Syria marks 1 year after Assad, but struggles to heal : NPR

HOMS, Syria. A year ago, Mohammad Marwan, barefoot and dazed, was emerging from Syria's notorious Saydnaya prison on the outskirts of Damascus when rebel forces advancing on the capital threw open its doors to free prisoners.

Arrested in 2018 for escaping compulsory military service, the father of three cycled through four other detention centers before landing in Saydnaya, a sprawling compound north of Damascus that has become synonymous with some of the worst atrocities committed under the rule of now-ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

He recalled how guards were beaten and subjected to electric shocks while waiting to meet new prisoners. “They said, 'You don't have any rights here, and we won't call an ambulance until we have a body,'” Marwan said.

His return home on December 8, 2024, to a house full of relatives and friends in his village in Homs province was a joyful one.

But in the year since, he has struggled to overcome the physical and psychological effects of his six-year sentence. He suffered from chest pain and difficulty breathing, which turned out to be the result of tuberculosis. He was overcome by insurmountable anxiety and problems sleeping.

He is now undergoing treatment for tuberculosis and attending therapy sessions at a center in Homs that rehabilitates former prisoners, and Marwan said his physical and mental condition has gradually improved.

“We were in a death-like state” in Saydnaya, he said. “Now we are back to life.”

A country trying to recover

Thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Monday to celebrate the anniversary of Assad's fall.

Like Marwan, the country is struggling to recover a year after the repressive 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty came to an end after 14 years of civil war that left an estimated half a million people dead, millions more displaced and the country destroyed and divided.

Assad's fall came as a shock even to the rebels who overthrew him. In late November 2024, groups in the country's northwest led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist rebel group whose then-leader Ahmad al-Sharaa is now the country's interim president, launched an offensive on the city of Aleppo, aiming to retake it from Assad's forces.

They were shocked when the Syrian army was defeated without much resistance, first in Aleppo and then in the key cities of Hama and Homs, leaving the road to Damascus open. Meanwhile, rebel groups in the south of the country mobilized to advance towards the capital.

Rebels captured Damascus on December 8, and Assad was taken away by Russian troops and remains in exile in Moscow. But Russia, a longtime ally of Assad, did not intervene militarily to protect him and has since established ties with the country's new rulers and maintained its bases on the Syrian coast.

Hassan Abdul Ghani, a Syrian defense ministry spokesman, said HTS and its allies began a major organizational overhaul after Assad's forces regained control of a number of previously rebel-held areas in 2019 and 2020.

The rebel offensive in November 2024 was not initially aimed at capturing Damascus, but was intended to preempt an expected major offensive by Assad's forces in opposition-held Idlib with the intention of “ending the Idlib cause,” Abdul Ghani said.

The attack on Aleppo “was a military decision aimed at expanding the radius of the battle and thus protecting the liberated interior,” he said.

In timing their attack, the rebels also took advantage of the fact that Russia was distracted by the war in Ukraine and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, another Assad ally, was licking its wounds after a devastating war with Israel.

As the Syrian army's defenses collapsed, the rebels continued their offensive, “taking advantage of every golden opportunity,” Abdul Ghani said.

Successes abroad, problems at home

Since his sudden rise to power, al-Sharaa has launched a diplomatic charm offensive, forging ties with Western and Arab countries that shunned Assad and once considered al-Sharaa a terrorist.

In November, he became the first Syrian president since the country's independence in 1946 to visit Washington.

In a speech in Damascus on Monday, al-Sharaa described his vision of Syria as “a strong country that belongs to its ancient past, looks to a promising future and restores its natural position in its Arab, regional and international environment” and will join “the ranks of the most advanced countries.”

But diplomatic gains have been undermined by outbreaks of sectarian violence in which pro-government Sunni militants have killed hundreds of Alawite and Druze civilians. Local Druze groups now established their own de facto government and army in the southern province of Suwayda.

Tensions remain between the new government in Damascus and the Kurdish forces that control the northeast of the country, despite an agreement signed in March that would have led to a merger of their forces.

Israel is wary of Syria's new Islamist-led government, although al-Sharaa has said he does not want conflict with the country. After Assad's fall, Israel seized the former UN-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria and began regular airstrikes and incursions. Negotiations on a security agreement have stalled.

Remnants of the civil war are everywhere. Landmines have killed at least 590 people in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime, including 167 children, the Landmine Advisory Group said Monday, putting the country on track for a world-record level of landmine casualties in 2025.

Meanwhile, the economy remains sluggish despite the lifting of most Western sanctions. Although Gulf countries have promised to invest in reconstruction projects, little has been implemented on the ground. The World Bank estimates that rebuilding the country's war-damaged areas will cost $216 billion.

Recovery largely by individual effort

The reconstruction that occurred largely involved individual owners paying to repair their damaged homes and businesses.

On the outskirts of Damascus, the once bustling Palestinian camp of Yarmouk now resembles a lunar landscape in many ways. The camp, overrun by a number of militant groups and then bombed by government planes, was largely abandoned after 2018.

Since Assad's fall, a steady stream of former residents have returned to the country.

The most damaged areas remain largely abandoned, but on the main street leading into the camp, blasted walls have gradually been replaced in buildings that remain structurally sound. Shops reopened and families returned to their apartments. But any broader recovery initiative appears to be a long way off.

“It's been a year since the regime fell. I hope they can demolish the old destroyed houses and build towers,” said Maher al-Homsi, who is renovating his damaged home so he can move back, even though the area doesn't even have running water.

His neighbor, Etab al-Hawari, was ready to give the new authorities some relief.

“They inherited an empty country – the banks are empty, the infrastructure is looted, houses are ransacked,” she said.

Bassam Dimashki, a dentist in Damascus, said of the country after Assad's fall: “Of course it's better, there's a kind of freedom.”

But he remains concerned about the fragile security situation and its economic impact.

“The job of the state is to provide security, and once you provide security, everything else will come,” he said. “The security situation is what encourages investors to come and implement projects.”

The UN refugee agency says more than 1 million refugees and nearly 2 million internally displaced Syrians have returned to their homes since Assad's fall. But without jobs and reconstruction, some will leave again.

Among them is Marwan, a former prisoner who says the situation in post-Assad Syria is “much better” than before. But he is experiencing economic difficulties.

He sometimes hires labor that pays as little as 50,000 or 60,000 Syrian pounds a day, the equivalent of about $5 US.

According to him, as soon as he completes treatment for tuberculosis, he plans to leave for Lebanon in search of a better-paying job.