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Last Sunday, Abdel Rahman was serving a 15-year sentence in a small cell in Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison, after clashing with a rogue police officer last year in Damascus.
By Friday morning, he was in the old city market selling a newly adopted green Syrian flag — the one that anti-Assad rebels have flown during nearly 14 years of a brutal civil war. During the day, he managed to listen to a sermon at a nearby mosque in which he called ousted president Bashar al-Assad a “tyrant”.
“What is the joy of the Syrians! said the prime minister, who was delivering an unprecedented sermon, his voice booming over speakers outside the Umayyad mosque. The message was received with joy. Euphoria and some disbelief settled on the faces of thousands of people still coming to terms with the fall of the dictatorship that ruled them with iron for more than 50 years.
Assad’s rule came to an abrupt end last Sunday when he fled to Moscow, following a lightning strike by the Islamist terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The group immediately began to free the prisoners who were in the brutal prisons of the country. But the regime was so brutal that when the men broke down the doors of Rahman’s enclosure, the prisoners returned and at first refused to come out.
“We thought they were creating conflict and would come to use us as human shields,” he said, watching people leave the mosque after Friday prayers chanting anti-Assad slogans. “I’m still scared. I feel like I’m in a movie.”
The feeling of victory is the relief that has swept away Syria in the last few days, however, they have been mixed with the reality of the problems that this country is facing. HTS terrorists have taken over a country that has been ravaged by civil war for more than a decade.
Many people who flocked to the Umayyad mosque to celebrate were happy with the message they received last night from a group calling itself “Free Syria”: “Syria is reborn. Good for our people. Thank you for our country.”
But they also know how difficult this rebirth will be for the rebels who have descended on the capital from northwestern Idlib – a region controlled by HTS in recent years.
The Islamist group oversees a complex, multi-ethnic state with institutions beset by corruption and aid, an economy crippled by conflict and sanctions, and a desire for revenge from some victims of the Assad regime.
“For the last 13 years, nothing has helped: there is no electricity, there is a lack of everything and there is a complete breakdown of people,” says a civil servant in the Damascus district. “(HTS) must work and organize things now and stop this corruption or people will turn quickly.”
From the Assad regime Initiation, corruption, oppression and brutality reigned: they were the tools that allowed a minority of Alawite rulers to gain power in a country with a majority of Sunni Muslims. Paranoia and a thirst for absolute control meant that his father Bashar Hafez, a military pilot who seized power in 1970, created a centralized presidential system with absolute control over government affairs.
This led to people’s trust in government services and corruption in all levels of society. Although it was not effective, it worked – at least until 2011, when popular uprisings were brutally suppressed by Bashar and led to a bloody civil war.
That period brought about a change in government from the old system run by Assad’s Ba’athist party to a fractured party. The country’s hospitals are in disarray, the lack of funding is evident in their crumbling walls and overburdened departments; its ruined hotels freeze over time. Most of the cars that fill the streets of Damascus date back to the 1970s and 1980s, as parts for new cars became hard to find and expensive to buy.
Western sanctions targeting Syria, the ousted president and his financial backers affect the civilian population, while government officials have found ways to circumvent sanctions.
The new prime minister, Mohamed al-Bashir, announced that a minority government would lead the country until March, but he did not explain what was coming and the topic of national elections was not announced.
HTS, an offshoot of the former al-Qaeda-linked group designated a terrorist group by the US and others, is the most powerful of the many militias in the multi-religious and multi-ethnic country. Abu Mohammad al-Jolani he is running the group as a strongman, and there are concerns that the regime could fall to Damascus, where his people are already wondering if HTS will curtail Christmas celebrations.
In a successful move, Bashir invited Assad’s prime minister, government ministers and civil servants to participate in the process to ensure a smooth transition of power. On Tuesday, he gathered the outgoing ministers (or at least, who appeared) and their fellow rebels in the formal room of the Assad government – a short but symbolic meeting to show the country where the central power is used to the wheels of the governments. the world was turning.
