One year after the fall of al-Assad, a reporter returns to Damascus | Syria’s War

Damascus, Syria – On the morning of December 5, 2025, a taxi drove me throughout the Lebanon-Syria border. This time was completely different from my first journey throughout, within the early hours of December 9, 2024, only a day after Bashar al-Assad fled Syria for Moscow.

On that day, Syrian Military army automobiles have been deserted on the aspect of the freeway to Damascus. Additionally deserted, scattered alongside the freeway’s shoulders, have been the uniforms of the lads who had as soon as pushed them.

A 12 months later, they’re all gone. So, too, are the defaced portraits of Bashar and his father Hafez, who dominated the nation from 1971 till final 12 months. And gone is an indication I’d photographed a 12 months earlier that learn “Assad’s Syria welcomes you”.

I used to be again in Damascus to cowl the primary anniversary of the autumn of the regime. A 12 months later, folks return to Umayyad Sq. to rejoice.

This time, armed males are organising the crowds as an alternative of firing their rifles into the air. The muddied SUVs that transported anti-Assad forces into Damascus have been changed by new safety forces automobiles, emblazoned with the brand new nationwide emblem adopted by Ahmed al-Sharaa’s authorities.

Loads can change in a 12 months. Instantly after the autumn, Syrians had a five-decade weight faraway from their chests. It had pressed down on their ribs and organs and robbed them of emotions of company.

‘Could God shield the federal government’

For years, many Syrians – even within the diaspora – averted giving their actual names or having their pictures taken out of concern of repercussions for themselves or family members again in Syria.

After al-Assad’s fall, many Syrians have been keen to precise the suppressed ideas they’d lengthy burrowed away.

In Umayyad Sq., regardless that the anniversary was nonetheless three days away, folks gathered and waved flags and lit fireworks. Many spoke of their pleasure on the upcoming celebration.

“The state of affairs is sweet, might God shield the federal government,” stated Moataz, a 19-year-old scholar. “The state of affairs within the final 12 months modified … in each means.”

We completed talking, and I started speaking to a different scholar. Then, Moataz approached me and requested me to please not embrace his household identify within the report.

One other of his buddies refused to be interviewed. Nothing was fallacious, they stated, they only felt extra snug that means.

Standing subsequent to me was a Canadian colleague. When Moataz’s good friend heard he was from Canada, he informed him that Syria was good to go to for every week or two, however that it’s higher to stay in Canada.

Most within the sq. had solely ever recognized one household’s rule. Many, below the age of 25, had solely recognized one man’s rule. Exorcising the trauma and demons, particularly these of the years of the rebellion and violent suppression, will understandably take time. So will bettering the nation and its infrastructure.

Syrian store house owners I spoke to within the al-Salhiye and al-Hamadiyeh souqs informed me that they not feared safety forces would raid their outlets, however that enterprise had largely nonetheless not improved. Hopes are excessive that the lifting of United States sanctions, together with the latest repeal of the Caesar Act, may kick-start the economic system. However for now, many live day-to-day or off remittances.

The disappeared

One criticism from activists is that little progress has been made on the problem of the tens of 1000’s of disappeared Syrians. Portraits of lacking individuals posted in Damascus’s Marjeh Sq. have been torn down.

A 12 months earlier, my colleagues and I had pushed in the direction of Sednaya jail north of town. We parked a few kilometres away, as Israeli air strikes exploded within the distance, and carried on by foot in the direction of the jail.

There, we discovered tens of 1000’s of individuals on the lookout for any signal, whisper or remnant of their family members who had been disappeared within the nefarious Syrian jail community constructed by the Assad regime over a long time. On our means down from the jail, folks arriving requested us if there have been any prisoners left inside. They didn’t but know that every one the remaining prisoners had been liberated and that rumours of an underground holding cell have been proof of the depths of inventive depravity the regime was able to.

That regime is gone. And no one I spoke to in Damascus needs al-Assad again. That reality alone has made a world of distinction to hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Nonetheless, discussions with store house owners, servers at cafes, a former lodge worker, former prisoners, researchers, college students, engineers, taxi drivers and members of the diaspora contemplating returning house, additionally highlighted that it’ll not be sufficient to rebuild the nation.

The World Financial institution estimates reconstruction in Syria wants $216bn. Dozens of areas nonetheless lie in ashes and rubble. The economic system has but to take off, and the pledges of economic and political help from worldwide and regional allies haven’t totally materialised but.

A 12 months on from al-Assad’s fall, some streets are being repaved, gunmen in mismatched fatigues who as soon as roamed town streets have been changed by males in matching black uniforms with state insignia. An official sheen has been laid over Damascus. Many locals might match that sheen with their very own expressions of pleasure, however beneath, many are nonetheless struggling.

To come back house or to not come house?

Syria remains to be in a post-war part.

