“There will be a coup d’état, a transitional government with all groups represented and everything will happen without a bloodbath,” said Shivan a few days ago, a Syrian living in the north of the country, who hides his real name for security reasons. If it had been anyone else, his words could have been quarantined, but coming from him, who has lived through the revolution, the atrocious repression of the Bashar al-Assad regime and the ruthless civil war that both he and international interference fueled, he had high probability that his predictions would come true.
Entering Syria has been much easier this time than in 2011, when it was necessary to clandestinely cross rivers, barbed wire borders and roads in the middle of the night. When Aleppo fell two days ago, Syrians shared their excitement at being able to return to their city after years in exile or at being reunited with their families after having been imprisoned for a few months: “I’m crying seeing my city again,” he writes on WhatsApp Yasser, a doctor from Aleppo, who has lived in exile in a town bordering Turkey for almost a decade.
This doctor, who spent several years in prison for opposing the Assad regime and then suffered an assassination attempt by members of the Islamic State, had to leave his city in 2016, when the government army recovered it from the insurgency. But he has returned home. Theirs, now, is one of the tens of thousands of stories that are repeated throughout Syria today: families separated by repression and war that can finally reunite and hug each other after this Sunday the rebel militias, led by the fundamentalist Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) overthrew the Syrian dictator after 13 years of conflict. “I can’t hold back the tears of emotion after so many years away from Aleppo,” exclaims Yasser.
In the north of the country, the situation is no different. The perspective of the war in northern Syria is very different from that of Aleppo and other cities in the south, because while in Hasaka or Qamishli they have shared authorities – until now they have been administered half between the Government and the Syrian Democratic Forces ( SDF) led by the Kurds—the latter have spent years very much subject to the Assad regime.
But even so, joy reigns among thousands of people who feel liberated from repression. In the cities they change the official flags to the four-color one with three stars of the revolution, and the population cries and hugs each other. Syrians are excited to know they are freed from a family dictatorship of more than half a century and from a regime that responded to the protests of the Syrian Arab Spring with massacres and bombings by Russian aircraft. “We are very happy, we are free,” responds anyone who is asked.
Trucks and cars full of fleeing families circulate along the roads of northern Syria, but also others returning to their cities of origin, where they will encounter soldiers firing salvos into the air to celebrate the fall of their dictator. In the city of Qamishli, on the Turkish border, vehicle traffic is intense; Drivers honk their horns, display flags out the window. Among the pedestrians, gathered in crowds, some have burned tires, and shots can be heard in the air, but the atmosphere is one of festivity. Even children participate in the rallies. “We are exhausted, but happy,” comments one of the passers-by.
In one of the city’s hotels, an employee called Ahmed He is also happy about the sudden turn of events in his country. “We have finally gotten rid of Assad,” he celebrates. And he exemplifies the great difference he finds in small details that were previously prohibited to him and now he believes are no longer: “I couldn’t even pronounce the word bastard, now I feel free to do so,” he boasts, referring to the Syrian dictator.
Syrians are not unaware of the amalgam of interests and ideologies that exist between the groups and countries that have brought down the dictatorship nor of the difficulty of maintaining a peaceful balance between them, but now is the time to celebrate liberation, regardless of their ideological or religious differences.
Between fear and hope
Although there is a happiness similar to that of the Libyans when, in October 2011, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown, there is also some fear of a repeat, as happened in the African country, of the disappointment and frustration that came when the country It was crumbling due to clashes between different factions that tried to seize power. “It is likely that we will enter a civil war in a short time,” muses another pragmatic citizen named Farek.
He’s not the only one worried that the violence won’t stop here; There are many Syrians who share uncertainty about a new war that, they believe, could be coming between the different groups that currently have a presence in the country and are supported by different international actors. Groups that are dividing up the territory after years involved in the conflict and that will now demand a part of the territory, either taking it by force or consolidating their control.
But in the meantime, what is seen in northern Syria the day after the fall of the dictator El Assad is relief, celebration and emotion for the freedom won and for the memory of the hundreds of thousands of murdered and reprisals in these decades that have already You will not see this Syria liberated, even temporarily.
