The abandoned military base was still filled with missiles. The looters weren’t interested in them: they were busy cutting down trees, and taking scrap metal and any removable parts of the overly-sized vehicles. From the machine gun on a roof, they took only bullets “for the copper”. From the offices and soldiers’ sleeping areas they seized office chairs and beds, but left behind the instructions for using and maintaining the weaponry.
Soldiers at this base in Eastern Ghouta used to “step on us”, one local said, angry about the bribes he was forced to pay, money he wanted back.
Some time between last Saturday and Sunday, as Bashar al-Assad’s reign crumbled, the base’s population of roughly 60 gave up their posts, discarded their uniforms and made off – “back to their parents’ homes”, a local man suggested.
The Assad regime had fallen.
A short drive away in the capital Damascus, where the internet was down, people called each other on landlines, in the dark, asking whether anyone had any idea what was going on. They thought they heard rockets; some saw military figures running outside. “We thought they were coming to kill us,” one recalled. Then they heard another noise: gunfire – so much of it that it could only be celebratory. That was when people ran on to the streets, towards army checkpoints and intelligence branches: all the places they would have averted their eyes from before. The time had come to reclaim their country.
Now, regime military-associated sites are identifiable across Damascus by their burnt out facades, while everything has been looted from Assad’s presidential palace except the chandeliers (“too high, too difficult to take without breaking them” explained a Syrian, eyeing them up). On Assad’s walls there was new graffiti reading “f*ck you, dog” and “f*ck your father”.
Back at the military base, Mohammed explained that he had long dreamed of firing a gun, but it was impossible under the Syrian regime. Now, he is armed and carries around a black plastic bag of bullets in his pocket, firing some off every day in celebration. When the internet is down – partially because locals have reportedly been “reclaiming” the fuel from the generators that power the connectivity masts – Mohammed shoots off 20 bullets as a signal to his friend, who shoots back in response. Their guns, he said coyly, included ones they had hidden during the war and others they stole from regime bases this week.
Mohammed is not his real name – he said he was still too overwhelmed to do a formal interview. This is an area that had almost no exposure to foreign journalists before: where, as one local said, being seen walking beside a reporter could have got someone thrown in prison. Once known as the “oasis” of Damascus, Eastern Ghouta was under siege by the regime for five years. From 2013 to 2018, its people were cut off, subjected to starvation, barrel bombs and chemical weapons attacks. Many of the buildings there are still in ruins, left as a reminder of how far the regime was willing to go to maintain its power.
After Syria’s revolution began in 2011, Eastern Ghouta became a stronghold of rebel fighters. Mohammed was one of them. He said he started out as a protester, then stole weapons from an army post and founded his own fighting group. He later joined another brigade, but left when he felt it had become “like military service ... I’m a revolutionary.” His brother was killed attacking a regime checkpoint.
During the siege, Mohammed said, they had “no sugar, tea, no water, nothing at all. We started to slaughter the sheep, chickens, eat everything on the farms. We reached a point where there was nothing left”. He said they collected plastic to melt, using the oil it created to power generators to pump water, in an effort to grow wheat. Occasionally, food parcels would arrive inexplicably from outside, but that was rare.
“The injustice that we’ve faced from the regime is indescribable,” Mohammed said. He described barrel bombs dropping on a six-floor building packed with civilians. “In Ghouta we started to step over dead bodies,” he said. And “after the siege, they [the regime] stole everything”.
When Assad’s forces took back the area, following a brutal offensive, Mohammed said he was taken to a shelter where intelligence officers arrived and shouted out names. “They took [those people] away, some were killed and some survived.” His uncle was imprisoned; he was released from the notorious Sednaya prison last Sunday, Mohammed said.
Mohammed is in his late 20s, though he looks much older – “because of what I’ve been through”.
Shortly before he offered a tour of the abandoned military base, Israeli warplanes flew loudly overhead, then audibly struck a target nearby. Within 48 hours this week, the Israeli military said it hit nearly 500 military targets across Syria, as well as seizing land in what had been a demilitarised buffer zone in the Golan Heights and advancing from there. It was yet another reminder that this country is vulnerable to the actions of its neighbours and foreign interests around the world.
[ Putin bruised by Assad’s fall as pressure mounts for talks on UkraineOpens in new window ]
Mohammed is not afraid of Israeli air strikes. During the war, “my heart died”, he said, meaning he has become fearless. “I’ve had hundreds of missiles fired towards me and survived.”
Now, “psychologically I’m so, so relaxed. Even if I find 50 thieves in the street and they rob me, I don’t care. I’m so mentally happy because any other regime that comes could never be as bad as the regime that has collapsed, any other government would not do what they did to people.”