Bashir has vowed to fight corruption, restore order and protect the majority of Syria’s minorities despite the new government’s introduction of Islam.
The country’s oil company was ordered to resume operations within 24 hours of the insurgents’ takeover, and was instructed to continue supplying electricity to the coastal areas not yet captured by the insurgents. State workers returned to service on Tuesday and Wednesday, and schools were ordered to reopen this Sunday. On Thursday night, the evening of the weekend in Syria, traffic returned to the streets as restaurants and parks were packed with people.
“Even though we lost everything,” says Abu Mohammed, a 54-year-old resident of a poor neighborhood in Damascus, “now we are free.”
One of the most difficult forward is rebuilding the economy, which has been in decline for several years. More than 90 percent of Syrians now live below the poverty line and many families in the country receive less than 6 hours of electricity a day. Pantries are often short of essentials, inflation and the collapse of the Syrian pound.
More than 80 percent of the country’s oil was imported from Iran, which supported Assad during the war, deputy head of the country’s oil company Mustafa Hasawiyeh told the FT this week. Although there were enough stores for one month, he said, it is not known where the oil will come from after that.
Domestic production has been severely disrupted, factories destroyed and workers sent to war in decades of civil war. This will take time to start: a large part of the country is still in bloody ruins, its people with the ghosts of their loved ones, killed or missing.
Assad’s government spent money to support the use of military equipment, government salaries and subsidized goods – these two were an important part of the basic contract of the Ba’athist government.
When the government’s beneficiaries, Russia and Iran, came to call for old war debts, Assad distributed parts of the state’s wealth to Moscow and Tehran, including extracting phosphates. Other debts that his government has defaulted on, including to Moscow, leave HTS with an unknown mountain of debt and a complicated calculus of how and when to pay it back.
The ruling family and their chosen relatives expanded their control over the government in the late years of the civil war, operating “mafia-style” shakedowns on elite businesses to line their pockets. This proved decisive in eroding Assad’s support among the business elite.
Syrian civilians are also said to be shaken daily in checkpoints scattered across government-held areas, many of them linked to the Fourth Division – a notorious terrorist group run by Bashar Maher’s brother.
These controls have not been used since the HTS takeover, many were not convinced, when government forces threw down their weapons, took off their uniforms and ran away from the rebels.
Hours after Assad’s fall, a derelict shop across the border from Lebanon, believed to be part of the Fourth Division, was looted by bandits. Hundreds of frightened men, happy in their first hours of relative freedom, carried refrigerators, new laptops and watches, calling it “justice” for years of suffering.
The Fourth District was also central to a number of illegal activities that contributed to the success of the government: weapons, oil smuggling, alcohol and the sale of the illegal amphetamine Captagon.
Changing this, as well as the rest of the government’s security apparatus, will be another challenge facing HTS.
The poor army was not prepared to die for a dictator who had already decided to use them as cannon fodder. Instead, those men gave up their battle fatigue and retired.
Within 48 hours of arriving in Damascus, HTS brought in traffic police from Idlib and government security forces. Two people told the FT they had noticed a change on the streets: people were obeying traffic lights again (in Assad’s Syria, stopping at a fire was a surefire way to get a bribe from the traffic police). But there are not enough such people to protect the entire country, and reports of robberies on the highways connecting the provinces are widespread.
There is also the fear of punishment, from Jolani’s forces, but especially from the hundred thousand people who may be looking to eliminate the numbers.
This is especially true for the families of the missing – the untold thousands lost in Assad’s massive prison system. They descended on the country’s prisons in search of their loved ones this week, and many are coming away with heartbreak. Expressing the growing anger, Jolani said those involved in the torture will see justice, while the soldiers who are not involved will receive amnesty.
In a stationery shop in an affluent district of Damascus, where a printer spit out pictures of the Syrian flag to sell for 40 US cents, the owner excitedly discussed the latest government changes with customers.
“But our question is, will they go after the criminals who (operate in prisons)?” he adds. “Will they blame the people who tortured and killed our people?”
Art is Steven Bernard and data structure and Keith Fray
