The rubble accumulate on both sides of the streets. The helmet, stacked in strategic places not to prevent the passage, form mountains of cement that can even be climbed and thus get a panoramic view of the city. Aleppo is an example of … Almost 15 years of war, continuous bombing, metrals embedded in the walls and above all, abandonment. Hundreds of apartments, with the shattered facades, show what one day was a living room or kitchen. What one day was a house alive.
Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, was also its shopping center and its historic Bazar, Unesco heritage since 1986. But, during the conflict, it became one of the most dangerous places in the world. Russian air attacks and the fighting between Al Assad’s forces and the rebels devastated all this heritage.
“The historic center is almost totally shattered,” explains Ahmed, born and grown in Aleppo. He studied journalism but, threatened by the terror regime that Bashar Al Assad established, he was exiled in Türkiye. Two days after Hayat Tahrir’s rebels Al Sham (HTS) and other groups overthrew Al Assad, Ahmed returned home. Thousands of people did the same: return to a shattered country, hoping to rebuild it. It is not an easy task. After almost 14 years of brutal civil war, it is estimated that more than half a million people have died and another 14 million have been displaced from their homes.
Many are the challenges faced by the new administration led by Abu Mohamed al Shaara (known by his war name: Al Golani). The main one: restore the confidence of a people in the authorities and peace between the multiple Syrian groups. A mosaic of religions that, after the entrance of HTS militiamen to the big Syrian cities, feared to be the center of reprisals. The fragility of the country was reflected this Friday, when more than 1,000 people, 750 of them civilians, died in the clashes with the new army in the coastal area of Latakia and Tartús. The insurrection began with armed groups linked to the previous regime against the new authorities. It is the greatest uprising from the fall of Al Assad and a fire test to see if the country is placed or not on the edge of a new civil war. All the victims belonged to the Alauí minority, a branch of the Shiite Islam to which the family belonged to the Assad and that, during the dictatorship, controlled the entire administration.
Minorities
What to do with this minority is one of the great unknowns. Also what will be the role of those who integrated the armed forces and were loyal to Al Assad. Many of them, a few days after the dictator’s fall, queued to deliver long arms and put at the service of the new regime. However, with other religious minorities, such as Christians, it seems that dialogue and coexistence are working.
During the first days in Aleppo, the combatants of the Salafista group went to call a door in the neighborhoods that have housed Christians for centuries to ensure their residents who were safe and even protected the streets so that during Christmas they could carry out the celebrations. Aleppo’s Christian neighborhood is almost intact. Here, the war seems to have passed, however fear was noticed. “Al Assad’s time has been the worst we have lived,” says Lila, a Catholic Syria. The fears of this woman multiplied in early December, when HTS militiamen arrived in her neighborhood. «I felt fear, I’m not going to deceive you. They compared them to the Taliban, they came from having links with Al Qaida … ». Lila went to Latakia, a region still controlled at that time by Al Assad’s army and where those of Al Golani had not arrived. “We fled, but after two days our neighbors in Aleppo told us that there was nothing to fear, so we came back.” At the moment, his life and that of his family (two children of legal age) continues with some normality.
Above, members of the White Helmets, organization of rescuers who for years have sought life among the rubble; Below, to the left, Khadija shows in Idlib a photo of his tortured son in the Sedian prison; To the right, Lila, which belongs to the Christian minority that lives in Aleppo
Syria’s new ‘de facto’ leader’s messages about how they will treat minorities are appeasers. He has repeatedly said that he will respect the “rights of all minorities.” Syrians face the difficult task of reconstruction, both their cities and their society, while they continue to face the deep wounds of more than fifty years of dictatorship.
The fall of Al Assad has exposed evidence of all its hidden atrocities. Dozens of common graves have been unearthed throughout the country and it is believed that many of the 100,000 people who are estimated to be missing are really dead. International researchers are negotiating access to documentation for possible war crimes.
Khadija is one of the thousands of victims of Al Assad’s repression. This 49 -year -old teacher went from Damascus to the northern region of Idlib during the beginning of the war. His brother failed to escape and was captured by Al Assad’s forces while helping a woman victim of a bombing. «It disappeared and we didn’t know anything about him. For years, neither his wife nor we had information, only that he was a prisoner in Sednaya, ”he recalls. His brother died in this prison of horrors, as the Sednaya prison is known for the number of bodies found and signs of torture found there after the fall of Al Assad. This was discovered by Khadija thanks to the files published in the ‘César Report’, which showed “the systematic murder of more than 11,000 arrested by the Syrian government in a region during the civil war in a period of two and a half years, from March 2011 to August 2013”. Khadija, while getting excited remembering her brother, holds the photo she discovered in these files. “I want justice for my brother,” he repeats.
The missing
The issue of the missing is one of the biggest challenges facing the new administration and is one of the main tasks to which the group of white helmets is being dedicated. They were the first to enter Sednaya to identify bodies and the first to work to locate common graves in the gutters that expand throughout Syria. This team, formed by civil society, was branded during the Al Assad of terrorist regime. However, his work was always trying to help the Syrians: they did it during the bombings and also during the February 2023 earthquake in neighboring Turkey, which left more than 8,000 dead in Syria.
For years, they worked almost in hiding. Now, its barracks are former police stations of Al Assad, where prisoners were also tortured. There are still remains of these atrocities: hooks where they hung the prisoners and whips with which they punished their bodies. On a tour of this headquarters in the center of Aleppo, you can still see the remains of the Al Assad dictatorship. His posters, which previously presided over almost every wall of the city with the dictator’s face, are now only pieces of canvas on the floor that the members of the white helmets step on laugh. “It was time for all this to end,” says the group that accompanies us during the visit for the torture rooms of the Al Assad regime. A few hours after their fall, the Syrians began to erase the remains of their brutal regime. His statues were demolished and those of his father, Hafez al Assad, portraits were desecrated and government offices, palaces and prisons were looted.
“Achieving sustainable peace demands accountability,” explains Khaled, spokesman for Aleppo’s White Helmets. “Justice must be done with those responsible for crimes, since accountability is a fundamental pillar of long -term stability.”
Lifting sanctions
Another of the work in which they are focusing in the first weeks of reconstruction are antiperson mines. “We have received numerous reports from bodies belonging to victims killed by these mines,” explains Khaled. Determining which areas are mined, limiting and deactivating them require technical measures for which they still do not have materials or instruction. “The magnitude of the brutality of the old regime is unimaginable,” he says.
The key, perhaps for this reconstruction to be effective, is in the lifting of the sanctions that the European Union and the United States imposed on the Al Assad regime. “The sanctions are probably the biggest problem, since they feed the bad economic situation, living conditions and reconstruction,” says Dima Moussa, vice president of the opposition and coalition coalition of the political movement of Syrian women.
How much will that reconstruction cost? It is still early to talk about figures and, for the moment, efforts focus on recovering a weak economy. During the war, the Syrian pound lost 99 percent of its value and is now quoted at 13,000 pounds per dollar. To buy a coffee you need a wad of tickets. «The EU and the US must raise all sanctions. They should do it if they really care, as they claim, for the well -being of the Syrian people. We have a destroyed country at all levels and we have to rebuild it, ”explains politics. What is clear are the true wishes of the population. “Freedom, freedom” is the words that are heard more frequently after five decades of oppression and a brutal civil war.
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