What's going on in Damascus?

On 10 December, very early in the morning, I was at the Lebanese border crossing to Damascus. The Lebanese side had increased security again, civilians were not allowed to cross, but people were crossing into Syria on foot from the land directly opposite the Lebanese passport office.

Eventually the procedures were completed and we started to move from the Lebanese side to the Syrian gate. The road was empty, pictures of the deposed government and Assad and flags of the previous government hung to the left and right. The guard posts, the customs section, the passport office; everything was empty. There were abandoned vehicles on the side of the road, some of them looted. We drove from the border crossing to Damascus without seeing a single shop open and, fortunately, without seeing a single person walking around.

As we approached the centre of Damascus, there was some traffic of vehicles and people, but very little.

The people I spoke to before travelling to Damascus told me that the phone lines were very bad, the internet was not working properly and they were having difficulty finding food, including bread. When I left Beirut, I had packed everything from soap to tinned food, spare batteries to an alternative internet connection, but on 10 December, the day I arrived in Damascus, the first thing I did was, of course, get a phone and an internet connection. What was the currency, were banknotes with pictures of the Assad family still in use, could we buy with dollars - all these questions were unanswered.

In fact, banks, exchange offices, bazaars, shops, almost everything was closed. Nobody knew anything, and there was no authorised person in charge to whom we could ask questions.

In Umayyad Square, one of the central squares of Damascus, groups large and small were demonstrating their joy. In the middle of the square, which also has a spiritual significance for the opposition and some Islamists, with the Syrian state television building on one side and the air intelligence building, one of the symbols of power of the former regime, on the other, there was a tank. I do not know whether it was there or whether the opposition had brought it there, but groups of mostly young men were shouting slogans on the tank. Families were taking their children up on the tank and taking souvenir photographs. There was a very inconspicuous number of armed young men in camouflage on the square. Their relations with people were very warm, they were always taking photos with someone or lending their weapons for a photo.

In the centre of Damascus, in the Hamidiyeh bazaar, around the Umayyad mosque or in Old Damascus, known as the Christian quarter, there was no clear sign of a new government or the fall of the Assad regime. Walls, buildings and shop shutters were still painted in the colours of the former regime's flags. There were small numbers of women, young girls and men on the streets. Few shops were open. There was already a curfew in place from 5pm, which was lifted the next day.

There was no mass delirium in the streets, no waves of lynchings, no riots. In fact, millions of people in Damascus had chosen to stay in their homes, to remain silent and watch the situation unfold. This situation continued for at least the week I was in Damascus.

In fact, people were in a state of shock, trying to understand the situation and the course of events.

I think the quickest to come to their senses were the relatives of the disappeared. Syria had been under the rule of the BAAS for decades and its record on human rights, law and torture was quite dark. There were prisons and intelligence centres that people were afraid to pass. Of course, it is not possible to talk about a properly functioning justice system in a country where there is no transparency. Tens of thousands of people have disappeared in Syria over the decades. The families of some of them have not even been able to find out where, to which branch or prison their missing relative has been taken. For some, only their identity cards were sent to their families. In Syria, people who were killed, executed or died somehow in custody or detention were not buried, only their identity cards were sent.

People flocked to prisons and secret services. They searched for traces of their loved ones in all the notebooks, records and documents they could get their hands on.

Sednaya is undoubtedly the largest of the prisons, whose dark reputation is known throughout Syria. The plans for the prison, built on a huge plot of land, are missing, as are the 24-hour surveillance cameras and prisoner files. Some former inmates say there are three or six floors of secret cells underneath the prison. The prison is still being searched for secret cells, but even if they do exist, it is certain that the people in them have died as a result of days of closed ventilation, hunger and dehydration.

One of the intelligence detention centres used during the Assad regime. | Photo: Hediye Levent

I visited several prisons, including Sednaya, and intelligence detention centres where there were women and children, and no beds, mattresses or blankets. There were walls rotten with damp, cells without light, the heavy smell of years permeating the corridors, and many things engraved on the walls, from notes saying 'My mother and father, be patient' to the Zulfikar, from pictures of Al-Aqsa Mosque to calendars. In most cells there were two plastic bottles, one for the toilet and one for drinking water... I saw nothing but a plastic plate.

Of course, not everyone in these prisons was innocent. There were also ISIS fighters who were responsible for dozens of deaths, and those who were imprisoned for years without trial because of a report written by someone who distorted a word they said in front of their friends...

Relatives of the disappeared also flocked to those released from prison. At the Ibn Nefis hospital in Damascus, a man released from Sednaya, holding his wife's hand and an intravenous drip in his other arm, looked at the photographs shown to the relatives of the disappeared one by one and tried to answer their questions. The room was full, and he kept repeating the words that had once again devastated the relatives of the disappeared: "Those arrested before 2017 are dead, don't search in vain. I don't know if this is true or not, but the relatives of the disappeared I spoke to still had some hope. Many of them said, 'I just need to know if they are dead or alive.

