President Joe Biden said that Syria and the broader Middle East faced a “historic opportunity” for peace and the establishment of a new Syrian state with the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s government on Sunday.
The US president spoke from the White House and called the moment a positive development while warning that it was important to ensure that an “independent” Syrian government that “served all Syrians.”
“After 13 years of civil war in Syria, more than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, rebel forces have forced Assad to resign his office, flee the country,” the president said in his address.
“At long last, the Assad regime has fallen,” said Biden on Sunday. “It’s a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country.”
He added that while it is not clear where Bashar Al-Assad and the dictator’s closest advisors were exactly at this hour, it appeared that they had fled to Moscow. Russian state media, according to Reuters, was making similar claims, indicating that the ousted Syrian leader had been granted political asylum.
The US president said he also remained aware of Americans in Syria — some residing there, others held captive like journalist Austin Tice. Biden promised to bring Tice home during his remarks.
“We believe he's alive,” Biden told reporters as he departed the lectern. “We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet."
On a call with reporters after the president concluded his remarks, a senior US official added that the stockpile of chemical weapons known to be in the Assad regime’s possession before its downfall was being monitored closely.
“We do have good fidelity on this type of thing,” they said. “I'll just want to just assure you that we're doing everything we can to prudently ensure that those materials are either not available to anyone or are cared for.”
The White House official concluded that the US would be looking for further signs of positive leadership from the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as well as a coalition of Turkish-backed groups known as the Syrian National Army which now hold claim over large parts of the country.
Parts of HTS itself were once officially affiliated with Al Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the 9/11 terror attacks, though its leader now claims his ideologies have evolved.
The fall of Syria’s government this week was sudden, and came in the face of a widespread rebel offensive that overtook the cities of Homs and Aleppo in the days immediately leading up to the fall.
It’s an end to the decade-long Syrian Civil War, which began during the regionwide “Arab Spring” phenomenon during the Obama administration and quickly became a shockingly brutal and bloody conflict as Bashar al-Assad, backed by Iranian-supported militias including Hezbollah as well as Russia, pounded rebel forces and occupied areas, pushing them away from the capital.
US officials had publicly called for Assad to step down for years, though those calls dwindled after Obama left office.
