This week’s cover

This week our global cover examines Syria’s future after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Now that the dictator has fled to Moscow, the question is where Syria’s liberation will lead. The country is a mosaic of people and faiths; they have never lived side-by-side in a stable democracy. Moreover Syria’s new powerbrokers are hardly men of peace. Still, despair is not a policy. The fall of Assad is a repudiation of Iran and Russia. And the jubilation in Syria this week suggests a nation exhausted by war could yet choose the long road towards peace. Much will go wrong. But before writing off the future, pause for a moment and share Syrians’ joy at bringing down a tyrannical dynasty.