In the month since Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by a coalition of rebel forces, thousands of political prisoners have been released while many more remain missing, assumed lost to the regime. The most powerful group among the rebels, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has moved to take control of the country while Israel has seized the opportunity to carry out extensive bombing of Syria’s military facilities. In this episode, Adam Shatz is joined by Loubna Mrie and Omar Dahi to discuss these events and consider what the end of fifty years of Ba’athist tyranny means for the Syrian people both at home and in exile.

Loubna Mrie is a Syrian activist and writer living in the United States.

Omar Dahi is a professor of economics at Hampshire College and a research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

After Assad