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The curtain has fallen on Bashar Assad’s regime. Fleeing Damascus for the safety of Moscow, Assad has left behind a fractured Syria.
Opposition groups — representing the country’s diverse mosaic of tribes, ethnicities, and religions — now hold the reins. The infamous torture chambers of Mezze and Sednaya have been opened, and the archives, hastily abandoned by Assad loyalists, reveal an apparatus of state-sponsored mass murder.
While Syria’s long and harrowing war is over, one cannot escape the thought: This moment could have come a decade earlier. The world could have been spared the cascading horrors unleashed by Syria’s descent into chaos.
The statistics are a grim testament to the war’s brutality. Over 600,000 lives have been lost, a number that could climb closer to a million. Millions more were displaced, many seeking refuge across Europe, triggering a crisis that toppled governments and claimed thousands of lives in the perilous Mediterranean crossings.
Amid this devastation emerged Daesh, whose reign of terror extended from Raqqa to Iraq and beyond, casting a dark shadow of extremism across the globe.
The bloodshed etched onto this chapter of history remains unparalleled, its savagery exceeding even that of Russia’s invasions of Ukraine. The Assad regime bears primary responsibility, but others share the blame.
Assad clung to power by enlisting foreign fighters, Russian airpower, and Hezbollah militants while employing sieges, starvation, and chemical weapons against his own people.
Markets, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure were reduced to rubble. Meanwhile, the regime transformed into a narco-state, enriching its elite through the drug trade while ordinary Syrians faced poverty and rationed electricity.
Russia and Iran backed Assad. Western nations faltered. Promises were made and broken, sanctions were eased, and tentative gestures toward rehabilitating the regime emboldened Assad’s brutal strategies.
The pivotal moment came in 2013, a year that could have altered Syria’s fate. The regime’s desperation became evident in August of that year when it deployed sarin gas in East Ghouta, killing over a thousand people in a gruesome act of terror.
President Barack Obama had declared chemical weapons a “red line,” hinting at dire consequences for their use. Yet, when the moment came, he blinked.

Today, as Syria’s future hangs in the balance, it is worth reflecting on what might have been.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim

Instead of decisive action, a deal brokered by Russia allowed Assad to evade accountability. Inspectors arrived to oversee the dismantling of Syria’s chemical arsenal, but the strikes that could have crippled the regime or its weapons production never came. The hollow rhetoric of “the regime must go” faded into ineffectual whispers.
The consequences were catastrophic. The regime’s chemical warfare continued, turning Ghouta and countless other regions into graveyards. The regime’s strategy of siege and chemical attacks became a hallmark of the war, prolonging the suffering and emboldening the regime to crush the opposition with impunity.
This inaction was not inevitable. In 2013, the regime was vulnerable. The opposition, coordinated by the Syrian National Coalition, had momentum. This secular, pluralist coalition of defectors and civil society leaders aimed to replace the regime with a government representative of all Syrians.
At the time, the opposition controlled significant territory, including parts of Aleppo and the Damascus suburbs. Daesh had not yet emerged, and Russia had yet to intervene militarily.
Western support for the Syrian National Coalition could have tipped the scales. Airstrikes or the credible threat of force might have constrained the regime, preventing its reliance on chemical weapons and aerial bombardments. Instead, the regime regrouped, secured Russian backing, and plunged Syria into deeper chaos.
By flinching in 2013, the Obama administration missed a critical opportunity. The regime, hollow then as it was in its final days, could have been defeated or coerced into compromise. The staggering human cost of the past decade — the lives lost, the communities destroyed, the rise of Daesh — might have been avoided.
Today, as Syria’s future hangs in the balance, it is worth reflecting on what might have been. The courage of the Syrian people has been remarkable, but the global community’s failure to match that resolve remains a sobering lesson. The Syrian National Coalition’s vision of a pluralist Syria — a beacon of hope in those early years — seems distant now, not only in time but in plausibility.
The world’s hesitation in 2013 allowed a regime to entrench itself in barbarity. The scars of that decision will remain, a testament to what happens when moral imperatives are overshadowed by political caution.

• Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is the director of special initiatives at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, DC.
X: @AzeemIbrahim