Early resolution. What if Assad forces retook the Damascus by the end of the year? /s

Damn ok, fall of Damascus was a fall of Kabul speedrun

Damascus has fallen. Incredible how quickly the cookie crumbled. Anyone have good markets about what happens next?

Well it makes me feel less bad that you also have a lot of yes here @SemioticRivalry

According to this map, rebels in the south are already some 6.5km from the palace:

@ScipioFabius hmm, when I go on the link it shows them much further away

@TheAllMemeingEye Hmmm, not sure why, but I think sometimes the map fails to load in/loads in a snapshot of a previous day.

Wow, this was Syria for most of this year until a couple weeks ago

This is it now

Every other faction is rapidly taking land and cities, Iran and Russia are evacuating their people, Assad has fled to Moscow, honestly I'm shocked the rebels are winning so much after losing so badly this past decade and being internationally isolated

@TheAllMemeingEye What is your source for this map?

@TimothyJohnson5c16 Wikimedia commons, typed in Syrian civil war map

Hoo boy literally one day later and now it looks like this

This is one of the cases where prediction markets shine. Nothing else can take a rapidly shifting situation with unreliable reporting and distill it into a number like this

Regardless of how you feel this conflict is likely to go in the long term, one month seems pretty fast for the government to lose control of its capital?

@SaviorofPlant Extremely fast (almost unprecedented), but the SAA is capitulating and Russia and Iran are dropping support. At this point, even if the regime maintains control of Dasmascus, they will have no prospects of retaking any territory, making an internal coup or Assad fleeing more likely.

@MaxMorehead Assad has left to Moscow apperantly? It's collapsing, I don't believe there will even be any noteworthy attempt at defending Damascus, even though they are pulling all of their forces back to there.

@ScipioFabius I don't think he's left, but I expect you're right about Damascus falling quickly.

@MaxMorehead Yes, I was wrong

Think all the people moving between Syria and Lebanon is causing chaos in the south west of Syria, around Damascus. The Syrian army looks overall very disorganised and fell apart when the rebels moved on Aleppo.

Talk of reorganizing for a counteroffensive looks fanciful. It's unclear what will happen if the rebels move on Damascus in the next month. The offensive on Aleppo looked carefully planned, and they might be following the pattern of the 2021 taliban offensive which lead to the fall of Kabul.

Without Russia and Iran, the Syrian regime has no power