When I left London almost two weeks ago after the rebel coalition took Aleppo – a stunning victory that was dwarfed by what followed – I thought I'd be reporting on a shooting.
The group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS was sweeping all before it, but I assumed the regime would fight back as it didn't stop doing so as it lost ground in the years before the Russians intervened in 2015 . to bomb Syrian cities and villages into ruins.
Almost a decade later, it was clear that Bashar al-Assad's Russian, Iranian and Lebanese allies should be thinking about other wars.
But while the regime struggled with unwilling recruits, it could always find Syrians willing to fight and die for it, even at the height of the post-2011 war, when rebels controlled much of Damascus outside the city center and the road to Beirut.
I have visited these men on the front lines many times.
Many of the most effective units were led by officers from Assad's Alawite community.
In Aleppo circa 2015. an Alawite general handed out glasses of perfectly distilled arrack poured from bottles that had once held Jack Daniels.
He proudly said that arak, an anise-based spirit popular in the Middle East, came from the Assad family's hometown in the hills behind the port of Latakia. Outside, his squad was attacking the rebel-held eastern part of the city.
Not all were Alawites. In Jobar, a neighborhood on the edge of central Damascus, a Christian officer loyal to Assad in the Syrian Arab Army took me to the tunnels they had dug under the rubble to attack the rebels.
He told how the rebels also had tunnels and how they sometimes charged into each other, killing in the darkness.
The young man had a crucifix tattooed on his wrist and another hanging around his neck, and he talked about how he had to fight to protect his community against jihadist extremists on the other side.
My instincts about the fighting spirit of the depleted band of Assad loyalists could not have been more wrong.
On Saturday, December 7, I went to bed after hearing the news that Homs had fallen.
When I woke up, Bashar al-Assad was on his way to Russia and rebel fighters were celebrating in the streets of Damascus.
EPAThey fired more bullets into the air in celebration than they fired in anger at Assad loyalists who were running for their lives.
I saw hundreds of cars queuing to leave the border with Lebanon, full of disgruntled, defeated men and frightened families.
The privates discarded their uniforms and weapons without firing a shot and went home.
Assad's regime crumbled, hollowed out by corruption, cruelty and a brutal contempt for Syrian life. Even Assad's own Alawite community is not fighting for him.
That's why on Thursday evening this week, instead of hiding from shells and bullets in some freezing street in Homs or Hama, as I had expected, I walked the marble halls of the presidential palace in Damascus with Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria's de facto president.
He ditched his uniform and replaced his wartime alias, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, with his real name.
Many Syrians question his claim that he too has replaced his old jihadist beliefs with a more tolerant form of Syrian religious nationalism.
It is true that he broke with Al Qaeda in 2016, after a long career as a jihadist fighter in Iraq and Syria. But as I discovered in Assad's palace, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a tall, softly spoken man in his early forties, is reluctant to talk too specifically about the Syria he wants.
He appears extremely intelligent and politically astute. Like many shrewd politicians, he often does not give a direct answer to a straight question.
He denied that he wanted Syria to become the Middle East's Afghanistan.
The Taliban, he said, run “a tribal society. Syria is completely different.” Syria's new rulers will respect its culture and history.
When I asked if women would have the freedoms they expect here, he said 60 percent of university students in Idlib, his power base, are women.
But he tried not to answer a question about the compulsory wearing of the hijab – the Islamic dress – for women.
Damascus is abuzz with rumors of bearded HTS men ordering women to cover their hair.
I pointed out that there was a big scandal on social media after a woman asked for a selfie with him and then lifted her hood when she took the photo.
Conservatives criticized al-Shara for agreeing to pose with a woman who is not part of his family. Liberals saw her hood as a grim omen for Syria's future.
XIf he was irritated by the question, he didn't show it.
“I didn't force her. But that's my personal freedom. I want to be photographed the way I'm comfortable with. I didn't force her. It's not the same as having a law about it that applies across the country . But there is a culture in this country that the law must recognize.”