With each passing day, phone lines and the internet improved a little more, the increase in human and vehicle traffic on the streets of Damascus became visible, shops opened, bakeries began to operate. As a foreigner and a journalist, I did not encounter or hear of any negative incidents against me in Damascus. However, the situation was not the same on the intercity roads and in other cities. On the Damascus-Aleppo motorway, for example, we began to hear of small and large gangs attacking vehicles and robbing people.

Again, in places where minorities such as Christians and Alawites live, especially in villages, there were more and more images of armed groups attacking and threatening people.

Pubs and shops were open in central Damascus. Christmas and New Year preparations and decorations were underway in the major hotels, streets, restaurants and Christian neighbourhoods, but in the almost 2,000-year-old Christian town of Maloula in the Damascus countryside, there was unease. The town had previously been attacked by Jabhat al-Nusra, the pre-Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS) version of Jabhat al-Nusra, which had kidnapped people, including nuns, and burned ancient churches. I went to Maloula during Sunday mass. People were nervous, reluctant to talk to the cameras, saying at most 'May God bless us all'. But as the bells rang to signal the start of the service, young people set up two huge loudspeakers in the centre of town and began broadcasting Islamic music, including takbirs. They turned up the volume to drown out the sound of the church bells.

In off-the-record conversations, shopkeepers and people told us that young men on motorbikes came into the town and threatened us: 'You will not drink, you will be careful'. No one knows who these groups were, whether they were sent by HTS or whether they were isolated incidents, but what is known is that minorities are in fear!

It is certain that the takeover of part of Syria by the HTS has caused joy and relief among Syrians living inside and outside Syria, but for example, I was expecting a stampede at the first Friday prayer of the HTS, I thought at least half a million people would take to the streets, but it did not happen. The Friday prayer was crowded, but the fact that not even 50,000 people attended the first Friday prayer in Damascus, a Sunni city where millions of people are tired of oppression and war, is an important indicator of nervousness and caution.

In Turkey, for example, there is a wave of 'Assad has been toppled, the Syrians will return', but this is not realistic. There are thousands of completely destroyed neighbourhoods, villages and towns in Syria. In addition to electricity, water and sewage systems, schools, hospitals, public buildings and roads need to be rebuilt.

The problem does not end with reconstruction! The economy needs to be revived, the wheels that create jobs, including factories, need to be restarted. All this requires money. For money, the US sanctions against Syria must be lifted, and HTS is still on the US list of terrorist organisations. It is not very difficult to deal with this; the organisation can change its name, unknown names can be brought forward, etc. etc. But it is also a fact that economy and stability, stability and security are inseparable.

In this context, one of the biggest handicaps of the new government will be the rebuilding of state institutions. There is currently no police force or army in the areas controlled by the HTS! The euphoria may gradually give way to a chaotic void, which means that anyone with a gun will form his own gang.

Meanwhile, I understand that the HTS is not very prepared to take over the administration of the country. In Damascus, HTS members were asked: 'How are you going to govern Syria? What will your economic policy be? What will your foreign policy be?' But I learnt that they have no plan.

They need to sit down and talk and decide on everything you can think of, from the currency to the curriculum, from internal security to agricultural policy, from foreign policy to the banking system. But does the HTS have enough manpower to cope with all this workload? Not at the moment, but it is not difficult to find them. There are many experts in various fields who fled the country during the war who can be worked with, and many countries, especially Turkey, are very keen to help in this regard.

However, one of the most important problems that will probably tie HTS's hands and could lead to internal conflicts in the future is, of course, the question of foreign jihadists and radical Arab jihadists...

What will HTS do with the thousands of jihadists with whom it has been fighting for years? The messages from Damascus suggest that there is no place for them in the new Syria, but it will not be easy to get rid of them in one fell swoop.

Issues such as minorities, women's rights and democracy remain uncertain.

As I was writing this article, a group called Secular Syrian Youth called for a demonstration in Umayyad Square in Damascus. The people I spoke to in Damascus said confidently: 'If they want to bring back the old regime, we don't want it. We want a secular government; we do not want Sharia law. But time will tell how realistic it is to expect a "secular" government from an organisation with al-Qaeda roots!

One of the most important issues before HTS is the discourse of 'settling scores with the old government'! In this case, it is HTS leader Golani himself who has to give an account and continue the reckoning with his father. After all, we are talking about a system that has existed for decades. It is impossible to find a single person in Syria who did not cooperate with the former regime, willingly or unwillingly.

Identifying the rhetoric of the former government with the Alawites, and perhaps in the coming days with other minorities, and paving the way for the delirium of revenge will only drag the country back to the days of bloodshed.

Of course, there are also issues such as HTS's relations with the Syrian Kurds, the Israeli attacks and its rapprochement with Turkey, but we will talk about these issues in the coming weeks. We will be talking about Syria for a long time to come!