Omar Hassan, a longstanding supporter of the Syrian revolution and a Palestine solidarity activist, is in Syria, reporting for Red Flag on the situation after the fall of Bahar Al-Assad’s dictatorship. These are his first impressions after entering the country from Lebanon.
Under Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, crossing the Syrian border from Lebanon was an unpredictable process, requiring a bit of bribery and a lot of luck. That was doubly the case for Syrians, who were treated with permanent suspicion by the government. Yet as we approach the border on New Year’s Eve, the taxi driver insists that things will be smooth: “The new system is different—Free Syria is open to all”. Sadly, that doesn’t prevent what should be a 45-minute trip from Chtoura, a Lebanese border town, to Damascus taking well over three hours, most of it spent lining up for car searches and identity checks.
But the queues give us a chance to talk. Three other passengers in the taxi are Syrians who provide context for the somewhat tedious procedure. “They used to interrogate you until you felt like a criminal. Only money would make them stop”, one says. “It used to cost 300,000 lira just to bribe the border officials to let us through—before you even thought about paying for a visa”, the driver chimes in.
The youngest of the other passengers is the most politically engaged and articulate. As a member of the Alawi religious sect, which the Assad regime manipulated and used as its shock troops against the 2011 revolution, he was doomed to be conscripted into the military.
“How could I accept killing Syrians for the sake of that regime?”, he asks. He studied for as long as possible to avoid this because students tended to get exemptions. But when that no longer worked, he paid thousands in bribes to get to Lebanon. He’s been unable to visit his family in nine years. “You would not believe the feeling of returning to a free country, to be treated with respect by the officials”, he says.
Though it’s nearly dark by the time we reach the Syrian side of the border, there is more than enough light to see vandalised posters and symbols of the former regime adorning the highway. When I try to get out to take a photo, the driver objects, though with a smile: “You’ll see plenty of that in Damascus!” (Some things aren’t so easily destroyed: Bashar’s murderous face is on every 2,000 lira note, while the 1,000 note is cursed with a picture of his father Hafez, who governed for 30 years before him.)
When we reach the capital, New Year’s celebrations are in full swing and masses of people are on the streets. The new government reportedly discouraged fireworks, but the decree has no visible impact; the sounds of these friendly explosions fill the night air for hours. Spirits are high, and in the relatively trendy neighbourhood of Bab Touma, the small number of armed guards seem relaxed.
Yet grievances are raised time and time again. Everyone I speak to says that their relationship to the former government was defined by two things: oppression and economic coercion. “The government was stealing from us constantly”, says one man in a Damascene market.
“If you looked at a soldier wrong, or just in a bad mood, they could demand you pay a bribe on the spot, else be arrested for a crime you didn’t commit”, a young woman explains. “Every checkpoint was an opportunity to extract money from the public. And there were checkpoints everywhere.”
In recent years, Assad and his cronies relied more and more on the drugs trade for their economic survival, selling weed for domestic consumption and Captagon, a type of amphetamine, in the Gulf markets. Meanwhile, the government pursued an aggressive “war on drugs” policy on the streets of major cities, helping it to raise revenue by arresting and fining lowly traffickers and users.
Wandering through one of Old Damascus’s many markets the next morning, I am accosted by three people with cameras. Two are travel vloggers; the other is Nagham, an experienced revolutionary from Dar’aa, a revolutionary city in Syria’s south. Keen to hear more about Dar’aa, I join them for lunch at a local restaurant.
On the wall as we enter is a large Free Syria flag and a picture of one of the revolution’s many martyrs—a small reminder of what has been lost and won in the past fourteen years. Before we can sit down, we’re hailed by a young couple, who insist we sit with them. As we order, a revolutionary song comes on the radio and everyone begins to sing.
The couple turns out to be young doctors from solidly middle-class families. Nour works in a public hospital, earning US$15 a month. “We never had any medicines, any syringes, nothing. We couldn’t even give our patients Panadol. They had to buy it themselves, and people just didn’t have the money”, she says.
Her hospital had a special wing, the Arabic translation of which is “room of the friends”. In it, fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon (Hezbollah)—who were in Syria to crush the revolution and protect the Assad regime—enjoyed free treatment. Nour says that she once walked in and discovered that all the medical supplies that the rest of the hospital lacked were there in abundance. Now, she says, “the whole hospital has supplies”.
There are echoes of this story everywhere. While there is still enormous poverty, in central Damascus the markets are bustling. One man is at pains to explain the difference in the provision of bread: “Under Assad, we would have to line up for hours, and the bread was stale … Now it’s more available and much better quality”. He says that the living standards in regime-held parts of the country were much poorer than those with greater freedoms.
They share more such stories. When the feared Sednaya prison was opened, many inmates came to her hospital for attention after years of torture and abuse. The medics did their best, but some of the patients’ problems were beyond their capabilities. “One man came in, he couldn’t speak. He kept repeating the name, ‘Bashar Al-Assad’, followed by ‘there are 44 bodies in the freezer’”, she says.
What is their vision for the future? After a pause, a young man, Abdullah, speaks up. “In my view, we need to go back to the old ways. We have so many different religions here; they all need to be treated with respect. The only way is through a Caliphate, as was written by the prophet”. He insists that this would still allow women their rights, and people could drink and smoke and so on as they chose. Nour, a trendy young woman who does not wear a hijab, seems to hesitate on that, but agrees that religion should play some role in the new state. Nagham seems to have other ideas, but the conversation moves on.
Islam is clearly a salient part of people’s identity. Perhaps more so now than before the revolution turned into a civil in which the major players gradually became more influenced by Islamism, for a variety of reasons. But contradictions abound. Nour says that in the summer she wears crop tops even though some people don’t like it. Abdullah whispers that he doesn’t recommend going to Idlib because things are a bit extreme up there.
Later, I’m lining up to recharge my sim card. What do people in the queue think about the economy and how things should change? Wages need to go up—on that everyone agrees. But after years of government theft, many are content, for now at least, to be free from a system characterised by bribery and arbitrary taxation. I can see why that would seem a step forward after living under a totalitarian regime that, despite demanding endless payments, offered few public services.
All of this is just first impressions and first conversations. It would be silly at this point to draw conclusions about “what the Syrian people think” or make generalisations about class consciousness. Aside from Nagham, who promises to talk more seriously in Dar’aa (in coming days), none of the people I have spoken to have been politically active in recent years.
From a handful of Damascus residents, I get a sense that the fall of Assad was something that happened around them, not something they did themselves. After all, it’s been more than a decade since the height of the revolutionary mobilisations, which were crushed so brutally by Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies. Popular protest and democratic resistance survived in some places, but in Damascus, which the regime held, such things were almost impossible.
Nevertheless, and for now, people are revelling in Assad’s defeat. Who could blame them? After 54 years of a dynastic dictatorship, the Syrian people are enjoying their first taste of freedom. Everywhere, there are joyful expressions. A dragon has been slain. Or, as the people say, a donkey has gone. (Assad means “lion”. So, “donkey” … you get it.)
“Finally, we can breathe”, my young companion in the taxi said. “Whatever comes next, nothing can be worse than Assad.”
“How lucky you are—how wonderful it is to have a liberated country”, replied the Lebanese woman in the front seat, heading to Syria for a New Year’s Eve party.
“Inshallah, one day it will be our turn.”