Al-Sharaa was referring to the fact that many Syrians, not only in the majority Sunni Muslim community, are pious.
Many women wear hijab. The point, secular Syrians would say, is to be able to choose.
During Assad's half-century of rule, Syrians developed survival strategies that often involved hiding their own feelings and doing what was expected of them.
Shocked, nervous, secular Syrians showed me videos on their phones of mass prayers outside universities when students returned last Sunday.
Was it true piety, they asked, or were the young people doing as they were told because that was the way it had been here all their lives?
All this, al-Shara said, would be a matter of a new constitution to be decided by a group of legal experts.
Al-Sharaa's critics will point out that, as things stand, he chooses who goes on the commission, which he says will write new laws as well as a new constitution.
Ahmed al-Shara wanted to talk the most about the oppression of the people by the old regime.
“The Syrian problems are too big of the problems you are asking about. Half of the population was expelled from Syria or forcibly displaced from their homes.
“They were targeted with barrel bombs and unguided blunt bombs and over 250 chemical attacks. Many Syrians drowned in the sea trying to escape to Europe.”
He acknowledged that Syria has no chance to begin to stabilize and rebuild if sanctions are not lifted.
Sanctions were initially aimed at the Assad regime. To keep them, he said, is to treat the victim the same as the oppressor.
He denied that the group he leads is a terrorist organization, which is currently the position of the United Nations and most of the world's most powerful countries.
Visits by foreign diplomats suggest that changing both sanctions and terrorist lists may be feasible.
ReutersHe was dismissive when I pointed out that I knew diplomats had told him that changing that status would depend on proof that he kept his promise to respect minority rights and lead an inclusive political process.
“What matters to me is that the Syrian people trust me. We promised the Syrian people that we would free them from this criminal regime, and we did. That's what matters to me first and last.
“I don't care much about what will be said about us abroad. I am not obliged to prove to the world that we are working seriously to achieve the interests of our people in Syria.”
In the last two weeks, I have heard many Syrians say that they want to be left alone to try to rebuild their country.
That sounds like a pipe dream.
The war destroyed much of the country, but it also took away Syria's sovereignty.
Bashar al-Assad became a client of Iran and Russia and fled the country when they stopped supporting him.
The US is in the northeast to pursue the remnants of the Islamic State and protect its Kurdish allies.
Turkey controls much of the northwest and has its own Arab-led militia.
There are signs that the Turks, who have close ties to HTS, are preparing a renewed attack on the Syrian Kurds, who have close ties to Kurdish separatists in Turkey.
Israel, now as aggressive as it has been in many years, is most blatantly exploiting the power vacuum it sees in Syria.
It continues to bomb the remnants of the state's military infrastructure and seize more Syrian land to add to the Golan Heights, which it has occupied since 1967.
The Israelis, as always, justify their actions as self-defense.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told me that Israel's actions were “irresponsible”. Israel, he said, must not act in a way that could “destabilize this very, very fragile transition process.”
EPAAhmed al-Sharaa knows he cannot stand up to the power of Israel, backed by the US.
“Syria is exhausted from the war, whether Israel is strong or not. Syria must become stronger and more developed. We have no plans of aggression against Israel. Syria will not be a threat to Israel or to anyone. “
Ahmed al-Sharaa's agenda is packed.
Syria is a broken country that he says he wants to fix and revive, full of challenges that could make his task impossible.
HTS is not the only armed group in Syria, and there are some who want to destroy its fledgling administration. HTS' enemies within the Islamic State network may attempt destabilizing attacks.
Syrians' desire for revenge against Assad's killers – and the former president himself – could explode into destructive public anger if HTS cannot show it is bringing to justice the men who have kept their boots on Syrian throats for so long.
Ahmed al-Shara correctly sees Syria as a fulcrum at the heart of the Middle East.
“Syria is an important country with a strategic location, very influential in the world, see how America is present in it on the one hand, Russia on the other hand and regional countries like Turkey, Iran and Israel as well.
He says that's why the outside world needs to help Syria rebuild.
This is also the reason why powerful countries do not allow this to happen.