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For more than half a century, Syria's Baath party under the Assad dynasty was a feared instrument of repression, ruthlessly ruling over the country until Sunday when the government collapsed under a shocking rebel offensive.

In 2011, President Bashar al-Assad -- who has reportedly fled the country as rebels took Damascus -- cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protesters with bullets when the Arab Spring reached Syria.

Like his father Hafez before him, Bashar chose force to fight any opposition for the 24 years that he ruled the country.

The Baath party, which advocates Arab unity, was founded on April 17, 1947 by two French-educated Syrian nationalists, Michel Aflaq, an Orthodox Christian, and Salah Bitar, a Sunni Muslim.

Baath means "resurrection" in Arabic.

In 1953, it merged with the Arab Socialist party and became popular across a wide cross-section of society, from intellectuals to peasants and religious minorities, with branches set up in several Arab countries including Iraq.

On March 8, 1963, a military coup brought the party to power in Syria.

Less than three years later, on February 23, 1966, a second coup saw General Hafez al-Assad engineer the ouster of party founders Aflaq and Bitar, causing a split with the Baathists in Iraq.

A third coup dubbed "the recovery movement" on November 16, 1970, saw the true birth of the dynasty, cementing the rule of Assad who became head of state. His predecessor, Nureddin al-Atassi, was in jail for the next 23 years.

A new constitution for Syria was adopted the following year, making the Baath party "head of state and society", and establishing what was called the "presidential referendum".

Under this new system, Hafez al-Assad was declared president by referendum, and he would stay in the post until his death in June, 2000.

'Elected' by referendum

For three decades in Syria the opposition and media were muzzled, protests were banned and the country was under a permanent state of emergency.

A crackdown in February 1982 saw the regime quash an insurrection by its bete noire, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the central city of Hama.

It is not known how many people were killed in the massacre because of a media blackout, but estimates vary from between 10,000 and 40,000 dead.

Politics in Syria were simple. With no opposition, the Baath party put forward the name of the "candidate", who was then elected by referendum.

Both Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar were "elected" with more than 90 percent of the votes cast.

When his father died in 2000, Bashar al-Assad was not old enough, constitutionally, to become president. But an amendment secured his succession in a movement denounced by the opposition as the birth of a "hereditary republic".

The Assads belonged to the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam in a predominantly Sunni Muslim Syria.

In 2011, the Arab Spring born in Tunisia moved west through Libya and Egypt, reaching Syria in March. It was the greatest challenge yet to Baath party rule.

Bashar al-Assad pledged reform and delivered blood, his forces crushing pro-democracy protests.

Promising political pluralism, the government held a referendum on February 22, 2012 on a new constitution.

But it did not prevent the uprising from rapidly becoming a full-blown civil war in which more than half a million people were killed and millions displaced.

When Islamist-led rebels took Damascus on Sunday after a lightning offensive of less than two weeks, they proclaimed "the end of this dark period and the start of a new era for Syria".