What just happened in Syria? Unpacking the historic week that toppled Assad

DAMASCUS, Syria — For more than a decade, Syria was synonymous with war, brutality and the family dynasty visiting this violence on its own people.

Then, in a relative eyeblink this week, everything changed.

It was only on Sunday that President Bashar al-Assad fled the country as rebels entered Damascus. Syrians have since torn down statues of Assad and ripped back the veil from his murderous regime.

Thousands have been freed from torturous prisons, while thousands more have been left searching the notorious sites for their loved ones — the desperate hunt for missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice uncovering another American, a pilgrim, in one of many remarkable developments.

Meanwhile, questions hang over Syria’s future, guided by a former Al Qaeda offshoot that says it has moderated.

The United States is warning the Islamic State terrorist group may seek to regroup, while Israel is striking and seizing territory in what it says is a temporary, defensive action.

But for the time being at least, the primary emotion for many in Syria is one of disbelieving joy.

“I must be dreaming — this is the greatest dream of my life and I don’t want to wake up,” Mohammed Al-Owir, 63, told NBC News in Damascus’ Umayyad Square, which has become a scene of flag-flying, car horns and celebratory gunfire.

Imprisoned for nine years by Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, he described living “in constant fear, never allowed to lift our heads” under the family’s 50-year dynasty.

His half-smile hinting hope, pain and trepidation, Al-Owir surveyed the scene with his granddaughter, Lina, a 20-month-old with hair in buns and pink sparkly sneakers.

“I don’t want to leave this square ever,” he said. “I want to stay here with the Syrian people and watch them dance and sing, look at their happiness, their laughter and their joy.”

For 11 days, the rebels had made a rapid advance from their stronghold in Idlib toward the capital, Damascus. They met little resistance from regime forces or their Russian and Iranian backers. And just like that on Sunday, state TV announced Assad had been toppled, later confirmed to have fled to Moscow.

The rebels were led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, considered a terror group in the U.S. and elsewhere. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, declared victory at the city’s Umayyad Mosque later that day.

Assad’s removal offers “real promise but also peril,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, summarizing a view held by many in the international community.

“This is a moment ripe with political opportunity for Syria, but the risk of failure also looms large,” said Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London. “Syria is in danger of sliding into a new chapter of instability,” she added. “There are very encouraging early signs, but it is important to recognize the challenges ahead.”

Part of that uncertainty centers on al-Jolani.

The former Al Qaeda fighter says he has moderated his extremist views, vowing Syria will be inclusive of its myriad religions and ethnic groups. He has appointed an interim prime minister who has vowed to guarantee the rights of all and root out the corruption that was allowed to pervade the Syrian bureaucracy.

Not everyone is convinced.

“We are leaving Syria because we are Shiites,” said Ammar Shahbander, 32, a philosophy professor fleeing Aleppo for Syria’s neighbor, Lebanon.

Around 74% of Syrians are Sunnis, like HTS, while 13% are Shiites and other Muslim denominations.

Shahbander calls HTS “terrorists” and believes Syria will be in “chaos for one or two or three months,” so he will “stay far away for now.”

Others are not only staying but frantically searching.

After rebels flung open the jails, families flocked to the Sednaya military prison — known as “the human slaughterhouse.” Armed with pickaxes and other tools, they hoped to find a rumored dungeon containing disappeared loved ones.

On Tuesday, NBC News witnessed this desperate excavation, so far in vain, as well as the horrors of the prison itself: squalid cells, bloodied nooses, and a mechanical press used to crush inmates. A jolting contrast came the next day when reporters were given access to Assad’s abandoned luxury palace.

Front of mind for Washington is Tice, 42, whose family has been given hope by Assad’s fall. Another U.S. national, Travis Timmerman, was discovered Thursday after disappearing earlier this year.

Washington is also concerned that ISIS “will seek to regroup,” Blinken said the same day, the U.S. having bombed what it said were 75 ISIS targets.

It’s not the only country intervening.

Israel has bombed arsenals and crossed the Syrian border, it says to temporarily distance itself from its destabilized neighbor. It ordered troops to overwinter there Friday, the move having already drawn condemnation from the United Nations and others fearing a land grab.

Turkey has renewed attacks against Kurdish forces, whom it considers terrorists but who have also been key partners for the U.S. And Russia still has troops and bases in the country, the future of which is unclear.

The challenges are not lost on Al-Owir. But he said “whatever life is like in the future, it will be better than the hell that has tormented us.”

He turned to his granddaughter, whose earliest memories will be of this remarkable time.

Mohammed Al-Owir with his granddaughter Lina.Mustafa Hashem / NBC News

“She deserves to live in peace and happiness. I hope she will never witness what we had to go through,” he said, before breaking down in tears.

Ammar Cheikh Omar and Charlene Gubash reported from Damascus, and Alexander Smith reported from London.