What happens after a dictator falls? Lessons from Syria, Venezuela, and the Philippines

When Bashar al-Assad was overthrown, statues erected in honor of his father began to fall across the streets of Syria. When Nicolás Maduro was ousted, the tracksuit he was photographed wearing aboard a U.S. military helicopter suddenly became a fashion trend. On that first day, many Syrians and Venezuelans simply allowed themselves to celebrate.

"I've never felt this relaxed in my life," said Syrian actor and filmmaker Shehab Fatoum after learning that Assad had fled to Moscow.

And when the United States flew Maduro out of the country, Gabriela Ramírez called home, and she and her grandfather celebrated the dictator's departure by sharing a glass of rum over a video call.

But what happened next?

"Now imagine this happening in Belarus," says Syrian journalist Kholoud Helmi. "Suppose that today the president of Belarus decides to leave the country and flee to Russia... Tomorrow morning is unlikely to be a pleasant one."

Euroradio has released the documentary Morning Without a Dictator. Join the watch party with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Imagine This: The Dictator Has Fled to Moscow From Men With Guns

— When did you realize you were living under a dictatorship?

Shehab laughs. The Belarusian and Syrian contexts are very different, but he feels I'll understand.

— I think I was about five years old. Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, was in power then. Our school was holding some kind of celebration, and they gave me a picture of him. I was so happy — there was music, everyone was having fun. I came home carrying this photo of Hafez al-Assad.

Then I remember the look on my father's face. He saw the portrait and immediately took it away. I was just a child. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what.

I never saw that picture again. The next day I asked, "Mom, where's my photo? I want my photo!" She said, "Your dad put it away until next year..." I think he actually destroyed it.

This is how Shehab describes the situation in Syria on the eve of the protests that would change the country:

— We had bread, but we had no dignity. And if you crossed the line, you were dead.

In 2011, people took to the streets to reclaim that dignity. Among them was the brother of journalist Kholoud Helmi — Ahmed. When the protests began, he was working on his master's thesis in macroeconomics at the University of Damascus. He would never finish it.

— It was the early stage of the protests. People were demanding democracy, a change of regime, and free elections, Kholoud recalls.

She stresses that her brother was involved exclusively in humanitarian work, helping refugees and internally displaced people.

Six months later, the peaceful protests had escalated into a civil war that would last 14 years. More than 650,000 people were killed, and many more disappeared without a trace. Risking their lives, around 16 million Syrians fled the country during those years.

— When I left Syria for Lebanon, I cried. But when I flew from Lebanon to Egypt, I had a panic attack, Kholoud tells us. — It felt like flying was a whole new level of losing my connection to my country. I drove to Lebanon, and for the first six months I couldn't shake the feeling that someone could take me back to Syria at any moment. But that flight to Egypt... From then on, getting home would mean getting on a plane. Ever since, I've been searching for a sense of home everywhere I've lived. But nowhere ever felt like home.

Shehab was among those who left Syria by the most dangerous route — across the sea.

For hundreds of Syrian refugees, the journey to Europe across the Mediterranean proved fatal.

— I remember standing on the beach. It was one o'clock in the morning.

— At night? I ask.

— Yes, one in the morning. I'm standing on the beach. I can hear the sea. And there's only one thought in my head: "What am I doing?" I don't even know how to swim. I looked around. There were piles of clothes, shoes, and documents left behind. I didn't even know whether the people those things belonged to were still alive or whether they'd made it to the other shore. It was terrifying. Really terrifying. But then I looked back and remembered why I was there. And I decided: "Okay. Let's try."

The Assad family ruled Syria for more than 50 years. Then, in 2024, everything changed. Something that had seemed almost unimaginable happened: in just 11 days, rebel forces advanced from Idlib to Damascus, encountering almost no resistance. Syria now has a new — interim — president.

Ahmed al-Sharaa is the former leader of the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra. Just two years ago, he was on the U.S. terrorist list, and Washington was offering a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture. Today, U.S. President Donald Trump describes him as an attractive, tough leader with a complicated past. Al-Sharaa now occupies the presidential palace in Damascus, originally built by Bashar al-Assad's grandfather. Assad himself is in Moscow.

Shortly after Bashar al-Assad spoke by phone with Vladimir Putin, we called Shehab. Back in 2024, he told us he was ready to return to Syria on foot if he had to.

— My whole life, I felt as if I were carrying a massive boulder on my back everywhere I went. The moment I heard the news, it felt like that boulder simply disappeared. I was finally free.

