It’s been a week since Syrian rebels overtook the country’s capital and forced out the longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad. This has all been a long time coming, but now a lot is happening very quickly. In this week’s How We Got Here, Max takes a look at the handful of other countries whose governments have also been overthrown by rebels to understand what it means for Syria that the guys with guns are now in control. Will they be tolerant and pluralistic — or despotic and cruel? Will they govern wisely or capriciously? How will they align Syria within the politics of the Middle East, and what will that mean for the rest of the world?
It's been a week since Syrian rebels overtook the country's capital and forced out the longtime dictator Bashar al Assad.
This has been a long time coming.
Syria's been mired on civil war for 13 years.
The fighting has killed 600,000 people.
It displaced millions.
And now hopefully it's over.
But a lot is happening very quickly.
You may have heard a clip that's been going around of a CNN crew touring one of the country's infamous secret prisons.
C.
Syrians lived in fear of these places for decades.
Just during the war, about 100,000 people were locked up in them, and most of them never came out.
Rebels have mostly freed the survivors.
So when that CNN crew went into one of those prisons on Wednesday, they expected to find it empty.
But instead, the reporter and her team found a man hiding under a blanket, said he'd been there for days, hadn't realized the government had even fallen.
So the CNN crew picked him up, gave him some water, and they walked him outside into a liberated Syria.
Here he is.
Oh, God, the light.
Oh, God, there is light.
Oh, God, there is light.
This seems to be sort of the mood in Syria right now.