History will judge him as a dictator who wrecked his nation, persecuted peoples and caused countless heartache and misery. He even gassed Syrian citizens.
His father, Hafez al-Assad, seized power in 1970 in a military coup. Tens of thousands died after he crushed an uprising in the city of Hama in 1982.
Bashar al-Assad inherited the country in 2000.
Rallying cries for rights during the Arab Spring of 2011 were met with guns, torture and persecution. A civil war has raged since then.
An estimated 600,000 people have been killed and 12million (half the population) displaced. About 6million of these have fled Syria.
The speed of the collapse was remarkable, surprising all the experts.
The armed forces melted away when Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces advanced towards Damascus. As history shows, regimes are sometimes much less secure than they might appear.
Mr Assad’s backers in Russia, as well as Iran and Hizbollah (both Shi’a), have faced their own huge challenges. Israel has decimated Hizbollah.
HTS grew out of al-Qaeda and is labelled a terrorist group by much of the West. Its leader has a $US10 million FBI bounty on his head.
However, so far so good. HTS has been softening its image and has shown tolerance and moderation after overrunning cities.
Residents have seen its soldiers as liberators.
A prime minister has been appointed to lead a transitional government to March next year, until a more permanent solution can be found.
If HTS wants international support in rebuilding Syria, it must be pragmatic and tolerant.
Pragmatically, too, the United States is seeking channels of communication and Iran and Russia — which will want to keep its key strategic port and air base — are treading carefully.
Israel is going full blast to wreck any military capacity which might one day be used against it, and the US is bombing Isis fragments in Syria.
The US fears extremists will try to exploit the regime collapse.
There are clashes in the northeast between Kurdish forces and a Turkish-backed faction. Syria has been a web of fragmented resistance and changing allegiances. The question of the oft-persecuted Kurds and their territorial ambitions complicate a complex landscape.
Factions will want their pieces of the pie.
US President Joe Biden summed matters up early this week when he called the situation the "moment of opportunity" before the world.
It was "also a moment of risk and uncertainty, as we all turn to the question of what comes next".
He noted that rebel groups had their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses.
What will count more than words are actions.
US President-elect Donald Trump said: "This is not our fight", but what happens in Syria is central to the future of the fraught Middle East. US interests are inevitably involved in this interconnected world.
Governance must be rebuilt in this shattered nation. A power vacuum must be prevented. The ongoing chaos and strife that is Libya would be the worst nightmare.
Can an HTS-led government fulfil its stated intentions and not veer towards its fundamentalist and authoritarian roots? How will all the various Syrian factions and personal ambitions play out? What role will the external powers play?
How can a laid-waste economy be rebuilt? Can the scourge of corruption be minimised? How can peaceful pluralism be established after more than 50 years of dictatorship and instability before that?
The aftermath of the overthrow of tyrants is often tragic.
Hopefully, nevertheless, Syria will emerge "from a dark chapter of unspeakable horror" into some form of peace and prosperity.
Hopefully, the jubilant waving of Syrian flags in Dunedin and around the world herald a new, positive beginning.
