At Damascus international airport, the new head of security – one of the rebels who marched from Syria to the capital – arrived with his team. Some of the maintenance workers who had arrived for work gathered around Major Hamza al-Ahmad, curious to know what would happen next.
They immediately vented out all the grievances they were afraid to express during the rule of President Bashar Assad, which has now, unimaginably, come to an end.
He told the bearded fighter that he had been denied promotions and allowances in favor of pro-Assad favorites, and that bosses had threatened him with jail for working too slowly. He warned of staunch Assad supporters among airport staff who are prepared to return when the facility reopens.
As al-Ahmad tried to reassure him, Osama Najm, an engineer, announced: “This is the first time we are talking.”
It was the first week of change in Syria after the unexpected fall of Assad.
The rebels suddenly in power were met by a population filled with emotions: excitement at the new freedom; Grief from years of oppression; and hopes, expectations, and concerns about the future. Some people were so overwhelmed that they had tears in their eyes.
The transition has been surprisingly smooth. Reports of reprisals, revenge killings, and communal violence have been minimal. Looting and destruction have been quickly controlled, rebel fighters have been disciplined. On Saturday, people continued to live their lives as normal in the capital Damascus. Only one van of fighter planes was seen.
There are a million ways this can go wrong.
After five decades of rule by the Assad family, the country is broken and isolated. Families have been torn apart by war, former prisoners are traumatized by the atrocities they suffered, and thousands of detainees are missing. The economy is in ruins, poverty is widespread, inflation and unemployment are rampant. Corruption has become pervasive in daily life.
But in this moment of flux, many are ready to feel a way forward.
At the airport, al-Ahmad told staff: “There will be challenges on the new path, but that is why we have said that Syria is for everyone and we all have to cooperate.”
The rebels have said all the right things so far, Najm said. “But we will never again be silent about anything that is wrong.”
Idlib comes to Damascus
After rebels entered the city on 8 December, a police station was set on fire, photographs of Assad were torn down and files were destroyed. All Assad-era police and security personnel have disappeared.
On Saturday, the building was occupied by 10 people serving in the police force of the rebels’ de facto “liberation government,” which ruled the rebel-held enclave of Idlib in Syria’s northwest for years.
Rebel policemen keep watch at the station, dealing with reports of petty thefts and street skirmishes. A woman complains that her neighbors have sabotaged her electricity supply. A policeman tells him to wait for the courts to start operating again.
“It will take a year to sort out the problems,” he muttered.
The rebels sought to bring order to Damascus by copying its governance structure in Idlib. But there is a problem of scale. One of the policemen estimates that the rebel police number 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 total fighting strength of the rebels to be around 20,000.
Right now, the fighters and the public are learning about each other.
Fighters drive large SUVs and new models of vehicles that are out of reach for most residents of Damascus, where they cost 10 times more due to customs duties and bribes. Fighters carry the Turkish lira instead of the depreciating Syrian pound, which has long been banned in government-held areas.
Most bearded fighters come from conservative, provincial areas. Many people are staunch Islamists.
The main rebel force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has abandoned its al-Qaeda past, and its leaders are working to reassure Syria’s religious and ethnic communities that the future will be pluralistic and tolerant.
But many Syrians remain skeptical. Some fighters wear ribbons with Islamic slogans on their uniforms, and not all of them belong to HTS, the most organized group.
“The people we see on the streets do not represent us,” said Hani Zia, a Damascene resident of the southern city of Daraa, where the anti-Assad uprising began in 2011. He was concerned by reports of attacks on minorities and revenge killings.
“We should be afraid,” he said, adding that he worries that some rebels 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 widespread in Damascus, where many insist they will no longer allow themselves to be oppressed.
Some restaurants have resumed serving alcohol openly, others have begun serving alcohol more discreetly to test the mood.
At a sidewalk café in the Christian quarter of the historic old town, men were drinking beer when a combat patrol passed by. People turned to each other uncertainly, but the fighters did nothing. When a man brandishing a gun disturbed a liquor store in the old city, rebel police arrested him, a policeman said.
Salem Hajjo, a theater teacher who participated in the 2011 protests, said he did not agree with the rebels’ Islamist views, but was impressed by their experience in running his own affairs. And they hope that their voice will be heard in the new Syria.
“We have never been so comfortable,” he said. “The fear is gone. The rest is up to us.”
The fighters make a concerted effort to reassure
The night after Assad’s fall, gunmen roamed the streets, celebrating victory with deafening gunfire. Some security agency buildings were set on fire. People vandalized the duty free area of the airport and broke all the liquor bottles. The rebels blamed this in part on the desertion of government loyalists.
The public remained indoors and watched the newcomers. Shops were closed.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham ordered a night-time curfew for three days. It banned celebratory firing and moved fighters to protect properties.
After a day, people started emerging.
For thousands, their first destination was Assad’s prisons, particularly Sayednaya on the outskirts of the capital, to search for loved ones who had disappeared years ago. Some have got some marks.
It was divisive but also uniting. The rebels, some of whom were also searching, were reunited in the dark halls of prisons with relatives of the missing, whom everyone had feared for years.
During street celebrations, the gunmen invited children to climb onto their armored vehicles. The rebels posed for photographs with the women, some with their hair open. Pro-revolution songs were playing from the cars. Suddenly shops and walls everywhere were covered with revolutionary flags and posters of activists killed by Assad’s state.
TV stations left no stone unturned, from praising Assad to playing revolutionary songs. State media reported a flurry of announcements issued by the new rebel-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 investigate security forces to prevent the return of “those whose hands are stained with blood”. Fighters reassured airport workers – many of whom were government loyalists – that their homes would not be attacked, one employee said.
But Syria’s problems are far from solved.
While produce prices fell after Assad’s fall, as traders were no longer required to pay heavy customs duties and bribes, fuel deliveries were severely disrupted, transportation costs soared and widespread and prolonged blackouts occurred.
Officials say they want to reopen the airport as soon as possible and maintenance crews this week inspected a handful of planes on the tarmac. The sanitation workers removed the garbage, broken furniture and belongings.
A cleaner, who identified himself only as Murad, said he earns the equivalent of $15 a month and has six children, one of whom is disabled. He dreams of getting a mobile phone.
“We need a long time to clean this up,” he said.