The dramatic and historic scenes that unfolded in Syria this week are a reminder of the horrors the country has experienced over the past few decades. We have witnessed some important moments in recent history.
June 2000
Funeral of Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar al-Assad. His “departure” was much more dignified and gentle than his son's withdrawal last week. For nearly 30 years, he has ruled Syria resolutely. He stabilized a politically turbulent country in brutal but brutal ways. He exterminated the Islamic rebels and those caught in crossfire in the town of Hama (today the rebels breezed through on the road to liberation), killing as many as 40,000 people there.
Greg Palcott reports on Hafez al-Assad's funeral. (Fox News)
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad flees as Islamic rebels overwhelm him country
The state funeral we saw (attended by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright) was well-managed until one of the mourners signaled that “all the people loved him.” I said to the camera close to my story, “For better or worse, his legacy…will live on.'' This week was even worse. His mausoleum and tomb were destroyed and burned by rebels in his homeland.
June 2012
An uprising occurred just 11 years later. Another faction of the Arab Spring uprisings that broke out across the Middle East in 2011. Bashar al-Assad takes aim. His regime went from using police to suppress peaceful demonstrators to using the military to bomb rebel resistance. Imprisoning and torturing so-called enemies.
We visited there in 2012 and were one of the only Western media teams there at the time. We saw the devastated town of Homs, another town that the current rebels had passed through with little resistance. My line on camera as I watched Syrian military airstrikes and shelling of the center of its city: “You're looking at a country at war with itself.”
Greg Palcott reports from Homs, Syria. (Fox News)
We walked through the desolate streets where Marie Colvin, an American journalist for the London Times, had been murdered earlier that year. We evaded an airstrike near the clinic ourselves. He was “captured” at a government militia checkpoint. Photographer Pierre Zakrzewski's camera was temporarily removed. And we witnessed deadly violence across the region, including an explosion targeting a state television station. . . The other is located at a busy intersection in central Damascus.
September 2013
Greg Palcott speaks in an exclusive interview with then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013. (Fox News)
The following year, we asked Bashar al-Assad himself questions about the controversy in an exclusive interview for Fox News with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich. We spoke in a huge palace occupied by rebels and curious civilians (off the record, I heard he was staying in an apartment in Damascus most of the time).
Experts say the collapse of Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime is a strategic blow to Iran and Russia
We were amazed at the gentle demeanor of the man leading this bloodthirsty regime. He publicly admitted to us that he had chemical weapons, but still claimed he did not use them. (The regime committed a chemical weapons attack the previous month that killed more than 1,000 people.)
He also claimed that the public grassroots protests that turned into a civil war are now “80 to 90 percent” run by al-Qaeda. We dispute these numbers and ask whether the growing rebellion is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The harder the government attacked, the more bad actors it attracted. And we asked President Assad if he shared the disappointment of many people that he could have steered Syria in a better direction after his father's death. “I'm still a reformer,” he said despairingly. Rebel gunshots could be heard behind the thick walls of the palace.
October 2014
Greg Palcott reports on the Syria-Turkey border in 2014. (Fox News)
A year later, we were on the Syrian-Turkish border when the rebellion really got out of hand. We witnessed the relatively new but highly dangerous ISIS terrorist group face off against local Kurdish militias on the ground, and US military airstrikes hit targets in the important town of Kobani. Huge plumes of smoke from explosions rise every minute. The final victory by the Kurds and the United States marked a turning point in the fight against ISIS. By then, the war had become a globalized conflict with ISIS — yes, al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups pouring into Syria to seize as much of the country as possible. Assad's regime was saved (for a time) only by Russia, Iran, and its proxy militia Hezbollah, which did much of the fighting. When the three allies were weakened or distracted by their own wars, rebels swooped in, liberated the country, and overthrew the Assad regime.
December 2024
Syrians gather in Umayyad Square to celebrate the fall of 61 years of Baathist rule in Damascus, Syria, December 9, 2024. (Murat Sengur/Anadolu via Getty Images)
This week we got in touch with one of our key contacts who was in Syria at the time. In an email, he wrote these very telling words: “This is an extraordinary moment… so far so good.” Syrians are rejoicing at the end of the dictatorship. They are returning to their homelands from which they were driven out by fighting. They feverishly search, sometimes joyfully, sometimes desperately, the prisons where their compatriots were imprisoned and tortured. Half a million people have been killed in the past 13 years. Millions of people are injured and displaced. The economy is a disaster.
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But my friend went on to write, “I'm a little wary of what might happen…and fill in the blank.” The HTS group that led the uprising had former ties to al-Qaeda and remains on the U.S. terrorist list. Its leader, Ahmad al-Shalal, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, was a jihadist through and through, but he has transformed in recent years. So far, he and the group have had a good relationship. Still, there are many factions, sects and splinter groups, all of whom will have to work together to achieve a new free Syria. That's a tall order. For the proud people of this country that we have gotten to know over the years, it is definitely worth a try.
