New Jersey and Damascus, Syria, may be separated by 5,600 miles, but for tens of thousands of Syrians and Syrian-Americans who call the Garden State home, the distance between their two lands just got a little bit shorter. The fall of Bashar al-Assad, Ba’athist President of Syria and ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, marks the end of over fifty years of his own family’s dictatorial rule. His father before him, Hafez al-Assad, ruled over Syria from when he took power in a coup d’etat, until his death in 2000. Shortly after Bashar took power, he suppressed the Damascus Spring, and in 2011, a revolution and civil war against his police state began. With the support of Russia and Iran, the Assad regime managed to hold onto power while the cities were devastated and over fourteen million Syrians were displaced from their homes.

Then, in less than two weeks, a renewed rebel offensive which began on November 27 broke the stalemate and toppled the government. Armed rebels took advantage of a weakened Russia bogged down in its bloody war of aggression in Ukraine and Iran-backed Hezbollah being pulverized by Israel to make an advance. The campaign, however, proved more successful than anticipated. Aleppo had fallen and in due time, Damascus fell. Assad promptly fled the country, taking asylum in Putin’s Russia.

What will happen next in Syria is uncertain. A number of factions made up the anti-Assad resistance, many of them united only by their mutual hatred of the regime. But for Syrians and Syrian-Americans in New Jersey, the fall of Assad marks the end of a blood-soaked chapter of their nation’s history.

“Paterson has long been a home for Syrian and Arab communities,” Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh told Insider NJ. “As someone of Syrian descent, I understand the deep ties many in our city and across New Jersey have to Syria. The fall of the Assad regime is a monumental moment—not only for Syria but for Syrians in New Jersey, including here in Paterson. It marks the end of years of oppression, corruption, and brutal dictatorship, offering a chance for the country to finally rebuild and move toward justice, democracy, and a brighter future.”

Paterson’s Syrian community is a long-seated one, with Syrians arriving in numbers in the late 19th Century, working in the city’s factories and markets. Their cultural and family ties to their old homeland, however, endure. “This resonates deeply in our community,” Sayegh said, “where so many families carry both the pain of the past and the hope for Syria’s future.”

Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed T. Khairullah, himself an immigrant from Syria who made the US his home as a youth in the early 1990s, said Syrians and Syrian-Americans rejoiced in the news. He said on Sunday morning invitations went out for a celebration. By 5 p.m., 500 Syrian people from as far as Albany and Pennsylvania had gathered to welcome the news. “It’s simply sheer joy and excitement,” Khairullah said. “Not a single family in Syria hasn’t suffered from the brutality of that regime, whether it’s someone who had family killed at the hands of the regime, or is missing and they still don’t know where they are, or someone was tortured, or their home has been destroyed. This is simply an evil family that ruled over Syria for half a century. Just them leaving the country—and we understand that they’ve left for Russia—brings joy and excitement to the Syrian people. Now they can finally be able to go back home without being in fear, and some people couldn’t go home, such as myself, to areas under the control of the regime. But obviously our excitement comes with a little caution, because there’s a lot of interest from regional and superpowers in the area. We know that there’s going to be a lot of interference in forming a new government in Syria. So, while we take in the moment, we also get ready to plan and help rebuild our homeland.”

The scale of destruction in Syria through the 2010s and 2020s has been enormous, with many Syrian refugees fleeing to neighboring Turkey, Jordan, and elsewhere.

Mayor Khairullah, for his part, has spent the last several years organizing relief operations for Syrian people affected by the war, traveling to the middle east from time to time to help as he can.

In the wider geopolitical context, the fall of the Assad regime also represents a black eye for Putin. The regime was propped up largely by Russian bayonets and airpower, and with the collapse of the Assad government, Putin has lost a key regional partner and foothold in opposition to Turkey, a member of NATO, and American allies in the middle east. The incoming Trump administration presents some uncertainty as to how US policy will be implemented with respect to Russia, but the developments in Syria are an unquestionable setback for the Kremlin.

“My analysis is that part of this means an international agreement has been struck,” Khairullah said. “Assad had refused any peaceful transition of power, or even a sharing of power. I think every single country, whether they opposed him or were with him, was sick and tired of Assad’s arrogance. The only thing that it proved right now—which we were saying since the revolution started—is that this was a paper tiger regime, a regime that was defeated by the people in 2012. It couldn’t even stand for more than a year in front of the people. If it wasn’t for Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah interfering, then the Assad regime would have been toppled 12 years ago.”

While the Syrian civil war has lasted over a decade, the renewed offensive moved quickly and achieved in a short time what had not been possible before. Insider NJ asked if this came as a surprise to the Syria-born mayor. “I wasn’t surprised,” he said, “but I was surprised that they actually moved forward. My initial impression was that everyone in the area was trying to tell Assad, ‘Listen, you need to start adhering to international agreements, you need to start surrendering or sharing power.’ I thought [the rebel forces] wanted to go to the edge of Aleppo, but when they started moving—and Russia and Iran did not interfere—it became apparent that Assad’s allies had let him go.”

Ahmet Akdag, international relations observer and political scientist in Passaic County focused on Middle Eastern affairs, noted the local New Jersey Middle Eastern community’s collective joy with the fall of Assad. “From what I’ve been hearing from community members, there’s a generally good sentiment. I can’t really say there’s anyone that supported Assad in this community. People are happy to see him gone. On the Turkish side of things, since the Turkish government has generally backed the rebels, it’s seen as though that their support has been redeemed, given these are the results that are being generated. For Syrians, the country has been under this family for generations because he and his father were basically in charge the whole time. Now this is turning a new chapter for Syria and getting out from underneath that dark period.”

Akdag, like Khairullah, acknowledged that there is uncertainty regarding what will happen next in Syria, but it does represent a major shift of power in the region and plays into the complex relationships between state and non-state actors. Immediately to the south of Syria, after all, is the continuing conflict with Israel and Hamas, and Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where a ceasefire was agreed to on November 26, although the IDF air force struck a target in Lebanon Sunday which Israel claimed was a weapons storage site.

“It is going to be an interesting scenario,” Akdag said of Syria’s future. “The Palestinians are supportive of the Assad regime falling. In fact, there was an impromptu parade down here in Paterson, and you had the Free Syrian flag—the rebels’ flag—flying along with the Palestinian flag. There are all these intricacies in there, but they are seeing the influence of Iran and Russia being pushed out. There are going to be questions, of course, on the large component of the Kurdish territories there. Within Palestinian groups, people were even posting online about how Hamas put out a statement, saying they celebrated the fall of Assad’s regime. People have a lot of questions and concerns because of just how complex the relationships are in that area, but now they feel like, at least, the people will have an opportunity to craft their future, rather than it being tied to the regime.”

Akdag also asserted that the fall of the Assad regime may represent the “capstone” of the Arab Spring, which began in December of 2010. Where strides had been made in other southern and eastern Mediterranean countries since then—some violently, others less so—Syria had held out, until now, thanks to outside support from Assad’s allies. For Syrians and Syrian-Americans watching in New Jersey, a new dawn has begun with new hopes and opportunities for their ancestral homeland, with many ready to engage however they can.