“The world was surprised,” said Pieter Jan Hagens Outside court (AVROTROS/BNNVARA/VPRO), and with that he summarized a large part of the reporting on Syria this weekend. No talk show guest would have seen it coming. Not at this rate. Newsreels showed images from several Syrian cities as residents tried to come to terms with what had just happened. While some were already dancing joyfully through the streets, with index and middle fingers raised high in the air as peace signs, others had yet to realize it. “We did not expect this big surprise,” said a man in central Damascus. He spoke loudly and quickly, his gaze darting from left to right and back again. Around him, guns were emptied into the air: shots of victory. “We went to sleep, woke up and suddenly it’s gone.”
‘Ie’, that was Bashar al-Assad. On Sunday he fled the country that had suffered for more than five decades under the reign of terror of first his father, and then himself. Both showed unprecedented cruelty in oppressing their own citizens. The Assad regime was characterized by full prisons, bombed hospitals, chemical weapons, millions of refugees. And now it was gone.
Flee to ally Putin in Moscow, as it turned out later in the day, when the rebels had long since declared their victory. They had advanced at breakneck speed in the previous days and suddenly achieved the unthinkable. The news kept coming in: the infamous prisons were being opened. Syrian refugees also gathered on the streets in other countries, singing. Some of them had already started dreaming out loud about a possible return.
Elsewhere on TV, there is a lot of looking back in December. For the third Sunday in a row, music history facts could be heard in the Top 2000 Quiz (NTR), which will face competition from the Talpa variant this year The Top 4000 Music Quiz (more is better, John de Mol must have thought). The second quiz is presented by Johnny de Mol and has the oddity that it involves a board game. Because board games are fun and December is a fun month, probably. For the same reason, the episode’s tagline was from Oh, what a year! (RTL) this weekend: ‘Enjoy winter’, and Chantal Janzen persistently repeated that there is nothing more pleasant than winter, as if she were manifesting the coziness on the spot.
Skepticism
But it’s quite difficult to look back when you’re constantly receiving NOS push notifications about new developments in world politics. In which Oh, what a year! memories were recalled of white winters, predictions were made in talk shows about the near future. Because what exactly does Assad’s departure mean for the Syrians? What are the plans of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the rebel group that was the driving force behind the fall of Assad? The organization is still considered terrorist by the UN, among others, although Jolani now presents himself as a moderate leader. War reporter Rudi Vranckx already showed some skepticism about upcoming peace. “I have seen few truly peaceful transitions.”
But when you wake up on a Sunday morning in a dictator-free country after decades of dictatorship, you neither look forward nor back. On Al Jazeera, a professor gave his analysis of Jolani while images were shown from Homs and Damascus. In the latter city, a group of boys stood on a tank waving Syrian flags. They extended a hand to a passerby; an invitation to celebrate the party with them. They kept their eyes on this Sunday. And on this Sunday they were free.