Nabil Najm al-Din writes 
Fate willed that I arrive in the Syrian capital, Damascus, in late July of the year 2000, two weeks after the deposed President Bashar al-Assad assumed power in the first week of this month on July 17, 2000. I arrived in Damascus seeking to conduct the first television interview with the son of the President, who was approximately 35 years old at the time, and who inherited the presidency from his father, Hafez al-Assad.. who continued to rule Syria for approximately 25 years.
They told me that the president was not ready for political dialogues yet, and that he needed protection from the media, and that it would be better for me to conduct the interview with the godfather of the regime at the time, General Mustafa Tlass, the Minister of Defense, who was responsible for transferring power safely, smoothly and competently to Bashar, the president’s son, and who appointed his son Firas Mustafa Tlass as the director of the new president’s office to ensure the continuation of the victorious march!
A tape of images and memories of that first and last visit to Syria came back to my mind forcefully.. and that strange uncomfortable feeling that could not be erased from my memory about that country that was immersed in a complex security atmosphere that was exaggerated everywhere.. and I did not forget the looks of apprehension, anticipation, fear and doubt in the eyes of every Syrian everywhere you go in the Levant.
I succeeded in conducting the exciting interview with General Tlass, the Syrian Minister of Defense, in his home in the upscale Mezzeh neighborhood, the time has not yet come to reveal all the circumstances of which, and the interview was broadcast and at the time caused remarkable interest, and my interest in this country, dear to every Arab, was cut off because I realized that its affairs were now in the hands of the faithful Alawite Assads!
With the fall of the deposed President Bashar al-Assad on the eighth of this December, the title of this article imposed itself forcefully on me, and dominated all my follow-ups of this major event that resounded in Syria, the Arab world, and the region: “The Fall of Bashar al-Assad… Why Now?”
Throughout his rule, Bashar al-Assad relied on members of his Alawite sect, which is the sect or branch of Shiite Islam that constitutes about 12% of Syria’s population of approximately 27 million… 15 million of whom live in Syria, and the rest, 10 million of whom fled outside the country, of whom approximately one million were killed, and approximately 900 thousand are missing.
The ousted president, Bashar al-Assad, distributed most of the jobs in the Syrian government among generations of the same Alawite sect, and like his father, he relied on his family members to assume important and sensitive positions. His younger brother, Maher, headed the elite presidential guard that led the campaign of repression against the Syrian street uprisings. The ousted president’s sister was preoccupied with local politics. Her husband, Assef Shawkat, held the position of Deputy Minister of Defense until he was killed in a bombing in 2012. Rami Makhlouf, Bashar’s cousin and the largest Syrian businessman, continued to control the largest financial empire in Syria until a major dispute occurred with his cousin, the president, and he was pushed aside. The normal people lived torn between submission and humiliation or between fleeing as displaced persons, refugees, or missing persons. President Hafez al-Assad, who brought Syria into a dark era of terror and fear that it had never witnessed in its entire history, died in June 2000. Syria did not emerge from that dark, inhuman civilizational tunnel until after the fall of President Assad Jr. in December 2024 and his escape to Russia..! All the facts and evidence related to the Syrian affair indicate that both the periods of rule of Assad Sr. and Assad Jr. formed a complete mental, spiritual, security and material hegemony over all classes and members of Syrian society. The character of the ruler in this ancient country turned into a terrifying, hateful model who was given characteristics that are outside the characteristics of ordinary citizens and people..!!.
Therefore, the fall of President Assad Jr. is linked to one of the following possibilities or all of them together.. The first of these possibilities is the complete destruction of Syria, the second center of the Iranian support and influence areas in the region, which has always been a key and a passage for transferring Iranian weapons, money and ammunition to Hezbollah, which was the first center and was almost destroyed and its leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Lebanon and removed from the equation.
The second possibility is to remove the Western camp from Syria’s complete control over it by Russia within the framework of the ongoing international chess game between the West and Russia.
The third possibility is to plan and detonate a major popular political earthquake in Syria that would occupy the Arab and international public opinion circles so that they would forget Israel’s crimes in Gaza, which the International Criminal Court classified in its historic ruling as crimes of genocide and war crimes that removed the fig leaf from Israel and the governments of Western democracies, or perhaps all three possibilities together.
to all.. 
