. Rumours were spreading that Assad was going to give a public address, which left Syrians around the country and the world glued to their TV screens. It was unclear whether Hafez knew that, only hours later, he would be leaving Syria for good.

Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Ankara and Daria Mosolova in London