Syria takes first steps in new era after fall of Assad dynasty

Syria is taking its first steps in the post-Assad era as its people come to terms with life under new rulers.

The few maintenance workers at Damascus’ international airport who showed up for work huddled around rebel officer Major Hamza al-Ahmed.

They quickly unloaded all the complaints they had been too afraid to express during the rule of President Bashar Assad, which now, inconceivably, is over.

They told the bearded fighter they were denied promotions and perks in favour of pro-Assad favourites, and that bosses threatened them with prison for working too slowly.

They warned of hardcore Assad supporters among airport staff, ready to return whenever the facility reopens.

As Maj Al-Ahmed tried to reassure them, Osama Najm, an engineer, announced: “This is the first time we talk.”

This was the first week of Syria’s transformation after Mr Assad’s unexpected fall.

Rebels, suddenly in charge, met a population bursting with emotions: excitement at new freedoms; grief over years of repression; and hopes, expectations and worries about the future. Some were overwhelmed to the point of tears.

The transition has been surprisingly smooth.

Reports of reprisals, revenge killings and sectarian violence have been minimal.

Looting and destruction have been quickly contained, insurgent fighters disciplined.

On Saturday, people went about their lives as usual in the capital, Damascus.

Only a single van of fighters was seen.

There are a million ways it could go wrong.

The country is broken and isolated after five decades of Assad family rule.

Families have been torn apart by war, former prisoners are traumatised by the brutalities they suffered, tens of thousands of detainees remain missing.

The economy is wrecked, poverty is widespread, inflation and unemployment are high while corruption seeps through daily life.

Maj al-Ahmed told 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 rebels have so far said all the right things, Mr Najm said. “But we will not be silent about anything wrong again.”

At a torched police station, pictures of Assad were torn down and files destroyed after insurgents entered the city on December 8.

All Assad-era police and security personnel have vanished.

On Saturday, the building was staffed by 10 men serving in the police force of the rebels’ de facto “salvation government”, which for years governed the rebel enclave of Idlib in Syria’s northwest.

The rebel policemen watch over the station, dealing with reports of petty thefts and street scuffles.

The rebels sought to bring order in Damascus by replicating the structure of its governance in Idlib.

But there is a problem of scale.

One of the policemen estimates the number of rebel police at only around 4,000; half are based in Idlib and the rest are tasked with maintaining security in Damascus and elsewhere.

Some experts estimate the insurgents’ total fighting force at around 20,000.

Right now, the fighters and the public are learning about each other.

The fighters drive large SUVs and newer models of vehicles that are out of reach for most residents in Damascus, where they cost 10 times as much because of custom duties and bribes.

The fighters carry Turkish lira, long forbidden in government-held areas, rather than the plunging Syrian pound.

Most of the bearded fighters hail from conservative, provincial areas.

Many are hardline Islamists.

The main insurgent force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has renounced its al-Qaida past, and its leaders are working to reassure Syria’s religious and ethnic communities that the future will be pluralist and tolerant.

But many Syrians remain suspicious.

Some fighters sport ribbons with Islamist slogans on their uniforms. and not all of them belong to HTS, the most organised group.

“The people we see on the streets, they don’t represent us,” said Hani Zia, a Damascus resident from the southern city of Daraa, where the 2011 anti-Assad uprising began.

He was concerned by reports of attacks on minorities and revenge killings.

“We should be fearful,” he said, adding that he worries some insurgents feel superior to other Syrians because of their years of fighting.

“With all due respect to those who sacrificed, we all sacrificed.”

Still, fear is not prevalent in Damascus, where many insist they will no longer let themselves be oppressed.

Some restaurants have resumed openly serving alcohol, others more discretely to test the mood.

At a cafe in the Old City’s Christian quarter, men were drinking beer when a fighter patrol passed by.

The men turned to each other, uncertain, but the fighters did nothing.

When a man waving a gun harassed a liquor store elsewhere in the Old City, the rebel police arrested him, one policeman said.

Salem Hajjo, a theatre teacher who participated in the 2011 protests, said he does not agree with the rebels’ Islamist views, but is impressed at their experience in running their own affairs.

And he expects to have a voice in the new Syria.

“We have never been this at ease,” he said.

“The fear is gone. The rest is up to us.”

On the night after Mr Assad’s fall, gunmen roamed the streets, celebrating victory with deafening gunfire.

Some security agency buildings were torched.

People ransacked the airport’s duty free, smashing all the bottles of alcohol.

The rebels blamed some of this on fleeing government loyalists.

The public stayed indoors, peeking out at the newcomers and shops shut down.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham moved to impose order, ordering a night-time curfew for three days.

It banned celebratory gunfire and moved fighters to protect properties.

After a day, people began to emerge.

For tens of thousands, their first destination was the prisons, particularly Saydnaya on the capital’s outskirts, to search for loved ones who disappeared years ago.

During celebrations in the street, gunmen invited children to hop up on their armoured vehicles.

Insurgents posed for photos with women, some with their hair uncovered.

Pro-revolution songs blared from cars.

Suddenly shops and walls everywhere are plastered with revolutionary flags and posters of activists killed by Mr Assad’s state.

TV stations did not miss a beat, flipping from praising Assad to playing revolutionary songs.

State media aired the flurry of declarations issued by the new insurgent-led transitional government.

The new administration called on people to go back to work and urged Syrian refugees around the world to return to help rebuild.

It announced plans to rehabilitate and vet the security forces to prevent the return of “those with blood on their hands”.

Fighters reassured airport staffers, many of them government loyalists, that their homes will not be attacked, one employee said.