Of course, Shehab did not walk to Syria. Instead, he flew to Lebanon. From there, he could drive to the Syrian border, cross it, return home, and visit the grave of his father, who had died while Shehab was living in Germany. He knew Assad was no longer in Syria — but he couldn't convince his own body of that.

— My body just couldn't accept that I could cross the border. What if Assad was still there? I was terrified, you know? How do you convince your own body that it's really over? That all the fear, all the stress, belongs to the past?

Shehab made a film about that journey, which was screened at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival in Germany. His mother had not been back to Syria for many years. At the festival, she finally saw her home again — if only on a screen. She watched her son open a door that no one had touched in years, one that refused to open at first. Then he sat alone in an empty kitchen. Later, he lay on the floor of a room where all the furniture was gone.

Shehab calls the short film a story about the real Odysseus. Odysseus returns home only to find that he no longer recognizes his own palace. "Odysseus" was also the nickname Shehab's father gave him.

— It's my story, but it's also universal. It could be about anyone who has lived through what I lived through. It could be any Syrian, any Iranian, or anyone forced to leave their hometown without being able to return.

Assad may have left Syria, but Shehab still did not return home for good. Because for Syrians, neither fear nor trauma has truly become part of the past.

When Shehab arrived in Lebanon and was preparing to cross into Syria, a wave of mass killings broke out in the country. Several more major outbreaks of sectarian violence followed. That raises an obvious question: can the country's new charismatic president — a man with what Donald Trump called "a complicated past" — preserve a peace won at such a devastating cost? He also faces the task of rebuilding a country where some families went six months without eating chicken and lived for a year and a half without electricity.

It is not only buildings that have been destroyed. Syria's state institutions have been shattered as well.

— The day after the regime fell, I was giving interviews. I remember saying that even if the devil himself came to rule Syria, it would still be better than Assad, Kholoud says. — Because no one could have done more damage to Syria than Assad did. That was my first thought. But what happened a year and a half later? Almost nothing. We're moving forward in tiny steps. And no real progress has yet been made toward building functioning civilian institutions in Syria.

In mid-July, as we were finishing this documentary, Syria's new parliament finally held its first-ever session.

But Shehab is blunt: in his view, Syria's new authorities are even worse than Assad's regime. His friend says she will never return home. When asked why, her answer is short: "Because of the jihadists."

She is referring, among others, to Syria's new president. For years, he was known by the nom de guerre al-Julani. He quite literally moved into the presidential palace from a field commander's tent. But shortly before Assad was overthrown, he abandoned the name associated with his jihadist past and began using his real name again: Ahmed al-Sharaa. Today, he meets with world leaders, including Western ones. Some have praised him in particularly glowing terms — Donald Trump among them.

Yet many Syrians still do not feel safe. Shehab's film contains almost no faces; he shows only the hands of the people he interviews because he fears for their safety. And he is right when he says that, despite the different circumstances, Belarusians will understand exactly why.

When Gabriela left Venezuela, her friends asked her never to forget what life there had been like. Today, arepas and music—especially salsa—keep those memories alive.

Gabriela has not been home since the summer of 2024, when she returned to cover Venezuela's presidential election. The authorities tried to prevent millions of Venezuelans abroad from voting: only those who already had permanent residency or refugee status in their new country were allowed to cast a ballot overseas. Everyone else was told to return home if they wanted to vote. Belarus followed the same approach in 2022, when the regime prevented the diaspora from voting in the constitutional referendum. Later, Belarusians living abroad were also excluded from the presidential election unless they returned to the country.

Many Venezuelans did exactly that to vote against Maduro. Gabriela reported on people buying expensive airline tickets and flying thousands of kilometers just to cast their ballots. She herself was about 8,000 kilometers from home—but she got on a plane as well.

The election changed nothing. Nicolás Maduro declared himself the winner over opposition candidate Edmundo González. Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the result. That changed nothing either. A year later, opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—but that, too, changed nothing.

Then came the new year, 2026.

On January 3, Gabriela was awakened by a phone call from her parents. It was 8 a.m. in Berlin, where she lives, and 2 a.m. in Caracas. They told her they could hear explosions and that military aircraft were patrolling the skies over the city.

— But Venezuelans are still asking the same question: when will we see the real transfer of power that people expected—and celebrated on January 3, when they saw Maduro in an orange jumpsuit? I think we now understand that this process will take much longer than we had hoped.

