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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to this special emergency episode of Battleground with me, Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

Well, extraordinary to say, Patrick, given that we were only chatting about this a couple of days ago,

but the 24-year rule of Bashar al-Assad in Syria seems to be over, and it was over in literally

24 hours in the sense that the rebels were approaching the capital, Damascus, and we all assumed

it would probably be a last-ditch fight there. His army

had promised to create a ring of steel around the capital, and yet they just melted away.

Yeah, on Friday we were saying, I think they were then approaching Homs, and I was saying it's a long

way still from Homs to Damascus.

And so, you know, don't hold your breath.

But in fact, the time it took to get from Homs to Damascus in terms of an advancing army was the time it takes to drive it, basically.

So clearly there was no opposition at all.

Damascus fell without any last ditch stand being made by,

as everyone will assume, the Allahite. You've got to remember that the Assad clan are

alawhites from the Mediterranean coast. And so they've always surrounded themselves by

fellow sect members. They would think it was in their interests to actually fight.

But they didn't, and it turns out to have been the sensible thing to do, because thus far,

fingers crossed, there's been no bloodbath of the sort that you might well have been feared.

...