By GHAITH ALSAYED and ABBY SEWELL, Related Press
HOMS, Syria (AP) — A 12 months in the past, Mohammad Marwan discovered himself stumbling, barefoot and dazed, out of Syria’s infamous Saydnaya jail on the outskirts of Damascus as insurgent forces pushing towards the capital threw open its doorways to launch the prisoners.
Arrested in 2018 for fleeing obligatory navy service, the daddy of three had cycled by means of 4 different lockups earlier than touchdown in Saydnaya, a sprawling advanced simply north of Damascus that turned synonymous with a few of the worst atrocities dedicated beneath the rule of now-ousted President Bashar Assad.
He recalled guards ready to welcome new prisoners with a gauntlet of beatings and electrical shocks. “They stated, ‘You haven’t any rights right here, and we’re not calling an ambulance except we have now a lifeless physique,’” Marwan stated.
His Dec. 8, 2024, homecoming to a home filled with family and associates in his village in Homs province was joyful.
However within the 12 months since then, he has struggled to beat the bodily and psychological results of his six-year imprisonment. He suffered from chest ache and issue respiration that turned out to be the results of tuberculosis. He was beset by crippling anxiousness and issue sleeping.
He’s now present process therapy for tuberculosis and attending remedy classes at a middle in Homs centered on rehabilitating former prisoners, and Marwan stated his bodily and psychological conditions have progressively improved.
“We had been in one thing like a state of demise” in Saydnaya, he stated. “Now we’ve come again to life.”
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A Syrian man waves his nation flag throughout celebrations marking the primary anniversary of the ousting of former President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Picture/Hussein Malla)
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A Syrian man waves his nation flag throughout celebrations marking the primary anniversary of the ousting of former President Bashar Assad in Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Picture/Hussein Malla)
A rustic struggling to heal
On Monday, 1000’s of Syrians took to the streets to have a good time the anniversary of Assad’s fall.
Like Marwan, the nation is struggling to heal a 12 months after the Assad dynasty’s repressive 50-year reign got here to an finish following 14 years of civil struggle that left an estimated half 1,000,000 individuals lifeless, hundreds of thousands extra displaced, and the nation battered and divided.
Assad’s downfall got here as a shock, even to the insurgents who unseated him. In late November 2024, teams within the nation’s northwest — led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist insurgent group whose then-leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, is now the nation’s interim president — launched an offensive on the metropolis of Aleppo, aiming to take it again from Assad’s forces.
They had been startled when the Syrian military collapsed with little resistance, first in Aleppo, then the important thing cities of Hama and Homs, leaving the street to Damascus open. In the meantime, rebel teams within the nation’s south mobilized to make their very own push towards the capital.
The rebels took Damascus on Dec. 8 whereas Assad was whisked away by Russian forces and stays in exile in Moscow. However Russia, a longtime Assad ally, didn’t intervene militarily to defend him and has since established ties with the nation’s new rulers and maintained its bases on the Syrian coast.
Hassan Abdul Ghani, spokesperson for Syrian Ministry of Protection, stated HTS and its allies had launched a significant organizational overhaul after Assad’s forces regained management of quite a few previously rebel-controlled areas in 2019 and 2020.
The insurgent offensive in November 2024 was not initially geared toward seizing Damascus however was meant to preempt an anticipated main offensive by Assad’s forces in opposition-held Idlib desiring to “end the Idlib file,” Abdul Ghani stated.
Launching an assault on Aleppo “was a navy answer to broaden the radius of the battle and thus safeguard the liberated inside areas,” he stated.
In timing the assault, the insurgents additionally took benefit of the truth that Russia was distracted by its struggle in Ukraine and that the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, one other Assad ally, was licking its wounds after a dangerous struggle with Israel.
When the Syrian military’s defenses collapsed, the rebels pressed on, “making the most of each golden alternative,” Abdul Ghani stated.
