Syrians have more freedom after Assad, but could they soon lose it?

On the morning of 8 December 2024, I waited anxiously at the Lebanese border, hoping to get into Syria as soon as the crossing opened, not knowing what to expect.
Bashar al-Assad, the president of 24 years, was gone. Opposition fighters had advanced towards Damascus, taking major cities including Aleppo. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Syria was free.
Like many Syrians, I’d only ever known the country under the rule of Assad and his father Hafez, who had been in power from 1971 until 2000. Life under the Assads had meant more than 50 years of disappearances, incarceration – and the civil war that began in 2011 had claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
I’d been detained at the start of the uprising that year, and several times afterwards; I witnessed men lined up to be beaten and heard screams of torture. Even after I left the country in 2013, I learnt that security forces had broken into my apartment in Damascus and vandalised it.
I assumed I’d lost my home country for good, then suddenly last year the dictatorship was toppled in just over a week. As I crossed the border into the country without fear of arrest, and watched rebel fighters shoot celebratory gunfire, while people rejoiced on the streets, I felt like laughing and crying at once.

Source: BBC | Language: English