Dramatic and Historical scenes from Syria This week is a reminder of the horrors that the country has been going through for the last several decades. We were there for some of the most important moments in recent history:
June 2000
Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafiz al-Assad’s funeral prayer. Her “departure” was far more grand and serene than her son’s retreat last week. For nearly 30 years he ruled Syria with an iron grip. Stabilizing a politically fractious country but in a brutal way. An estimated 40,000 people were killed there, killing Islamist rebels and people caught in the crossfire in the town of Hama (which today’s rebels are on their way to freedom).
Greg Palcott reports on Hafiz al-Assad’s funeral. (Fox News)
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad flees into exile after victory over Islamist rebels The country
The state funeral (including then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s attendance) that we saw was well staged with one mourner telling us, “Everybody loved him.” “His legacy will live on … for better or worse,” I noted on camera near my story. This week, it was for the worse. His mausoleum and tomb were destroyed and burnt by the rebels in his hometown.
June 2012
Exactly eleven years later, there was a rebellion. Another offshoot of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that spread across the Middle East. Bashar al-Assad His government in the crosshairs ranged from using the police to crush peaceful protesters to using the military to bomb rebel positions. Locking and torturing the so-called enemy.
We went there in 2012, one of the only Western media teams there at the time. We saw the ruined city of Homs, another town that the current rebels took with little resistance. My on-camera line as we watched Syrian army airstrikes and artillery bombard the heart of the city: “You’re looking at a country at war with itself.”
Greg Palcott reporting from Homs, Syria. (Fox News)
We walked the devastated streets where Mary Colon, an American journalist for the London Times, was murdered earlier this year. We survived our own airstrikes near a medical clinic. A government militia outpost was “shaken up”. Cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski’s camera was temporarily taken away. And we saw deadly violence across the region, with one explosion targeting a state-run TV station. . . Another at a busy intersection in the heart of Damascus.
September 2013
Greg Palcott in an exclusive interview with then Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013. (Fox News)
Questions about the turmoil we put to Bashar al-Assad in an exclusive interview we did with Fox News with the former Congressman Dennis Kuchenich next year. We spoke in the large palace now occupied by rebels and curious citizens (although we were told off the record that he lived most of the time in an apartment in Damascus).
Experts say that the fall of Bashar al-Assad of Syria is a strategic blow for Iran and Russia
We were amazed at the gentle behavior of the man leading this bloodthirsty government. He publicly admitted to us that he had chemical weapons but still claimed he did not use them. (The government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack a month earlier, which killed more than 1,000 people.)
He also claimed that grassroots protests, which had turned into civil war, were now “80-90% run by Al Qaeda.” We disputed this figure and asked whether the growing rebellion was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The harder the government hit, the more bad people it attracted. And we asked Assad if he shared the disappointment of many that he might have made a better turn for Syria after his father’s death. “I’m still a reformer,” he deadpanned. As the mutineers’ gunfire was heard beyond the thick walls of the palace.
October 2014
Greg Palcott reporting on the Syria-Turkey border in 2014. (Fox News)
A year later, we were on the border between Syria and Turkey when the rebellion really got out of hand. We saw the relatively new, but very dangerous, ISIS terrorist group, along with local Kurdish militias, eliminate US airstrikes on the ground targeting targets in the key town of Kobani. Minutes later, huge smoke billowed from the explosions. The eventual victory of the Kurds and the US marked a turning point. The war against ISIS. By then, the war had become a global conflict with ISIS — and yes, al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups piled into Syria to take over as much of the country as possible. The Assad regime was saved (for a while) in most of the fighting only by Russia, Iran and its proxy militia Hezbollah. When the three allies were weakened and/or distracted by their respective wars, the rebels attacked, liberating the country and toppling the Assad regime.
December 2024
Syrians gather in Umayyad Square to celebrate the end of 61 years of Baath Party rule on December 9, 2024 in Damascus, Syria. (Murat Cengol/Anadolu via Getty Images)
This week we had an important contact in Syria these days. In an e-mail, he wrote in some beautiful words: “This is an extraordinary moment … so far so good.” The people of Syria are rejoicing at the end of a dictatorship. They are returning to the homes from which they were driven out by fighting. They search feverishly, sometimes with joy, or with despair, the prisons where their fellow citizens were imprisoned and tortured. One and a half million people have been killed in the last 13 years. Millions are injured and homeless. The economy is a disaster.
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But my friend also wrote, “I’m a little wary of what might happen … and fill in the blanks.” The HTS group that led the coup had previous ties to al-Qaeda and is still on the US terror list. Its leader, Ahmad al-Sharar, also known by his alias Abu Muhammad al-Golani, was a dyed-in-the-wool jihadist and has reformed in recent years. He and the group, so far, are toeing the fine line. Still, there are many factions, religious sects, and breakaway groups that must all work together if a newly independent Syria is to be realized. A tall order. For the country-proud people we’ve known for years, it’s worth a try.