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FILE – A person breaks the lock of a cell within the notorious Saydnaya navy jail, simply north of Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP Picture/Hussein Malla, File)
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FILE – A person breaks the lock of a cell within the notorious Saydnaya navy jail, simply north of Damascus, Syria, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (AP Picture/Hussein Malla, File)
Successes overseas, challenges at residence
Since his sudden ascent to energy, al-Sharaa has launched a diplomatic allure offensive, constructing ties with Western and Arab international locations that shunned Assad and that when thought-about al-Sharaa a terrorist.
In November, he turned the primary Syrian president for the reason that nation’s independence in 1946 to go to Washington.
In a speech in Damascus on Monday, al-Sharaa described his imaginative and prescient of Syria as “a powerful nation that belongs to its historic previous, seems to be ahead to a promising future and is restoring its pure place in its Arab, regional and worldwide surroundings” and can be part of “the ranks of essentially the most superior nations.”
However the diplomatic successes have been offset by outbreaks of sectarian violence by which lots of of civilians from the Alawite and Druze minorities had been killed by pro-government Sunni fighters. Native Druze teams have now arrange their very own de facto authorities and navy within the southern Sweida province.
There are ongoing tensions between the brand new authorities in Damascus and Kurdish-led forces controlling the nation’s northeast, regardless of an settlement inked in March that was presupposed to result in a merger of their forces.
Israel is cautious of Syria’s new Islamist-led authorities though al-Sharaa has stated he desires no battle with the nation. Israel has seized a previously U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria and launched common airstrikes and incursions since Assad’s fall. Negotiations for a safety settlement have stalled.
Remnants of the civil struggle are in every single place. The Mines Advisory Group reported Monday that not less than 590 individuals have been killed by landmines in Syria since Assad’s fall, together with 167 kids, placing the nation on observe to document the world’s highest landmine casualty charge in 2025.
In the meantime, the economic system has remained sluggish, regardless of the lifting of most Western sanctions. Whereas Gulf international locations have promised to put money into reconstruction tasks, little has materialized on the bottom. The World Financial institution estimates that rebuilding the nation’s war-damaged areas will price $216 billion.
Rebuilding largely a person effort
The rebuilding that has taken place has largely been particular person homeowners paying to repair their very own broken homes and companies.
On the outskirts of Damascus, the once-vibrant Yarmouk Palestinian camp right now largely resembles a moonscape. Taken over by a collection of militant teams then bombarded by authorities planes, the camp was all however deserted after 2018.
Since Assad’s fall, a gradual stream of former residents have come again.
Essentially the most broken areas stay largely abandoned however on the principle road main into the camp, little by little, blasted-out partitions have been changed within the buildings that stay structurally sound. Outlets have reopened and households have come again to their residences. However any bigger reconstruction initiative seems to nonetheless be far off.
“It’s been a 12 months for the reason that regime fell. I might hope they may take away the previous destroyed homes and construct towers,” stated Maher al-Homsi, who’s fixing his broken residence to maneuver again, though the realm doesn’t also have a water connection.
His neighbor, Etab al-Hawari, was prepared to chop the brand new authorities some slack.
“They inherited an empty nation — the banks are empty, the infrastructure was robbed, the properties had been robbed,” she stated.
Bassam Dimashqi, a dentist from Damascus, stated of the nation after Assad’s fall, “In fact it’s higher, there’s freedom of some type.”
However he stays anxious in regards to the precarious safety state of affairs and its financial impacts.
“The job of the state is to impose safety, and when you impose safety, every thing else will come,” he stated. “The safety state of affairs is what encourages traders to return and do tasks.”
The U.N refugee company studies that greater than 1 million refugees and almost 2 million internally displaced Syrians have returned to their properties since Assad’s fall. However with out jobs and reconstruction, some will depart once more.
Amongst them is Marwan, the previous prisoner, who says the post-Assad state of affairs in Syria is “much better” than earlier than. However he’s struggling economically.
Typically he picks up labor that pays solely 50,000 or 60,000 Syrian kilos day by day, the equal of about $5.
As soon as he finishes his tuberculosis therapy, he stated, he plans to depart to Lebanon in quest of better-paid work.
Sewell reported from Beirut. Related Press journalist Omar Albam in Damascus contributed to this report.
