Traffic is chaotic in the absence of police on the streets of Damascus and, in the midst of the hustle and bustle, the flags of the new Syria (with three red stars) can be seen on balconies, public buildings and shops. It is the insignia that insurgents brought from the northwest of the country when, a month ago, they stormed the capital and overthrew the regime of President Bashar Al Assad.
Since then, the city has regained its pulse and armed men are hardly seen on the streets; The only signs of change are some burned or closed government headquarters. The face of the former president is no longer omnipresent.
In recent weeks, commercial activity has increased with the arrival of more products from Turkey – a country that has always supported the Syrian armed opposition – and with the drop in prices thanks to the recovery of the value of the local currency against the dollar. .
This is the first thing that ordinary Damascenes, who have suffered many hardships in the past more than ten years of conflict, highlight: prices have dropped and there are more goods on the market, first of all, the precious fuel, with which they have The buses are back on the road. On the sidewalks and in the middle of the roads, street vendors sell fruits and vegetables: potatoes, oranges, lemons, kiwis and bananas.
“I have never bought bananas!” says Imane Hammud, a housewife who is looking at wool hats for winter at a street stall. It is cold in Damascus but, as a good omen, the sun is shining, warming the vendors and passers-by and making the low temperatures that many Syrians endure without heating more bearable. The woman smiles and is not afraid to speak, she tells elDiario.es that she comes from Eastern Ghouta, one of the main opposition strongholds around the capital that was attacked with chemical weapons on several occasions, although the Al regime Assad denied being responsible.
Hammud hopes that in the new Syria there will be jobs for his two sons, who are married and unemployed, he says. He also has a daughter, while a third son died. “It was from the Free Syrian Army,” he says openly. This group was born in the face of the violent repression of the 2011 protests and, at first, was made up of military deserters who used their weapons to protect anti-government protesters and, after a couple of years, it became a prominent rebel group. against the regime. “Before I wouldn’t have dared to say it, now I do,” admits the mother of the young man who died in 2013 in armed confrontations when he was only 22 years old. “I feel proud of him,” she adds.
In the new Syria, there are many who dare to speak and are willing to do so, to tell of the injustices, abuses and losses they have suffered in the past 13 years of civil war. A war that, according to conservative calculations, has left at least half a million dead and the social and economic fabric of the country in tatters.
“We lived in a state of terror”
“I would never have been able to talk like that before,” admits Abdelhadi Abu Yazan, owner of a men’s clothing store who also exchanges currency irregularly. “I am 60 years old and I have lived my entire life with these people on top of me.” [de mí]”I’ve finally gotten rid of them,” says the white-haired man while he relaxes and smokes a cigarette. Abu Yazan refers to the Al Assad family, which has ruled Syria with an iron fist since Bashar’s father, Hafez, took power in the 1970s.
He assures that now he is calm because no one can arrest him without reason or with a false accusation. “We lived in a state of terror. The employees of the Treasury or others came to collect taxes, or those of the Government [de Damasco] and they asked for bribes.” Merchants who did not pay these bribes ran the risk of being arrested, tortured and even disappeared.
In the nearby Plaza de los Mártires or popularly known as Plaza de Maryi, there are several people looking for their missing loved ones. Jalil Abdulrazak, 45, arrived in Damascus four days ago from the distant city of Qamishli (in northeastern Syria and under the self-proclaimed Kurdish administration). His nephew disappeared in 2013, when he was just 16 years old. He tells elDiario.es that he was detained by the regime’s military and brought to the capital after about ten days. The family was later informed that he had died, but they have not seen the body or know where he is buried. “We hope he is still alive,” says his uncle.
Since the collapse of the regime and the release of political prisoners last month, relatives have searched prisons and other detention centers for those who were arrested or kidnapped over the years. Abdulrazak explains that they have searched for him in the mass graves that have been discovered and also in the infamous Sednaya prison, but they have not found him. Abdulrazak’s cousin was imprisoned in that prison, located in Damascus and known for being one of the most horrible torture centers of the Syrian regime. The tall man with a deeply sad look remembers that his cousin was arrested in 2016 and, when the family was able to visit him in Sednaya a year later, he had been reduced to “a skeleton and a soul.”
Like Abdulrazak, there are other men from different parts of the country who sip tea in Maryi Square and wait for information about their missing relatives. They approach the monument in the center of the square, on which posters with photos of their loved ones and family contacts are posted. “We came to see if anyone has seen them or knows anything about them, since everyone is looking for someone.”
When the regime collapsed and the insurgents – led by the armed group Hayat Tahrir al Sham, affiliated with Al Qaeda until 2016 – took power in Damascus, Sednaya was one of the first places everyone went to look for the missing, but many were not there and their whereabouts remain unknown. Finding them and ensuring justice is done is one of the main challenges of the new Syria, where there is still no agency in charge of the missing or an official mechanism to find them.
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