Published 6:30, MAY 13, 2025

The singing and clapping burst forth before the plane started moving. “Raise your head up high, you’re a free Syrian,” a group of passengers a few rows ahead of me chanted in Arabic. The song has become a classic in the months since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria last December. A few passengers—some draped in Syria’s new flag, a symbol of anti-colonial and anti-al-Assad uprisings—took turns playing the tune on their phones, along with a few other victory anthems, and called on other passengers to join in. I clapped along in giddy bewilderment. Just three months earlier, I kept thinking, this could have gotten us all killed.

Under the autocratic rule of Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in 1971 following a military coup, and his son and successor, Bashar, any whiff of dissent meant prison and torture. Most Syrians didn’t express their political views beyond a tight circle, and even then, we often spoke in code. We never knew who might be part of the secret police or an informant. In public, we either loudly praised the al-Assads or kept quiet.

Like me, many of those on the flight that February morning, from Doha, Qatar, to Damascus, Syria’s capital, were returning to the country for the first time after a fourteen-year war. Several passengers declared it loudly, their tone a mix of joy and grief that captured my own feelings about the trip.

Aside from seeing family, I was eager to soak in as much as I could of the country’s impossibly fragile moment. I wanted to hear from Syrians who’d lived through the war about how they felt now and what they thought it would take to move forward and rebuild. Since I had only a week, I decided to stay in Damascus—it’s where I grew up. For me, it’s still home.

The celebrations resumed as our flight landed. When I walked out into the arrival hall, many of those waiting carried flowers and Syria’s new flag, and strangers called out greetings. But as I left the airport and a family friend drove me into town, euphoria gave way to reality.

The war in Syria was triggered in March 2011, in the southern city of Daraa. A group of teenagers was arrested and tortured on the charge of spray-painting anti-al-Assad graffiti on a school wall. That January, popular uprisings had overthrown authoritarian governments in Egypt and Tunisia, and a wave of pro-democracy movements rippled across North Africa and the Middle East in the period known as the Arab Spring. When locals took to the streets in Daraa, calling for the kids’ release, their protests grew into demonstrations for broader rights and freedoms that quickly spread across the country.

Al-Assad ordered his forces to arrest and shoot at protesters, and in April, the military laid siege to Daraa—tactics that would be repeated in other cities. In May, footage circulated online of the tortured and mutilated body of Hamza Ali al-Khatib, a thirteen-year-old from Daraa who’d been detained after attending a protest. It fuelled further outcry.

During those initial weeks and months, al-Assad promised limited reforms but largely blamed the unrest on the media and foreign actors bent on destabilizing the country. Throughout the war, the regime would continue to circulate propaganda painting the opposition as radical Islamists and terrorists.

The playbook was familiar; to maintain their hold on power, the al-Assads had long claimed that their secularist regime protected minorities, most notably Christians and their own Alawite sect, in the Sunni-majority country. Their policies also favoured Alawites and loyalists, placing many in high government positions or rewarding them with lucrative contracts—a fact that’s created widespread resentment against Alawites in particular.

While the revolution started out as peaceful, some protesters began arming themselves in the summer of 2011. Over the following years, multiple rebel factions emerged, including the Free Syrian Army, a loose coalition formed largely of military defectors, and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate.

The armed rebel groups battled the government and gained control of parts of the country—some with support from foreign powers, including Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Iran, the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, and Russia stepped in to prop up the regime. In some pockets, non-violent, non-sectarian resistance persisted.

The war spawned unthinkable horrors: an estimated death toll of more than 600,000; at least 150,000 arrested and arbitrarily detained, including thousands of children; chemical attacks, massacres, and sieges against rebel-held areas; heavy aerial bombardment; the targeting of hospitals. In 2013, the Islamic State was formed and went on to seize power in and terrorize northeastern Syria. It was defeated mostly by US-backed Kurdish groups in 2019.

In 2020, following military escalations along Syria’s northern border, Russia and Turkey negotiated a shaky stalemate. Some Arab states had by then started normalizing relations with al-Assad. For a while, it looked like he’d won.

Over the course of the war, more than 6 million Syrians fled, and 7.4 million are thought to be internally displaced. (The World Bank estimates the total population to be at 23.5 million, but there are an untold number of Syrians born abroad who haven’t been registered in the country.) In February 2023, devastating earthquakes in Turkey and northern Syria compounded the humanitarian crisis, killing more than 55,000 and levelling infrastructure.

Last November, the tide suddenly turned. Russia was focused on its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, while fighting with Israel over the past year had debilitated Iran and Hezbollah. On November 26, Hezbollah and Israel signed a ceasefire in Lebanon, severely weakening the militia’s reach.

By this point, Jabhat al-Nusra had evolved into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which controlled parts of the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. The day after the Hezbollah ceasefire, HTS began a military advance that eventually veered southward, pushing government forces to flee or retreat. In less than two weeks, HTS took control of major cities and small towns along the way, cutting Damascus off from outside support. On December 8, they reached the capital, where another rebel group from the south had already breached the city. That morning, news broke that al-Assad had fled. The regime was done.

Many Syrians remain skeptical of HTS due to its Islamist core and reports of its authoritarian rule in Idlib. HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who is responsible for atrocities such as coordinating suicide bombings, has sought to distance himself from his extremist past since taking power as interim president. He’s spoken about the importance of protecting women’s rights and minorities. After years of conflict, Syria’s diverse religious and ethnic communities—Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Ismailis, Circassians, and others—must find a way to coexist.

In late March, al-Sharaa introduced a transitional government; observers have noted that some of the twenty-three cabinet appointments, with one Alawite, one Druze, and one Kurdish minister, were clearly intended to gesture toward inclusivity. Hind Kabawat, a lawyer and founder of the Toronto-based Syrian Centre for Dialogue, Peace, and Reconciliation, is the only woman and only Christian in the cabinet, serving as the minister of social affairs and labour. Earlier in the month, al-Sharaa had put into effect a temporary constitution, which would remain in place for five years, until elections can be held (though, like the previous constitution under al-Assad, it stipulates that the president has to be Muslim).

Even if al-Sharaa manages to deliver on his promises, the challenges ahead are gargantuan. The new government will have to, among other things, restore public services, revive the shattered economy, unite regional militias and build a national army, pursue justice for war crimes committed, resist Israel’s unlawful incursions into contested territory and escalating military aggression, and rebuild infrastructure to repatriate displaced Syrians. And that’s just a start.

There’s not enough money in the country to do any of that. While al-Assad was in power, his family drained government coffers of millions of dollars and sent the money abroad, including to Russia, where the former........

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