Major Newspapers Detail Assad’s Overthrow and Syria’s Future

The overthrow of Bashar al-Assad and the future of Syria are the primary focus of today’s front pages. The Financial Times characterizes Assad’s removal as a “welcome end to a brutal Middle East dynasty” and the start of a “new chapter.” The FT describes the “euphoria” spreading through Damascus’s streets. Omar Seif, a 24-year-old waiter, informed the publication that for every year of his life, he felt Assad’s “boot” on his neck, keeping him suppressed. “But today? I can breathe for the first time,” he stated. The Guardian notes that the Syrian populace is “daring to dream of a better future,” following the abrupt and unexpected conclusion of five decades of dynastic rule. It recounts how army tanks, intended to halt the swift rebel offensive, stood abandoned before checkpoints. The newspaper mentions that, by force of habit, one driver paused at a checkpoint and lowered his window. “No more checkpoints, no more bribes,” the smiling individual told the Guardian’s reporter, before accelerating away. “”Downfall of the devil,” declares The Sun, detailing what it characterized as a “free-for-all” by looters seizing valuables within the presidential palace yesterday. “Louis Vuitton suitcases packed with… souvenirs and trinkets snatched from the first lady’s boudoir were seen being wheeled away,” according to the paper. The Daily Express headline highlights “delight in Syria as rebels force Assad to flee to Russia.” However, it also states that the world is “watching nervously… as players in the powder-keg Middle East vie for supremacy, amid fears that leaderless Syria may erupt again in full-blown civil war.” The Times reports on “some of the saddest scenes,” observed nationwide, involving elderly women waiting as buses and lorries arrived transporting men freed by rebels from the regime’s most feared jails. A woman in Aleppo informed the paper she has received no news of her son since 2012. The Times adds that she appeared to be waiting “more in hope than expectation.” Con Coughlin, The Daily Telegraph’s defence and foreign affairs editor, asserts that the “humiliating collapse” of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime represented an appropriate conclusion for an individual he describes as “always trying to overcompensate for his evident unsuitability for the role.” The paper indicates that world leaders have expressed approval for Assad’s fall, but have cautioned about the rebels’ history of terrorism and human rights abuse. Other publications also raise concerns about Syria’s future. The main headline in the Daily Mail asks: “Is worse to come?” Writing in the paper, Mark Almond, from the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford, contends that the lawlessness following Colonel Gaddafi’s fall in Libya in 2011 serves as a “terrible warning from history.” Finally, The Telegraph covers what it terms the King’s surprise event at Buckingham Palace for a group of “Coronation Girls” from Canada. The paper notes that none of them could have foreseen that 70 years after attending the late Queen’s coronation, they would reunite in London and be greeted by the King “beaming from ear to ear.” With a cup of tea in hand, the paper reports, he recalled his mother’s coronation and even joked about “feeling slightly anxious” about the substantial weight of the crown — and its wobbling — during his own ceremony last year.