A defaced poster of Bashar al-Assad outside a Syrian army recruitment centre. The shoe is considered dirty in Arab cultures.

Syrians are marking the fall of Bashar al-Assad and his regime by putting the boot in his mouth as they destroy countless propaganda images of the former dictator.

The demonstrations of anger are part of a wave of protests and celebrations using shoes to express displeasure.

When Russian forces withdrew from bases across the country last week, rebels lined the roads, waving shoes at their vehicles as they went.

Shoes have been shoved in the mouths of defaced Assad posters, and statues and portraits have been kicked, stamped on and beaten with shoes.

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During a visit to Damascus’s notorious Saydnaya prison last week, a woman waved her shoe at Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria.

She was reportedly searching for her missing brother and two cousins and wanted to denounce perceived inaction by the UN over Syrian suffering during almost 14 years of conflict.

In Arab cultures, shoes can be used as an insult as they touch dirt and are put on the foot, the lowest part of the body.

To be under a shoe means that you are lower than dirt and it is a practice that dates back to Biblical times.

Showing the bottom of your shoe when sitting with legs up on a chair and facing another is also considered a grave insult and belittling to the other person.

Politicians in Arab countries have often found themselves on the wrong end of a flying shoe, with perhaps the most well-known incident involving Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter, who threw his footwear at George W Bush during a 2008 news conference in Baghdad.

“This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!” he shouted, expressing the deep-seated anger and resentment felt by many Iraqis towards US policies.

When protests swept the Middle East in what became known as the Arab Spring, the practice was widespread among anti-government demonstrators.

During the 2011 protests in Syria that spiralled into civil war, statues of Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, were beaten with a shoe.

In 2013, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president, was greeted by a group of men hurling shoes at him on a trip to Egypt, while a Bahraini delegation was met by raised shoes in Gaza in 2018.

It was a signal of contempt and a rejection of the delegation’s efforts to improve Palestinian relations with Israel.

After one of the most well-known moments of modern Middle Eastern history, the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Paradise Square in 2003, jubilant onlookers rushed to beat it with shoes and stamp on it.

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