The road to Damascus is littered with relics of the fallen Assad government

The relics of fallen Assad governments were found on the road to Damascus early Monday morning as rebel vehicles drove down a highway

We were in Damascus early Monday after taking a highway leading into the city from Lebanon. Scattered across the main highway to the Syrian capital are newfound relics of the government of Bashar al-Assad whose oppressive rule has defined the country for decades.

A convoy of rebel vehicles drove down the highway from the military base. Four-wheel drive vehicles with mud-caked windows, and military vehicles that were once used by the al-Assad government, were among the vehicles they drove.

Checkpoints typically manned by Syrian intelligence and security forces, who would question drivers and passengers for hours on end, were empty. A man in a military uniform is dead on the ground next to an abandoned pickup truck, not far from the border.

There were also signs of the lawlessness that many fear could seize the country, the celebration over the fall of Mr. al-Assad mixed with the uncertainty of what comes next.

A duty free shop just across the border from Lebanon appeared to have been broken into — its storefront windows smashed while bottles, chocolates and bags of snacks were strewn across its floor. Windshields and windows of dozens of abandoned cars along the roads were broken and their doors flung open.

Source: Road to Damascus Littered With Relics of Fallen Assad Government

A Syrian soldier walks among rebels in Babsharqi, Syria, when the Assad government was taking down a tightrope

A young man stands in front of a tank and takes a picture. He took his toddler and put him on top of the tank, telling him to hold his hand up in the air and take a picture.

In Old Damascus, the centuries-old city center of winding, narrow alleys, Victor Dawli, 59, stood in his apartment’s entryway, a cigarette in hand. As a truck carrying Syrian rebels passed, Mr. Dawli waved. A fighter with a rifle and sitting in the bed of a truck nodded in response.

Mr. Dawli’s neighborhood, Babsharqi, is home to mostly Christians, many of who supported the Assad government and now fear they could face retribution from rebels and others who were part of the uprising.

As dawn broke on the second day of life in Syria without Mr. Assad, there was a sense of unease in the neighborhood, as people here walked a tightrope. Some stayed in their homes and kept their heads down. Mr. Dawli said they supported the rebels after the beginning of their offensive.

Mr. Dawli shouted to his neighbor when he passed by. The man gave him a blank stare, then hurried down a nearby alleyway.

Hafez al-Assad and the Libyan General Relatives: The Times of a Crusade and a Crucial Resignation

Russia’s ties with the Assad family go back to the 1970s, when Hafez al-Assad — Bashar’s father — solidified Syria’s place in the Soviet orbit. Russia used its veto power on the UN Security Council to try and get Mr. al-Assad to resign after his violent suppression of the uprising. The year before, Mr. Putin, then prime minister, had lambasted a separate U.N. resolution authorizing airstrikes against the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi as a “medieval call for a crusade” and was said to be livid when Colonel Qaddafi was killed. He was determined that Mr. al-Assad not suffer the same fate.