Syrians, finally liberated from the shackles of Assad’s regime, savour the taste of freedom long denied. Yet the spectre of old foes looms, says Amr Salahi.
Never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined seeing what we saw in Syria this Friday. The joyous scenes in Damascus and other Syrian cities would have been completely impossible just three weeks ago.
Syrians gathered in their thousands to celebrate the fall of a regime which had silenced their voices through fear and terror for over five decades, killed and disappeared hundreds of thousands of them, and destroyed their country’s infrastructure and economy, leaving millions of them in abject poverty.
The atmosphere was beyond any ordinary celebration. This was reportedly the 700th Friday since anti-Assad protests broke out in March 2011.
Throughout the Syrian revolution, the largest protests had always happened on Friday after prayers, but this time people could gather in the centre of the Syrian capital without fear of attack for the first time ever.
Freed prisoners who had endured torture at the hands of the regime were in the squares celebrating.
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Souad Jakmiri, an English teacher living in Damascus told me about the atmosphere in the city.
“The early hours of [Sunday] morning when we heard that Damascus is free and the regime fell was the best moment in my entire life. I can’t describe how happy I was. I called my friends and family and we cried with joy together. All the killing, fear, torturing, kidnapping, bombing, and destruction were gone with him,” she said, while also recounting the suffering she and her family lived through over the past 13 years, including the killing of her cousin by a regime sniper.
“Syrian people are in the streets, smiling, singing, distributing sweets, dancing and hugging each other. I am 30 years old and this is the first time in my life that I see people in Damascus that happy!” she said.
Syrians living outside Syria watched the celebrations with a feeling of incredulity. Before the rebel offensive against regime forces began on November 27, Syria had seemed like a lost cause. The world no longer cared about the country and the Assad regime seemed to have won, confining opposition forces to a small area in the northwest and content to rule over the ruins of the country which it had destroyed.
The horrors of the 2013 chemical weapons attacks on rebel-held suburbs of Damascus and the indiscriminate barrel bombs which had killed tens of thousands of civilians in opposition-held areas over the years were no longer in the global public consciousness. The conflict had seemed to have quietened down in the worst possible way, with the same regime which had committed unimaginable atrocities against its own people firmly entrenched and ready to be welcomed back into the global fold.
The tragedy of Syria brings us together
However, one of the results of the long years of conflict and destruction which followed the 2011 outbreak of revolution was to bring Syrians together in ways that would have been unlikely to happen before.
Syrian diaspora communities gathered around activism and charity work and made contact with the growing Syrian refugee communities in Turkey, Lebanon, and elsewhere. As a Syrian born in the UK, this changed my life in so many ways.
I saw the euphoria and confidence at the first Syrian diaspora gatherings and protests in 2011, as new Syrian activist and civil society groups were being set up, while dictators were being toppled in other Arab countries amid expectations this would soon happen to the Assad regime.
I saw this later turn into anger and despondency as it became clear that Bashar al-Assad was willing to destroy the whole of Syria to stay in power and that no country in the world was willing to stop him. The 2013 chemical attacks brought only a limited response that allowed the regime to continue its massacres — with conventional weapons and chlorine gas only.
Syria, it seemed was different. Because of its complex sectarian and ethnic make-up and its proximity to Western ally Israel, from a Western perspective any change of government there seemed dangerous and unpredictable. As a result, Western countries led by the US took what seemed like cosmetic measures against the regime – imposing sanctions and issuing denunciations, but refusing to impose a no-fly zone or provide significant military help to anti-Assad rebels.
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By the time I met my wife Hadeel, the manager of a charity based in Gaziantep, Turkey, in 2021, many Syrians — at least outside the country — had abandoned whatever hopes they had for change in Syria.
“We felt that the road had been completely blocked in front of the revolution and the regime could take Idlib province at any minute and be on the Turkish border,” she told me. “There was a ceasefire agreement but there was still killing and bombing and people were fleeing Syria despite it.”
“We thought that our [charity] work would stop and there would be a disaster for the three million people in Idlib province,” Hadeel added. She was from Aleppo and had seen the horrors of life there when it was under the regime’s barrel bombs, leaving to Turkey in 2014 with her family when people were killed around them on a routine basis.
By the time our son was born in early 2024, we both had little hope of ever seeing Syria again. We gave him an English-sounding middle name to allow him to “fit in” better in the UK, because we both had seen the ever-growing racism against Syrian refugees in Turkey, and were concerned about the same kind of thing in the UK and Europe.
We never thought our boy would see Syria in his life — but happily it seems we were very wrong.
Will Syria’s joy last?
However, many things could ruin the newfound hopes of Syrians. Israel has, quite literally, crashed Syria’s party.
It waited for the regime to fall before carrying out what it called the largest air operation in its history, claiming to have taken out most of Syria’s strategic weapons, which were outdated and posed little threat anyway.
Souad emotionally described the relentless Israeli air attacks, pointing out that they were being carried out against a traumatised population yearning to breathe free.
“The Israeli bombardment never gave us a chance to breathe, to enjoy the feeling of being free after these years of oppression. Many Syrians are suffering from psychological disorders related to the sound of explosions and warplanes – we didn’t get a chance to recover. Women, kids, and elderly people are petrified. We deserve to celebrate and build our country peacefully – we have had enough!” she said.
Israel is unlikely, however, to be moved by the plight of Syrians, and its actions in the country – occupying more territory near the Golan Heights and trying to sow sectarian discord between Druze and Sunnis in southern Syria underline just how much of a challenge it will be to build a stable Syria where the rule of law and eventually democracy prevail.
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Other examples from the Arab Spring, such as Libya, show how foreign actors and militia infighting can stop state-building efforts after a longstanding dictatorship is overthrown.
Syria, in the middle of a hostile regional environment and with sectarian tension deliberately exacerbated by the Assad regime, faces a real risk of division and internal conflict following Assad’s overthrow.
For now, however, Syria’s 50-year Assad regime nightmare is over, and its people finally have a chance to choose their own destiny. The failed experiments with democracy in other Arab countries could serve as cautionary lessons, and there are already encouraging signs of political maturity from the new authorities, following years of horrific conflict.
Amr Salahi is a senior journalist and news editor with The New Arab. He has an MSc. in Media, Power, and Public Affairs from Royal Holloway University of London. Amr has many years of experience in media, translation and research, having previously worked with the BBC, ITV News, Al-Hiwar TV, and Iraq Body Count.
