A year after Assad’s collapse, Syria battles trauma, sectarian rifts and the slow work of rebuilding
Arrested in 2018 for evading compulsory military service, the father of three passed through four other prisons before landing in Saydnaya, a sprawling complex just north of Damascus that has become synonymous with some of the worst atrocities committed under the rule of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
He remembered guards waiting to greet new prisoners with beatings and electric shocks. “They said, ‘You have no rights here and we won’t call an ambulance unless we have a body,'” Marwan said.
It was a joyous return to his village in Homs province on December 8, 2024, to a house full of relatives and friends.
But in the year since, he has struggled to overcome the physical and psychological effects of his six-year prison sentence. He was experiencing chest pain and difficulty breathing, which turned out to be the result of tuberculosis. Crippling anxiety and difficulty sleeping beset him.
He is currently being treated for tuberculosis and attending therapy sessions at a center in Homs that focuses on rehabilitating former prisoners. Marwan said his physical and mental condition is gradually improving.
“We were in a near-death situation,” he said in Saydnaya. “We’re back to life now.” A country trying to heal Thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Monday to mark the anniversary of Assad’s overthrow.
Like Marwan, the country is struggling to recover a year after the end of the Assad dynasty’s 50-year oppressive reign following a 14-year civil war that left an estimated half a million people dead, millions more displaced and the country battered and divided.
Assad’s ouster came as a shock even to the rebels who displaced him. In late November 2024, groups in the country’s northwest – led by the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose then-leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is now the country’s interim president – launched an offensive in an attempt to retake the city of Aleppo from Assad’s forces.
To their surprise, the Syrian army collapsed with little resistance, first in Aleppo and then in important cities such as Hama and Homs, leaving the road to Damascus open. Meanwhile, rebel groups in the south of the country took action to advance towards the capital.
While the rebels took Damascus on December 8, Assad was removed by Russian forces and remained in exile in Moscow. But Russia, a long-time ally of Assad, did not intervene militarily to defend him and has since established ties with the country’s new rulers and maintained bases on the Syrian coast.
Syrian Defense Ministry spokesman Hassan Abdul Ghani said HTS and its allies launched a major organizational overhaul after Assad’s forces regained control of some previously rebel-controlled areas in 2019 and 2020.
Abdul Ghani said the rebel offensive in November 2024 was not initially aimed at capturing Damascus, but was aimed at preventing an expected major offensive by Assad’s forces in opposition-held Idlib to “finish the Idlib file”.
He said launching an offensive on Aleppo “was a military solution to expand the battlefield and thus protect the liberated interior areas.”
In timing the attack, the rebels also took advantage of Russia’s distraction from the war in Ukraine and the fact that another Assad ally, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, was licking its wounds after a devastating war with Israel.
Abdul Ghani said rebels were pressing “taking advantage of every golden opportunity” as the Syrian army’s defenses collapsed.
Successes abroad, challenges at home Since its sudden rise to power, Al Shara has launched a diplomatic charm offensive, building ties with Western and Arab countries that have shunned Assad and once considered Al Shara a terrorist.
In November, he became the first Syrian president to visit Washington since the country’s independence in 1946.
In a speech in Damascus on Monday, al-Sharaa described his vision for Syria as “a strong country that belongs to its ancient past, looks forward to a promising future and re-establishes its natural position in the Arab, regional and international environment” and will “join the ranks of the most developed nations.”
But diplomatic successes were offset by sectarian violence in which hundreds of civilians from the Alawite and Druze minorities were killed by pro-government Sunni fighters. Local Druze groups have now established their own de facto government and army in southern Sweida province.
Tensions remain between the new government in Damascus and the Kurdish-led forces controlling the country’s northeast, despite an agreement signed in March that was expected to lead to the unification of forces.
Israel is wary of the new Islamist-led government in Syria; although al-Sharaa says he does not want any conflict with this country. Israel seized a previously UN-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria and has launched regular airstrikes and offensives since Assad’s ouster. Negotiations on the security agreement have stalled.
The remnants of the civil war are everywhere. At least 590 people, including 167 children, have been killed by landmines in Syria since the fall of Assad, the Mine Advisory Group said on Monday, putting the country on track to record the world’s highest mine casualty rate in 2025.
Meanwhile, the economy remained stagnant despite the lifting of most Western sanctions. Although Gulf countries promised to invest in reconstruction projects, little has happened in practice. The World Bank estimates that rebuilding the country’s war-torn areas will cost $216 billion.
Rebuilding is largely an individual effort. The rebuilding that took place was largely the result of individual property owners paying to repair their damaged homes and businesses.
On the outskirts of Damascus, the once bustling Palestinian camp of Yarmouk today largely resembles a moonscape. The camp, which fell into the hands of a number of militant groups and was subsequently bombed by government aircraft, was almost completely abandoned after 2018.
Since Assad’s ouster, a steady stream of former residents has returned.
The worst-hit areas remain largely abandoned, but on the main street leading to the camp, walls that collapsed piece by piece have been replaced by buildings that remain structurally sound. Stores reopened and families returned to their homes. But a larger restructuring effort still seems a long way off.
Mahir al-Homsi, who repaired his damaged house to return even though there was no water connection in the region, said, “It has been a year since the regime collapsed. I hope they can remove the destroyed old houses and build towers.”
His neighbor, Etab al-Hawari, wanted to give the new authorities some leeway.
“They inherited an empty country; banks are empty, infrastructure is robbed, houses are robbed,” he said.
Damascus dentist Bassam Dimashqi said of the country after Assad’s overthrow: “Of course it is better, there is some kind of freedom.”
But he remains concerned about the unstable security situation and its economic impact.
“The duty of the state is to provide security, and once you provide security, everything else will follow,” he said. “The security situation encourages investors to come and do projects.”
The UN Refugee Agency reported that more than 1 million refugees and nearly 2 million internally displaced Syrians have returned home since Assad’s ouster. But without jobs and restructuring, some will leave again.
Among them is former prisoner Mervan, who says the post-Assad situation in Syria is “much better” than before. But it is having financial difficulties.
Sometimes he hires workers who pay only 50,000 or 60,000 Syrian pounds a day, or about $5.
He said he plans to go to Lebanon to find a better-paying job after completing his tuberculosis treatment.
