8 January 2025

The Syrian people yearn to take control of their own destiny

Bashar al-Assad has gone but, as elation begins to be edged out by anxiety, what comes after authoritarianism?

Happiness. It’s a word reporters rarely get to use. But there it was in Syria, on 8 December, an extraordinary explosion of joy rising from teeming streets. A brutal 54-year-old dictatorship had suddenly collapsed; President Bashar al-Assad had fled, on a flight to Moscow.

History. That was palpable too. That rare kind of moment “when hope and history rhyme”, as Seamus Heaney wrote. In a Syria millions of its citizens thought they would never see, I wondered when this whirl of celebration would subside. But squares popped with firecrackers and song over Christmas. Back in London, watching from afar, social media and my messaging apps still bring emotional scenes. Exiled activists, writers, scholars and more flood home for the first time in more than a decade, hugging mothers or visiting their graves.

But a month on, elation is being edged out by anxiety – what comes after an authoritarian order was peacefully brought down, and a transitional government, dominated by Islamists, takes shape? It’s led by a man in a Western suit, once known for his links to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, who’s now described as a “pragmatist” and a moderate. Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has dropped his nom de guerre Al-Jolani, promises “Syria is a country for all”.

The past is not yet past. It won’t be for countless Syrians until they know what happened to loved ones who “disappeared” into notorious prisons and secret detention centres. Syrians have been storming into that darkness to see the stomach-churning machinery of torture. Agony bottled up for so long is being uncorked, in heart-rending cries of those who have found a dreaded death certificate, or even a bag of broken bones. Many are still searching. And human rights groups are gathering the blood-soaked secrets stored in the filing cabinets of the regime’s fastidious record keeping.

Through all those years, Syrian lawyers in exile collected the evidence. If there is to be a new start, there must be proof that “the arc of history bends towards justice”.

Memories kept rushing back during my December visit. One of many abiding images from my last trip to Syria in 2018, before the government banned the BBC along with most Western media, was a cobbled lane running through the old city of Damascus thronged with young men from Afghanistan. Some were happy to chat as they hastened to the mosque for prayer. Of the same Shia faith as most Iranians, they’d come to Damascus, via Tehran, to bolster Assad’s forces. How quickly those forces gave up the fight in December, when Iran, Russia, Hezbollah were all drained by their own wars. In 2013, after the first major battle involving Hezbollah, I asked one of its fighters how hard it had been to recapture a town from Syrian rebel forces. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” was his unexpected reply. You could use the same phrase today.

Iran’s forward base in Syria, with its land bridge to Hezbollah in Lebanon, has fallen. Russia has lost its Mediterranean mooring too, though ties between Moscow and Damascus run deep. Even Sharaa said, “We do not want Russia to depart in a manner unbefitting the long-standing relations with our country,” which include, of late, Russia’s naval and air bases. But there are signs Moscow is moving to Libya.

Not so for Turkey, which exclaims the “sun is rising” in Syria. It’s congratulating itself on staying the course after Western countries largely turned their backs on rebel Syrian forces.

The war hasn’t ended. Rebels backed by Turkey have clashed with Kurdish forces backed by the US. Israel has been bombing military bases and more to stop weapons from falling into “the hands of extremists”. There’s concern that the remnants of Islamic State will seek to maximise this moment. Will Sharaa’s “Syria for all” be a competition among foreign powers? Some observers already predict it.

I wonder who keeps Sharaa’s diary. In the past month, there’s been a blizzard of diplomats from east and west who clamoured to meet the leader despite the $10m bounty on his head. It’s now been lifted. But his group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is still a proscribed organisation, and Syria is one of the world’s most sanctioned countries. Western delegations all bring the same message: an inclusive government (which includes many religious and ethnic communities) and respect for women’s rights is vital. A German diplomat told the BBC that Sharaa would be judged by “actions, not words”. Even Sharaa’s move to avoid shaking the hand of the German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock caused a flutter in German media. Most Syrian commentators stay focused on moves that matter more.

It’s striking that a people who have never known democracy are now so vigilant. Syrians are fighting every battle big and small – from taking back a Damascene art house confiscated by gunmen to pushing back against a statement that women’s roles would be limited by their “special physical and mental nature”.

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters” is roughly how Gramsci put it. Many “monsters” lurk in Syria. But so too do Syrians determined to build a new country they can recognise as their own.

Lyse Doucet is the BBC’s chief international correspondent