Syria marks 1 12 months after Assad, however struggles to heal : NPR

HOMS, Syria — A 12 months in the past, Mohammad Marwan discovered himself stumbling, barefoot and dazed, out of Syria’s infamous Saydnaya jail on the outskirts of Damascus as insurgent forces pushing towards the capital threw open its doorways to launch the prisoners.

Arrested in 2018 for fleeing obligatory navy service, the daddy of three had cycled by 4 different lockups earlier than touchdown in Saydnaya, a sprawling complicated simply north of Damascus that turned synonymous with a few of the worst atrocities dedicated below the rule of now-ousted President Bashar Assad.

He recalled guards ready to welcome new prisoners with a gauntlet of beatings and electrical shocks. “They mentioned, ‘You don’t have any rights right here, and we’re not calling an ambulance except we’ve got a useless physique,'” Marwan mentioned.

Former detainee Mohammad Marwan walks down a avenue on his method to the Homs Restoration Heart within the village of Inform Dahab within the Homs countryside, Syria, Dec. 2.

Ghaith Alsayed/AP

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His Dec. 8, 2024, homecoming to a home stuffed with kin and buddies in his village in Homs province was joyful.

However within the 12 months since then, he has struggled to beat the bodily and psychological results of his six-year imprisonment. He suffered from chest ache and problem respiration that turned out to be the results of tuberculosis. He was beset by crippling nervousness and problem sleeping.

He is now present process therapy for tuberculosis and attending remedy classes at a middle in Homs targeted on rehabilitating former prisoners, and Marwan mentioned his bodily and psychological conditions have progressively improved.

“We had been in one thing like a state of loss of life” in Saydnaya, he mentioned. “Now we have come again to life.”

A rustic struggling to heal

On Monday, hundreds of Syrians took to the streets to rejoice the anniversary of Assad’s fall.

Like Marwan, the nation is struggling to heal a 12 months after the Assad dynasty’s repressive 50-year reign got here to an finish following 14 years of civil battle that left an estimated half one million folks useless, thousands and thousands extra displaced, and the nation battered and divided.

Assad’s downfall got here as a shock, even to the insurgents who unseated him. In late November 2024, teams within the nation’s northwest — led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist insurgent group whose then-leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, is now the nation’s interim president — launched an offensive on the town of Aleppo, aiming to take it again from Assad’s forces.

They had been startled when the Syrian military collapsed with little resistance, first in Aleppo, then the important thing cities of Hama and Homs, leaving the highway to Damascus open. In the meantime, rebel teams within the nation’s south mobilized to make their very own push towards the capital.

The rebels took Damascus on Dec. 8 whereas Assad was whisked away by Russian forces and stays in exile in Moscow. However Russia, a longtime Assad ally, didn’t intervene militarily to defend him and has since established ties with the nation’s new rulers and maintained its bases on the Syrian coast.

Hassan Abdul Ghani, spokesperson for Syrian Ministry of Protection, mentioned HTS and its allies had launched a significant organizational overhaul after Assad’s forces regained management of numerous previously rebel-controlled areas in 2019 and 2020.

The insurgent offensive in November 2024 was not initially aimed toward seizing Damascus however was meant to preempt an anticipated main offensive by Assad’s forces in opposition-held Idlib meaning to “end the Idlib file,” Abdul Ghani mentioned.

Launching an assault on Aleppo “was a navy resolution to broaden the radius of the battle and thus safeguard the liberated inside areas,” he mentioned.

In timing the assault, the insurgents additionally took benefit of the truth that Russia was distracted by its battle in Ukraine and that the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, one other Assad ally, was licking its wounds after a dangerous battle with Israel.

When the Syrian military’s defenses collapsed, the rebels pressed on, “profiting from each golden alternative,” Abdul Ghani mentioned.

Successes overseas, challenges at house

Since his sudden ascent to energy, al-Sharaa has launched a diplomatic appeal offensive, constructing ties with Western and Arab international locations that shunned Assad and that when thought-about al-Sharaa a terrorist.

