Maher Semsmieh, 43, stood in front of a pile of surrendered weapons at a Baath party office on Thursday, marking the symbolic end of the Assad regime's decades-long grip on Syria.
Semsmieh, his thin beard betraying his age, smiled with relief as he turned in his rifle – an act of defiance against a regime that had forced many like him to align with its oppressive ideology.
“We are no longer Baathists,” Semsmieh said, his voice tinged with the weight of liberation.
This moment came just days after the surprise downfall of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
Anti-regime forces, spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took control of the capital, Damascus, and with it, the Baath party’s long reign of terror.
Semsmieh, a member of the party’s "avant-garde," recalled his role in recruiting civilians and arming them to support the Syrian army.
He lamented the many martyrs lost in a cause they didn’t fully understand.
"They didn’t know what they were dying for," he said, reflecting on the tragic waste of life under the regime.
The Baath party’s fall was swift.
Just a day earlier, on Wednesday, the party announced the suspension of its activities "until further notice."
As the anti-regime forces entered the capital, Assad’s military forces abandoned their posts, leaving behind a power vacuum and a decimated regime.
At the office gate, other former Baath members handed over their rifles, including Firas Zakaria, a civil servant from the Ministry of Industry.
“We’re cooperating in the interest of the country,” Zakaria said, his smile betraying a mix of relief and resignation.
Like many Syrians, Zakaria had been compelled to join the party to secure employment. “You had to be a member of Baath to get a job,” he explained.
The Baath party, founded in 1947 by two Syrian nationalists, Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar, had long been a symbol of Arab unity.
Yet it was its shift to authoritarianism and violence, particularly under Hafez al-Assad, that set the stage for decades of repression.
Bashar al-Assad, his son, inherited the party’s brutal legacy, which crumbled just four days ago as anti-regime forces stormed Damascus.
Inside the once-imposing Baath party headquarters, evidence of the regime’s downfall was everywhere.
Cups of coffee and crumbs of bread lay undisturbed on a table.
Abandoned luxury cars stood among scattered documents, while HTS members guarded the entrance, rifles slung over their shoulders.
One HTS member, in a symbolic act of defiance, smashed the Baath party logo with his rifle butt.
Outside, the bust of Hafez al-Assad lay toppled, a fitting tribute to the fallen autocrat.
Moqbel Abdel Latif, 76, who had joined the Baath as a schoolboy, reflected on what might have been. "If Baath had stayed on the right path, the country today would be in a better condition," he said, his voice heavy with regret.
