MARK ALMOND: What happened after Gaddafi fell in Libya in 2011 is a terrible warning from history

Ultimately, the psychopathic dictator Bashar al-Assad was the enemy of everyone.

His hardcore supporters, who have failed to flee the country, will do everything they can to distance themselves from his overthrown regime, and the rest of Syria will celebrate wildly.

Rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani has tried to keep things calm and has ordered his fighters not to celebrate by firing automatic fire into the air. But as Assad’s palaces, associates’ properties and the Iranian embassy were looted, that order was often ignored.

But once the party is over, Syria will suffer a hangover that could last for years. Too often, the fall of a Middle Eastern strongman is followed not by stability but by anarchy.

For example, the lawlessness and infighting that emerged in the aftermath of Colonel Gaddafi’s overthrow in Libya in 2011 is a dire warning from history.

Jolani leads a small army of no more than 20,000 soldiers. They are heavily armed, fanatically motivated and highly experienced, the veterans of battles against many enemies, from Assad’s army to the Islamic State, Russia and the US.

What they achieved in a very short time – ousting an entrenched regime and taking control of all of Syria’s major cities, including now Damascus – is a testament to their remarkable discipline and organization.

But it is one thing to depose a dictator, quite another to maintain a grip on power. Even after waves of civil war and an exodus of refugees, Syria has a population of almost 20 million – a thousand times larger than Jolani’s army. And the country has one of the largest stockpiles of weapons in the world, amassed not only by Assad but also by many rebel groups and even civilians.

It is no exaggeration to say that guns are more common in Syria than umbrellas in England.

Even more worrying are the arsenals of artillery, mortars, rockets and even chemical weapons. Israel carried out numerous airstrikes on ammunition and weapons depots in Syria this weekend in an attempt to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, but it is unlikely to have destroyed them all.

Jolani has tried to present herself as a moderate, courting Western governments and media and even speaking to the Israeli press.

As far as the outside world is concerned, his brand is anti-Iran, anti-Hezbollah and anti-terrorism.

But now that he has gained power at the cost of so much blood, it will be difficult for him to become a conventional politician. He may want peace, but the warriors who support him do not. They have fought against the toughest odds under extreme circumstances for years. After all the sacrifices they have made, they do not think in terms of truce and tolerance.

There will be so many factions vying for influence in Syria’s future, many drawn from opposing ideologies and religions, that prolonged internal unrest seems inevitable.

Jolani commands Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, which emerged from the al-Qaeda-linked Front for the Conquest of the Levant.

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is backing the Syrian National Army – formerly called the Free Syrian Army – to suppress the Syrian Democratic Forces, drawn from the Kurdish people on the border.

Then of course there is the Islamic State and various Druze militias, including the Men Of Dignity Movement and Mountain Brigade Gathering.

All this may have grim echoes of Monty Python’s Life Of Brian and the endless variations on the People’s Front Of Judea, but infighting between these groups can make life a misery for the locals.

For Western Europe, the immediate fear is twofold: terrorism and organized crime. No one knows how many foreign jihadists there are in Syria, mercenaries driven by fanatical Islamism rather than money.

Some come from former Soviet republics such as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, others from China and Afghanistan, but most come from Muslim areas of Russia: Chechnya and Dagestan.

Unlike Jolani, their ambitions go beyond deposing Assad. Some are even talking about taking the fight east to China.

While Jolani may look to powers like China to support his government in international forums like the UN in the coming months and years, he may want to get off his lunatic edge.

If expelled, some will likely go to Britain and the EU, where they will try to continue their war against Western civilization.

Syria is also a major source of drugs for the Middle East and increasingly for the West, and whoever gains control of the narcotics trade – a business once led by Assad’s younger brother Maher – will have a major share in the European illegal drug market, which is often supplied via refugee routes.

The combination of a multi-sided power struggle and organized crime means that chaos in Syria will soon spread beyond its borders.

Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford