At Damascus’ worldwide airport, the brand new head of safety – a member of the anti-regime forces who marched throughout Syria to the capital – arrived along with his workforce. The few upkeep employees who confirmed up for work huddled round Maj Hamza al-Ahmed, desirous to study what is going to occur subsequent.
They shortly unloaded all of the complaints they’d been too afraid to specific throughout Bashar Assad’s rule, which now, inconceivably, is over.
They employee’s mentioned they have been denied promotions and perks in favor of pro-Assad favorites and that bosses threatened them with jail for working too slowly. They warned of hardcore Assad supporters amongst airport employees, able to return every time the power reopens.
As al-Ahmed tried to reassure them, Osama Najm, an engineer, introduced: “This is the first time we talk.”
This was the primary week of Syria’s transformation after Assad’s sudden fall.
The anti-regime alliance, out of the blue in cost, met a inhabitants bursting with feelings: pleasure at new freedoms; grief over years of repression; and hopes, expectations and worries in regards to the future. Some have been overwhelmed to the purpose of tears.
The transition has been surprisingly easy. Reports of reprisals, revenge killings and sectarian violence have been minimal. Looting and destruction have been shortly contained. On Saturday, individuals went about their lives as typical within the capital, Damascus. Only a single van of armed forces was seen.
There are 1,000,000 methods it might go mistaken.
The nation is damaged and remoted after 5 a long time of the Assad household’s tyranny. Families have been torn aside by struggle, former prisoners are traumatized by the brutalities they suffered, tens of hundreds of detainees stay lacking. The financial system is wrecked, poverty is widespread, inflation and unemployment are excessive. Corruption seeps via every day life.
But on this second of flux, many are able to really feel out the best way forward.
At the airport, al-Ahmed instructed the staffers: “The new path will have challenges, but that is why we have said Syria is for all and we all have to cooperate.”
The anti-regime alliance, have to date mentioned all the suitable issues, Najm mentioned. “But we will not be silent about anything wrong again.”
At a torched police station, photos of Assad have been torn down and recordsdata destroyed after the opposition teams entered town Dec. 8. All Assad-era police and safety personnel have vanished.
On Saturday, the constructing was staffed by 10 males serving within the police pressure of the Salvation Government, which for years ruled the opposition enclave of Idlib in Syria’s northwest.
They watch over the station, coping with reviews of petty thefts and avenue scuffles. One girl complains that her neighbors sabotaged her energy provide. A policeman tells her to attend for courts to start out working once more.
“It will take a year to solve problems” he mumbled.
The Salvation Government has sought to deliver order in Damascus by replicating the construction of its governance in Idlib. But there’s a drawback of scale. One of the policemen estimates their quantity at solely round 4,000; half are based mostly in Idlib and the remaining are tasked with sustaining safety in Damascus and elsewhere. Some specialists estimate the opposition’s complete combating pressure at round 20,000.
Right now, they and the general public are studying about one another, and a few Syrians stay suspicious.
“The people we see on the streets, they don’t represent us,” mentioned one Damascus resident from the southern metropolis of Daraa, the place the 2011 anti-Assad rebellion started. They have been involved about spiritual minorities and revenge killings.
“We should be fearful,” he mentioned, including that he worries some insurgents really feel superior to different Syrians due to their years of combating. “With all due respect to those who sacrificed, we all sacrificed.”
Still, concern shouldn’t be prevalent in Damascus, the place many insist they may now not let themselves be oppressed.
Some eating places have resumed overtly serving alcohol, others extra discretely to check the temper.
At a sidewalk cafe within the historic Old City’s Christian quarter, males have been consuming beer when a patrol handed by. The males turned to one another, unsure, however the armed patrol did nothing. When a person waving a gun harassed a liquor retailer elsewhere within the Old City, the insurgent police arrested him, one policeman mentioned.
Salem Hajjo, a theater trainer who participated within the 2011 protests, mentioned he could not agree with the opposition’s spiritual views, however is impressed at their expertise in operating their very own affairs. And he expects to have a voice within the new Syria.
“We have never been this at ease,” he mentioned. “The fear is gone. The rest is up to us.”
On the night time after Assad’s fall, armed anti-regime forces roamed the streets, celebrating victory with deafening gunfire. Some safety company buildings have been torched.
The public stayed indoors, peeking out on the newcomers. Shops shut down.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) moved to impose order, ordering a nighttime curfew for 3 days. It banned celebratory gunfire and moved its members to guard properties.
After a day, individuals started to emerge.
For tens of hundreds, their first vacation spot was Assad’s prisons, notably Saydnaya on the capital’s outskirts, to seek for family members who disappeared years in the past. Few have discovered any traces.
It was wrenching but in addition unifying. Opposition members, a few of them additionally looking, mingled with family members of the lacking at midnight halls of prisons that each one had feared for years.
During celebrations on the street, anti-Assad forces invited youngsters to hop up on their armored automobiles, posed for pictures with ladies. Pro-revolution songs blared from vehicles. Suddenly retailers and partitions in all places are plastered with revolutionary flags and posters of activists killed by the deposed regime.
TV stations didn’t miss a beat, flipping from praising Assad to enjoying revolutionary songs. State media aired the flurry of declarations issued by the brand new transitional authorities.
The new administration referred to as on individuals to return to work and urged Syrian refugees around the globe to return to assist rebuild. It introduced plans to rehabilitate and vet the safety forces to forestall the return of “those with blood on their hands.” They reassured airport staffers – lots of them authorities loyalists – that their houses gained’t be attacked, one worker mentioned.
But Syria’s woes are removed from being resolved.
While produce costs plunged after Assad’s fall, as a result of retailers now not wanted to pay hefty customs charges and bribes, gas distribution was badly disrupted, jacking up transportation prices and inflicting widespread and prolonged blackouts.
Officials say they wish to reopen the airport as quickly as doable and this week upkeep crews inspected a handful of planes on the tarmac. Cleaners eliminated trash, wrecked furnishings and merchandise.
One cleaner, who recognized himself solely as Murad, mentioned he earns the equal of $15 a month and has six youngsters to feed, together with one with a incapacity. He desires of getting a cell phone.
“We need a long time to clean this up,” he mentioned.
Source: www.dailysabah.com