Venezuela is now governed by Delcy Rodríguez, who served as vice president under Maduro. According to Gabriela, every major political decision Rodríguez has made has been made under direct guidance from the United States and the Trump administration.

— The reality is that nothing has really changed. Ask any Venezuelan, and they'll tell you the only difference is that Maduro is no longer in the country. Everything else remains the same. More than six hundred political prisoners are still behind bars. And there is still no clear timeline for when we will be able to hold elections.

Rodríguez carried out a cosmetic reshuffle of the government. For example, Maduro ally and former defense minister Vladimir Padrino López was reassigned as minister of agriculture. His post went to former intelligence chief Gustavo González López, who is under European Union sanctions for human rights violations. In short, the same people received different titles—and that was the extent of the change.

— There has been no trial for any of the crimes they committed. Yes, they've left their previous positions, but that isn't justice. And of course Venezuelans don't trust this regime or forget what it did to people—how it imprisoned and tortured them.

The "updated" regime has tried to distance itself from Maduro. It hasn't just changed its rhetoric—some officials have literally changed their clothes.

— It's astonishing to watch. In the first days after Maduro left the country, these people were demanding his release. Then, three months later, they were saying, "Maduro? Who's Maduro? We don't know him." They don't even wear red shirts anymore. Now they dress in white and light blue—the colors that always belonged to the opposition. In other words, they're going through a complete rebranding.

— Most people will tell you that the U.S. intervention had a positive impact because nothing had changed in Venezuela for thirty years. That's true. But it's equally true that if this moment isn't handled properly, it could all end in failure.

We're speaking in Gabriela's apartment in Berlin. On the windowsill behind her sits a small green plastic toy—a perinola. She brought it back from her last trip home in 2024, when she traveled to cover the election campaign.

— There was one week left before the election. I remember walking through Sabana Grande, one of Caracas's most popular shopping streets. There I met a nine-year-old boy who was helping his mother sell clothes, and we became friends. I was recording interviews, and he followed me around all day carrying this little toy. At the end of the day, he gave it to me. Now it stays with me as a reminder of how resilient Venezuelans are. He was only nine years old, yet he was already working hard to help support his mother. That's one of the darkest sides of Venezuela's crisis: children grow up in poverty and start working from an early age.

It is true that two armed conflicts were already underway in the Philippines before martial law was declared. But Carol argues that Marcos deliberately exaggerated both their scale and the threat they posed to justify imposing martial law. At the time, she was a university student—and one of many who were forced underground.

— During those years, many of my closest friends and fellow activists were killed or imprisoned for long periods while they were still very young. That's my personal experience. That's how the dictatorship affected my own life.

I managed to avoid arrest during the first wave of repression, but six months later I was detained as well. Unlike many of the people imprisoned with me—especially the young men—I was not physically tortured. But I endured psychological torture and threats of sexual violence.

Journalist Inday Espina-Varona was only in second grade at the time. Her father was a journalist but sensed that something was coming. Shortly before martial law was declared, he left journalism to become a government official.

— We grew up as children who always had breakfast with the news on the radio. Then one day the radio went silent. There was nothing but static.

We started asking our father what had happened. He told us the president had shut down all the radio stations. We were raised in a liberal household, so naturally we asked why anyone would do that. Why cut off the broadcasts that keep people informed? I remember my father saying, "Maybe he's trying to hide something," Inday recalls.

There was indeed much to hide. According to Amnesty International, between 1972 and 1981, around 70,000 Filipinos were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed by state forces.

Today, however, the Marcos era is increasingly portrayed in the Philippines as a "golden age." That "golden age" lasted for more than twenty years. How did Marcos manage to stay in power for so long?

He was backed by a powerful and wealthy country: the United States. President Ronald Reagan valued the Philippine dictator as an ally against communism and largely overlooked his human rights abuses. Belarus, too, has a powerful neighbor that supports its dictator—and that support makes removing him vastly more difficult. No matter how many sanctions are imposed, there is always another source of loans and financial backing.

— I don't really want to compare the United States and Russia, but... I tell Inday as I explain the parallels that came to mind.

Inday nods. Go ahead, she says—make the comparison.

— Yes, both the United States and Russia are imperial powers. Their political systems may look different on the surface, but fundamentally, whether it's Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, both seek to expand their influence over other countries where they can exploit land, extract resources, enrich themselves, and give very little back.