He grinned. “We have seen the final episode.” He meant the fall of the Assad regime.
* * *
Mohammed’s account is just one of countless stories of suffering, resistance and survival that the Syrian people have experienced over more than half a century, since the Assad family came to power.
While grave abuses existed before, the civil war that broke out in 2011 brought them to global awareness. More than that, it changed the world forever.
About 600,000 people are thought to have been killed over nearly 14 years of a conflict that began out of a desire to topple Assad and end the brutality, corruption and injustice of his regime. The UN says more than 13 million people were displaced, both inside and outside the country. Among the huge numbers arrested, about 100,000 disappeared forever into Assad’s prisons, their families sometimes learning of their fates only through leaked photographs of their mangled bodies. This regime – which fell apart so suddenly in the end – had maintained its control through terror.
Perhaps the most well-known detainee was Mazen Hamada, who came to symbolise those tortured by the Syrian regime, but also the punishing existence of a Syrian refugee in exile. Hamada escaped to Europe in 2014, following unimaginably violent abuse. Over the following years, he spoke constantly about the horrors taking place and the need for accountability. His trauma and pain was clear, which made his decision to return to Syria in 2020 highly confusing.
He disappeared immediately afterwards.
It turns out that Hamada survived almost long enough to see the regime he hated so much fall. His body was discovered this week. He is believed to have been recently killed, and to have likely been held in the notorious Sednaya prison, to which tens of thousands of Syrians rushed in recent days, trying to discover any evidence of missing loved ones.
On Thursday, Hamada’s coffin was carried through the streets of Damascus, surrounded by hundreds of mourners chanting his name and calling for justice. A scene like this would have been unthinkable even a week ago: with his death, he is again reminding the world of the tragedy of Syria’s detainees.
Visual artist Sakir Khader, who lived near Hamada in the Netherlands, said while Assad bore the “primary guilt” for Hamada’s death, “the Dutch government is jointly responsible”.
Hamada was “one of the most important witnesses against Assad’s regime”, but in the Netherlands, where he was granted asylum, he “became just another file in the towering stacks of a faceless bureaucratic system”, Khader said.
“Every time Mazen travelled abroad to testify against Assad and share his story of injustice, Dutch authorities increased the pressure on him. If he could travel, which they considered more like vacations, then he should be able to work. They wanted him to perform manual labour, something like street sweeping. But Mazen had become paranoid. The trauma of his past had instilled a constant fear in him. He didn’t want to be seen in public spaces, where he felt vulnerable.”
According to Khader, Hamada had his benefits cut and became homeless. When he made the decision to leave, “he saw returning to Damascus as his only option. Going back to the slaughterhouse, it seemed, was a way out of the suffocating grip of the Dutch systems ... We failed to protect him.”
***
Despite the fall of the regime, daily struggles in Syria continue amid a severe economic crisis, such as the search for fuel. The Irish Times went to four petrol stations on Wednesday with no luck – one worker said to come back in “a few days”.
But businesses are reopening, and communities in Damascus have organised neighbourhood clean-up operations, following days where the municipal authorities were not working and the litter piled high.
While European countries are putting asylum claims on hold, those who feel safest to return to Syria are those who now have foreign passports: a security that means they can leave again if necessary.
Some people are still on the move in the other direction. Thousands – largely believed to be Shia Muslims – were seen waiting at the Lebanese border this week in the hope of crossing. On Tuesday, the UN said approximately 100,000 people had been displaced to “northeast Syria”. Reports suggest many Alawites – Assad’s ethno-religious group, who make up about 10 per cent of the population – have left Damascus.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham chief Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who led the conquering coalition, has said minorities will be respected, but many still have major concerns. Jolani Jolani – who has recently started going by his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa – has also said there should be amnesties for conscripted soldiers who didn’t kill or torture, but the fates of those who did remains to be seen. “I don’t know what happens in the future but I think the people won’t forget,” said one Syrian man.
* * *
In the heady early days of Syria’s revolution, protesters often took to the streets after Friday prayers. That made Friday this week a particularly symbolic time, with excited and emotional people gathering across the country to celebrate the moment for which so many had longed.
Syria’s new interim prime minister Mohammad al-Bashir attended prayers at the central Umayyad Mosque. Rebel fighters were dotted around, taking photographs with eager fans and even handing over their guns for people to pose with, or helping them fashion scarves into a balaclava to look the part. Old friends grinned and hugged each other. One man said it was the best day of his life.
Men waving revolutionary flags led the crowd in chants. “Allahu Akbar,” they called. “We love Syria.” “No need for war.” “Syria is ours.”
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