In November, he turned the primary Syrian president for the reason that nation’s independence in 1946 to go to Washington.

In a speech in Damascus on Monday, al-Sharaa described his imaginative and prescient of Syria as “a powerful nation that belongs to its historical previous, appears ahead to a promising future and is restoring its pure place in its Arab, regional and worldwide setting” and can be part of “the ranks of probably the most superior nations.”

However the diplomatic successes have been offset by outbreaks of sectarian violence during which tons of of civilians from the Alawite and Druze minorities had been killed by pro-government Sunni fighters. Native Druze teams have now arrange their very own de facto authorities and navy within the southern Sweida province.

There are ongoing tensions between the brand new authorities in Damascus and Kurdish-led forces controlling the nation’s northeast, regardless of an settlement inked in March that was alleged to result in a merger of their forces.

A boy checks out navy gear as guests tour the “Syrian Revolution Army Exhibition,” which opened final week forward of the primary anniversary of the ousting of the Bashar Assad regime in Damascus, Syria, Sunday.

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Israel is cautious of Syria’s new Islamist-led authorities though al-Sharaa has mentioned he needs no battle with the nation. Israel has seized a previously U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria and launched common airstrikes and incursions since Assad’s fall. Negotiations for a safety settlement have stalled.

Remnants of the civil battle are in all places. The Mines Advisory Group reported Monday that a minimum of 590 folks have been killed by landmines in Syria since Assad’s fall, together with 167 kids, placing the nation on observe to file the world’s highest landmine casualty price in 2025.

In the meantime, the economic system has remained sluggish, regardless of the lifting of most Western sanctions. Whereas Gulf international locations have promised to put money into reconstruction initiatives, little has materialized on the bottom. The World Financial institution estimates that rebuilding the nation’s war-damaged areas will price $216 billion.

Rebuilding largely a person effort

The rebuilding that has taken place has largely been particular person homeowners paying to repair their very own broken homes and companies.

On the outskirts of Damascus, the once-vibrant Yarmouk Palestinian camp right this moment largely resembles a moonscape. Taken over by a sequence of militant teams then bombarded by authorities planes, the camp was all however deserted after 2018.

Since Assad’s fall, a gentle stream of former residents have come again.

Essentially the most broken areas stay largely abandoned however on the principle avenue main into the camp, little by little, blasted-out partitions have been changed within the buildings that stay structurally sound. Outlets have reopened and households have come again to their flats. However any bigger reconstruction initiative seems to nonetheless be far off.

“It has been a 12 months for the reason that regime fell. I might hope they might take away the outdated destroyed homes and construct towers,” mentioned Maher al-Homsi, who’s fixing his broken house to maneuver again, though the world would not actually have a water connection.

His neighbor, Etab al-Hawari, was prepared to chop the brand new authorities some slack.

“They inherited an empty nation — the banks are empty, the infrastructure was robbed, the houses had been robbed,” she mentioned.

Bassam Dimashqi, a dentist from Damascus, mentioned of the nation after Assad’s fall, “In fact it is higher, there’s freedom of some type.”

However he stays anxious concerning the precarious safety state of affairs and its financial impacts.

“The job of the state is to impose safety, and when you impose safety, every little thing else will come,” he mentioned. “The safety state of affairs is what encourages traders to come back and do initiatives.”

The U.N refugee company stories that greater than 1 million refugees and practically 2 million internally displaced Syrians have returned to their houses since Assad’s fall. However with out jobs and reconstruction, some will depart once more.

Amongst them is Marwan, the previous prisoner, who says the post-Assad state of affairs in Syria is “much better” than earlier than. However he’s struggling economically.

Typically he picks up labor that pays solely 50,000 or 60,000 Syrian kilos day by day, the equal of about $5.

As soon as he finishes his tuberculosis therapy, he mentioned, he plans to depart to Lebanon looking for better-paid work.