Syrians are dancing in the streets of Damascus and other cities, to celebrate the collapse of the hideous regime of Bashar al-Assad, the man responsible for an estimated 600,000 dead in a 13-year-long civil war — including tens of thousands viciously tortured to death in his dungeons.Those still alive have been staggering out of liberated prisons, limping and running toward family and freedom.'This is the moment of celebration,' I was told by the University of Oklahoma's Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist with family in the country. He told me the dispirited Syrian army had faded away and let rebels win because they had been receiving little or no pay and no further support from their Russian and Iranian backers.That's the good news. The not so good news: No one is certain what kind of government will follow Assad in the weeks to come — whether it will help stabilize the region, including Lebanon and possibly Gaza, or further tear it apart.The critical news, which may save Syria from a relapse into violence: Assad's flight to exile in Moscow is a body blow to Iran's ayatollahs and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, for whom Syria had critical importance. It displays their increasing weakness and paints them as losers. It makes them more vulnerable to anyone who seeks negotiations with either.President-elect Trump, take note.The immediate post-Assad threat is that Syria might collapse into separate militia fiefs or into another civil war. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (known as HTS) — the main rebel group that toppled the government in a lightning advance from the north — was once the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, broke with the terrorist group several years ago and is trying to soften his image. But Syria's many minorities will have doubts.'Jolani's going to have to reach out to all these different Syrian communities,' said Landis, hopefully.I still recall my last visit inside Syria in 2012, during the Arab Spring just before the heightened civil war and Islamist kidnappings made journalistic access almost impossible.With a Syrian translator, I visited a headquarters of a group called Ahrar al-Sham, inside an abandoned school, and the aggressive hostility of the fighters was only contained when a Belgian volunteer intervened. I soon left. I also interviewed moderate, unbearded civilian fighters who had set up militias because they wanted a democracy to replace Assad's vicious rule.How to coalesce secular Syrians, moderate Muslims,
