Syria may be broken, but it’s energised by hope

The famous ice cream store, Bakdash, was packed, as it was when I visited in 2008.

Workers at the 19th-century Bakdash ice-cream parlour, in the Hamidiyah market, old Damascus. Photo by Louai Beshara / AFP via Getty Images

The roundabout outside the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus has a new electronic sign: “Thank you President Trump. With your support we will Make Syria Great Again.” There is a new leadership in town here, and comprehensive sanctions relief – following a meeting in May between Donald Trump and Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa – has the potential to provide the biggest boost to the country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024.

It is more than 16 years since I came to Damascus on a fruitless mission to try to persuade the then president, Assad, of the risks of Iran’s nuclear programme to regional stability and as a block on Syria’s desire to engage with the West. The intervening period has been marked by one of the most brutal armed conflicts in modern memory. Around seven million Syrians are refugees outside the country, predominantly in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, but also in Germany and Sweden. Around 22,000 Syrians have been admitted to the UK.

The country’s infrastructure has been ruined by the intense fighting. There are bombed-out buildings across tracts of land within a few minutes’ drive of Damascus’s city centre. Hospitals, schools, bridges and homes have been destroyed. Just across the square from Aleppo’s historic Citadel there are ruins where once stood grand buildings.

The UN Development Programme estimates reconstruction costs could reach $1trn. Then there is the mental toll on the families of the 500,000 Syrians killed and the countless imprisoned, wounded, tortured and “disappeared”.

The consequences of the conflict on refugees appeared as headline news in 2015, and after the 2022 earthquake across the Turkey-Syria border, there was a surge of international attention and funding. But until the surprise overthrow of the Assad regime, the country had dropped out of public consciousness. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) – the organisation for which I am CEO – was unusual in keeping Syria in the top ranks of our “emergency watchlist”. Most states in the region and beyond were coming to terms with an Assad government. The war was supposedly over.

But impunity and cruelty don’t build legitimacy or support. As Robert D Kaplan writes in his recent book, Waste Land, “The more control there is… the greater may be the eventual reaction against it.” Assad’s forces melted away, and Damascus was taken with hardly a shot being fired.

I was in Syria to say thank you to the IRC staff for their work over 12 years of conflict, to understand for myself the scale of the challenge – 16.5 million people are thought to be in need of humanitarian assistance – and to take a measure of how we can help.

The IRC employed over 800 Syrians during the conflict. Our humanitarian focus has been healthcare, protection, education, and economic recovery, helping around one million Syrians per year. We were unable to register to work in government-controlled areas, and so for most of the conflict worked in north-western Syria, in Idlib and Aleppo provinces – places dominated by armed opposition groups, accessed via crossing from Turkey – and the north-east of Syria, where Kurdish-led groups are in control. There, American and Turkish forces circle each other warily, while Islamic State remnants continue to conduct attacks.

The IRC supported 36 hospitals across the two provinces, and I visited Idlib Surgical Hospital, where our teams ran services, organised pharmaceutical supplies and offered specialist support in areas like maternal health. The patients told me about lost husbands – the personal cost of the war. But when I asked whether they were hopeful for the future, most smiled. Today, such conversations are punctuated with the renewable energy of hope and possibility.

The buildings are dilapidated and the equipment is run down, but health services in previously opposition-held areas like Idlib are better than in areas that were under Assad’s control. I saw the difference on a visit to one of two working hospitals in Homs, where doctors said money had been frittered away by the former regime. Their patients were desperate for the basics.

Markets in Damascus, Idlib and Aleppo were alive again. The famous ice cream store, Bakdash, in the old souk, was packed, as it was when I visited in 2008. So far about 450,000 refugees have returned to Syria.

The government has to try to achieve a series of daunting policy and political combinations. Improved security for all communities alongside accountability for crimes committed under Assad. Economic renewal to create the funds for social improvement. Delivery for its political base while making good on promises to people who suffered in the former government-held areas. Improving services, rebuilding infrastructure, and creating opportunities for the millions of refugees who may hope to return to a new Syria some day.

I put questions on politics, economics and relations with Trump, to President Al-Sharaa and his foreign minister. They were candid about the scale of the challenges: for example, the sanctions relief has not yet translated into investment and economic growth. They emphasised that they had no desire to quarrel with neighbours, including Israel, which has repeatedly launched air strikes on Syrian territory.

Before the war Syria was a middle-income country, allied to Russia and Iran but beckoned to modernise by the West. The last 15 years have been worse than tragic. But the Assad family finally met its match at home, not abroad. Maybe, just maybe, Syria can be great again.