As Syrian President Bashar Al Assad fled the country amid a regime change and rebel forces moved in, statues of his father and former President Hafez Al-Assad in and around the capital were pulled down by protesters welcoming the rebel fighters.

More history in the making – Syrians in Jaramana, a SE #Damascus suburb, tear down the Hafez al-#Assad statue.

The end is near. pic.twitter.com/ySTpVKHImo

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) December 7, 2024

Seizing power through a coup in 1970, Hafez Al-Assad started as a Prime Minister and then remained Syria’s President till his death in 2000. The three-decade rule, though autocratic, gave Syria an era of stability and established it as a major force in the Middle East. His son, Bashar Al Assad, succeeded him and ruled Syria for over two decades till an armed rebellion overthrew his regime.

This is the head of a statue of Hafez Al-Assad. The person who massacred their families in the 80s, the former dictator and the father of the current dictator. Syrians will never stop fighting until freedom is achieved. This is #Hama pic.twitter.com/wxQJTGwlyj

— Omar Alshogre | عمر الشغري (@omarAlshogre) December 6, 2024

Dramatic scenes played out in the streets of Damascus and other cities as the regime changed in Syria. In particularly symbolic visuals, a statue of former President Hafez al-Assad was pulled down in Syria’s fourth-largest city Hama — over 200 km from Damascus. Celebratory firing and cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ rang out loud as the statue was destroyed. A video showed a vehicle dragging the statue’s decapitated head through the road as people chased it to kick. In the city of Latakia too, a statue of the former President was pulled down as protesters cheered and recorded the moment on their phones.   

The vandalism of statues is a symbolic act witnessed in regime changes worldwide in recent history. When the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh was overthrown earlier this year, statues of the country’s first president and Sheikh Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were vandalised. The scenes in Syria are also reminiscent of the 2003 footage of a US armoured vehicle toppling a statue of former dictator Saddam Hussein on the day Baghdad fell.

The rebellion that proved to be Bashar Al Assad’s undoing began after peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 were repressed. Over time, the movement snowballed into a complex conflict drawing in foreign powers and leaving half a million people dead and many more displaced.