In Yarmouk, to get from one house to another, you walk through bombed-out holes in demolished cement walls. Mountains of rubble and mounds of trash dot the landscape, which locals climb over to get from one street to the next. To walk through this ghost town is to be haunted by spirits of the dead, as well as by packs of hungry, and sometimes rabid, dogs.

There is no longer as much fighting in the streets in this refugee camp outside Damascus, but it doesn’t feel like a new Syria here, where a diaspora community of Palestinians displaced over decades struggles to survive.

On paper, the prospects for Syria have vastly improved over the last six months. The country seems poised for an economic recovery after years of war and a half-century of rule by the Assad dynasty. On December 8, 2024 — “Day Zero,” as many call it in Syria — Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, forces chased Bashar al-Assad out of the country, ending an era of brutal dictatorship. In February, the European Union began easing sanctions against Syria, then lifted them entirely. Last month, in a surprise move prior to meeting in Saudi Arabia with Syrian Interim President Ahmed al-Shara, President Donald Trump announced his plan to lift U.S. sanctions that have been leveled against Syria since Jimmy Carter was president. Trump praised al-Shara — who fought against the United States in Iraq and was once imprisoned in Abu Ghraib — as a “young, attractive guy,” and a “tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”

News of the end of Syrian sanctions have been welcomed across the aisle in Washington and from Brussels to Ankara to Damascus. Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani thanked the EU for its decision. Former Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss said Trump’s decision was “the right move, which will aid desperately needed humanitarian and reconstruction efforts in Syria.” The Economist’s article about the “euphoria” of the news is titled “One happy Damascus.”

People in Syria are certainly hopeful. A banker in Syria who spoke to Reuters described the lifting of sanctions as “too good to be true,” and a soap factory owner in Aleppo rushed to the square as soon as she heard the news. “These sanctions were imposed on Assad, but … now that Syria has been liberated, there will be a positive impact on industry, it’ll boost the economy and encourage people to return” she told AFP.

But what are the odds that what benefits investors will benefit the average person living in Syria?

After all, as United Nations Development recently warned, “nine out of 10 Syrians are living in poverty, and one in four is jobless.” The report ominously added that “40 to 50 per cent of children aged six to 15 are not attending school, and 5.4 million people have lost their jobs,” and $800 billion was lost during the war.

And then, there’s the issue of the people among Syria’s most marginalized residents: Palestinian refugees whose families have been impoverished for decades.

“No group has suffered as badly during the war as we have in Yarmouk.”

To understand what this period of enormous transition means for them, The Intercept spent a week in the Yarmouk refugee camp and observed the lives of three residents who lived or hailed from there in a loose, informal family: Salwa, a single young woman, barely out of adolescence herself, who is responsible for a brood of children she didn’t birth; Bilal, a young man who wants to build houses but can only find work dealing hash inconsistently; and Abu Tarek, an HTS soldier positioned to thrive in post-Assad Syria. All of their names have been altered to protect them from retaliation.

Salwa, 22, has lived in Syria her entire life. Her family is originally from Haifa, where she declares, “I will return the moment it is possible.” But she’s actually never been to Palestine. Home, for now, is a bombed-out building in Yarmouk, where she is sit al beit, or “lady of the house.”

It is her house, she explains, because she is the person supporting her family financially. After her parents left their daughters, Salwa found herself responsible for two younger sisters, ages 13 and 18. She also cares for a 6-year-old and a 2-year-old whose mom dropped them off a few months ago when she could no longer take care of them. (Why did their mother leave them? Maybe it is drugs, trauma, a man, or all three, Salwa says.)

Salwa wears a hijab, but only outside of her home. The only male guests who come over are related to her anyways, and they always ask, “Is everyone decent?” before entering. This evening, Salwa has sparked up a heater meant to be powered by gas. But now it’s fueled by burning plastic, with coals burning precariously on top for shai (tea). She has also set up a perilous bank of power strips, so everyone can charge their devices during the few hours of nightly state-supplied electricity. She then winds down with a nargileh (hookah) to her lips, as visitors come over to pass the time. They include her 25-year-old “uncle” Bilal, more like her big brother, and two friends including Heba, who has Down syndrome.

Heba immediately starts asking the men in the room questions about what what they like and dislike, sometimes teasing them. She flirts unabashedly. She enjoys listening to Shami Arabic music, and tonight she plays it loudly while showing off her dance moves. She says she loves to dance and makes everyone clap for her. The younger children jump up and down by her legs as she twirls with a sash around her waist.

A woman dancing in a room of men, related or not, wouldn’t have been appropriate during the more intense skirmishes in years past when groups of men in Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS might be too close to hear the music playing. The combat is done, but signs of those days of fighting are never far away. On one of the few walls still left standing of a partly destroyed building a few hundred feet away, graffiti reads la ilaha illAllah: “There is no God but God.” It’s a foundational Islamic declaration and common Arabic phrase said often in Syria. But these words are spray-painted in black and drawn inside a black circle —conveying that fighters and supporters of the Islamic State group are in the neighborhood. A few doors down is another ominous tag. It belongs to another Islamist militia, Jabhat al-Nusra, whose roots are from Al Qaeda. Over the last decade, Nusra rebranded to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the main rebel force that opposed and then pushed Assad’s regime out and took over the country.

The graffiti doesn’t faze Salwa. ISIS, she says, was an enemy to most people anywhere, but she “doesn’t mind an Islamist regime in theory.” That said, she thinks it is going to be tough to get Syrian women to stop wearing skirts.

It’s a welcome change from the Assad regime. “No group has suffered as badly during the war as we have in Yarmouk,” Salwa says. “Life is hell.” Women especially were not safe under Assad. She says she knows many girls who were harassed, raped, and even murdered. “If a soldier wanted you, even if you were married or he was married, he could do whatever he wanted … but,” she adds pointedly, “I am a girl who screams and fights.”

Until Assad was gone, she was afraid to speak of that violence — and prohibited even from posting pictures of the dilapidation she lived in, for fear of being disappeared.

Now, she says, it is fine to take pictures in Yarmouk. “I don’t feel afraid like I did before, 3adi [it’s OK].”

On another night, Salwa and a friend are cooking dinner in her makeshift kitchen, the kind of chore they enjoy doing together, like going to the market to find deals on baby formula. Salwa says she worked at........

© The Intercept