Whereas locals stated electrical energy and infrastructure are bettering, strolling via unlit streets or alleys remains to be not unusual. Whereas visiting a good friend within the Muhajreen neighbourhood, he regarded on the clock. “The electrical energy hasn’t come but as we speak,” he stated. “We’ve been getting two hours on and 4 hours off.”

After all, few folks in Damascus miss the times of al-Assad. His mere absence has opened up the opportunity of return for 1000’s of Syrians.

Many really feel there is a chance to assist rebuild and reshape the nation.

About three million Syrians have reportedly returned to the nation within the final 12 months. I met a handful throughout my quick journey.

Omran, 22, moved again every week in the past from Lebanon, the place he labored putting in photo voltaic panels after not seeing his mom or little brother for near a decade.

Abu Taj, 24, got here again after 10 years in Saudi Arabia and hopes his household will quickly observe. At a dinner close to Bab Sharqi, a gaggle energetically mentioned the final 12 months, the modifications they needed to see and the way they is perhaps a part of shaping it.

A Syrian-Palestinian researcher who had moved again from Lebanon just a few months earlier had her criticisms however felt contagiously optimistic in regards to the course the nation was stepping into.

Others, Syrians dwelling overseas in London, Amman or Istanbul, stated they have been contemplating shifting again as properly. For them, there may be lastly hope.

Finish the tradition of impunity

On December 9, 2024, I visited a villa utilized by the al-Assads to host visitors. In entrance of the villa was a neatly curated row of fruit timber, bearing kumquats.

As locals filtered out and in of the ransacked villa, visiting a location that had beforehand been off-limits to the general public, a person carrying a leather-based jacket picked kumquats off the timber and sucked the juice from them. He projected his voice for throughout to listen to, “How candy that is!”

He may have been speaking in regards to the fruit or the second in historical past.

On that day, and for months afterwards, it was widespread to see males in a wide range of colors and patterns of fatigues, patrolling town or manning checkpoints.

As we speak, they’ve been changed by males in standardised black uniforms. Individuals are not leaping up and down, hugging them and celebrating with them. However in Damascus at the very least, folks didn’t visibly concern them in public.

After all, the previous 12 months has additionally included a wide range of lived experiences, together with some which can be darkish.

Widespread violence and massacres on the coast in March and in Suwayda in July have left many minorities distrustful of authorities. In earlier journeys across the nation, together with to Suwayda for a day in February 2025, I discovered many Syrians from minority backgrounds sceptical of Ahmed al-Sharaa and his new authorities. However many expressed a way of hope that actions about minority rights and dignity would match the phrases from the brand new management and its followers.

Actually, many expressed frustration about discuss in Europe and elsewhere in regards to the safety of minorities. At an upscale restaurant within the Abou Roummaneh neighbourhood in Damascus, a lawyer informed me he was angered by a conservative French newspaper after it mentioned his views on the political state of affairs and known as him a “Christian lawyer”.

On my newest journey, nonetheless, I discovered a lot of that goodwill from the minorities I spoke with had pale. That was true in Damascus and elsewhere.

“I don’t assume folks perceive how badly the massacres in Suwayda affected folks there,” one non-Syrian who repeatedly visits the area for work informed me.

Final 12 months, I wrote a reporter’s pocket book after a visit to Damascus and Aleppo in December. In it, I expressed scepticism over the Western obsession with minority rights once they had so clearly ignored that below al-Assad, and that the one universalism was the power to be imprisoned, tortured or disappeared.

“The considerations of minorities are actual and to not be dismissed, however I additionally hope a give attention to a specific minority group doesn’t overshadow or dismiss the broader battle for common rights that 1000’s of Syrians are demanding throughout sects and areas,” I wrote at the moment.

The aid that al-Assad is gone remains to be current. However that battle for common rights, for minorities and for almost all, nonetheless has a mountain to climb.

On my second day in Damascus, I obtained a voice notice from Razan Rashidi, government director of The Syria Marketing campaign. Rashidi and her colleagues are main a marketing campaign to carry al-Assad again from Moscow to face a Syrian-led particular courtroom.

“After one 12 months of the autumn of the Assad regime as human rights campaigner and an individual who labored for thus lengthy for a few years with survivors of many atrocities inside Syria, I’ve personally witnessed phases and the way the regime used assist to starve civilians, labored with chemical weapons survivors, labored with households of the lacking. And it’s very heartbreaking to know that Assad resides and having fun with freedom in Moscow and plenty of of his officers,” she informed me.

“And what we’ve seen up to now 12 months when it comes to the tradition of impunity in several elements of Syria, whether or not for perpetrators who movie themselves once they’re committing the crimes or the denials of lots of the crimes that we’ve seen as properly inside Syria, it makes us extra dedicated and our perception within the want for justice and accountability is even deepened, realizing that solely justice can carry peace to this nation that’s attempting to rebuild and revive after years of atrocities.”