Then come even more flashbacks. Marcos was overthrown after mass protests in 1986. Repression had intensified, public anger had been building. In 1983, the country's leading opposition figure, Benigno Aquino Jr., was assassinated at Manila airport.

He had spent several years abroad for medical treatment but decided to return home to take part in the elections. He planned to meet Marcos and present a roadmap for restoring democracy before extremists could seize power and make such a transition impossible.

But the authorities tried to prevent him from returning. Aquino was denied a passport, and international airlines were warned not to allow their aircraft to land in Manila if he was on board.

He found a way to fly anyway. Expecting he might be killed, he put on a bulletproof vest. During the flight, he told journalists to keep their cameras ready because everything could happen within minutes. It happened even faster than that. Aquino was shot in the head immediately after landing. After the Marcos government fell, sixteen soldiers were convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite years of investigations and court proceedings, it was never proven that Marcos personally ordered Aquino's assassination.

But in 1983, Aquino's murder sparked a wave of spontaneous public outrage, Carol recalls.

— Even institutions that had traditionally been conservative and supportive of the establishment—big business and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church—began questioning the Marcos dictatorship.

They were disturbed not only by military abuses and the looting of public funds and private businesses, but also by the ruling family's lifestyle. They behaved like kings and queens, flaunting their privilege and acting as though they were untouchable. All of this combined to bring tens and then hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. At the same time, an armed insurgency was expanding in other parts of the country, and support for Marcos within the military was no longer united.

Eventually, the United States concluded that Marcos was no longer useful and pressured him into calling an early presidential election.

Marcos's challenger was Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino. The events of 1986 became known as the Yellow Revolution because supporters of democratic change wore yellow ribbons. Corazon Aquino served as president of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992.

But ordinary Filipinos saw few of the benefits of the democracy they had fought for. Inday argues that the new political leadership continued to accommodate the country's powerful oligarchs instead of addressing the problems of the people who had elected them. When voters realized that the champions of democracy had no intention of tackling economic and social inequality, they stopped believing in them.

— The benefits of democracy never truly reached ordinary people. In rural areas, exploitation and oppression continued, Inday says. — Why else have people lost faith in those who speak about democracy? Because every time a new administration comes to power, it prosecutes only its enemies while protecting its own allies. That has happened under one government after another.

Many of the governments that followed were so disappointing that, in 2022, Filipinos voted for another Marcos—this time the son. And if this Philippine story is giving you flashbacks too, it's not difficult to imagine how events in Belarus might unfold after Alexander Lukashenko eventually leaves power.

Inday closely followed the Marcos Jr. campaign on social media and predicted that he would win.

— Marcos Jr. himself wasn't a particularly forceful politician, nor did he campaign aggressively. Instead, his team relied heavily on social media, creating troll farms to target anyone who reminded Filipinos about the dangers of dictatorship.

Every time someone tried to push back against the myth that dictatorship had been some kind of paradise, they were immediately swarmed by online trolls. At the same time, there was an extremely expensive and highly coordinated social media campaign, involving Cambridge Analytica, that portrayed Marcos as a gentle, kind, likable young man while rebranding his father's dictatorship as the Philippines' "golden age," Inday explains.

An entire generation of Filipinos has now grown up without ever experiencing that so-called "golden age," Carol says. And Philippine school textbooks devote very little attention to the years of martial law.

But how was it possible that, in a country of more than 100 million people, no one emerged as a more compelling candidate than the heir to a dictatorship?

— I don't know how it is in Belarus, but in the Philippines the opposition has always been deeply fragmented, Inday replies. — And I'm convinced that if the opposition had really tried, it could have found at least a few fundamental issues to unite around, putting internal disagreements aside. I still don't understand why we never learned to do that.

Marcos Jr. did not build his campaign on open nostalgia for the Philippines' authoritarian past. Instead, his surname was carefully cleansed of its negative associations through a sophisticated and well-funded effort involving social media and traditional media alike. The result was the image of a gentle, sensitive man who tears up during an interview with his goddaughter, TV host Toni Gonzaga, while speaking about his dreams. His dream, he says, is simple: justice for the Filipino people.

— So you're not trying to rewrite history? Toni asks him.

— There's no reason to rewrite history.

— But that's exactly what your critics accuse you of. Are you planning to rewrite the textbooks?

— Only if they're written incorrectly, Marcos Jr. replies.

Produced with the support of the Russian Language News Exchange