How Syria is rebuilding after the fall of a dictator

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0:43In Damascus this week, Syrians packed into the city's central square to celebrate one year since the fall of the Assad regime.

0:57Freedom. Freedom. Just freedom. 14 years. Now we are freedom. When Syria's former dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the country last December in 2024, it brought an end to almost 14 years of civil war. The UN estimates over 13 million people have been displaced and more than 580 ,000 people were killed. So for many, the celebrations this week were bittersweet. I think every person we lose is here now with us. He's in the sky with us. He's seeing us when we are happy and he's happy. We're not sad for losing them because they did this road for us. Much of the hope for the future of Syria now rests on the actions of the former jihadist who's leading the country, Ahmed al-Sharah.

2:01At a speech on Monday, al-Sharah said that Syria is the story of people who were patient and steadfast, turned victorious. And the new leader spoke of guaranteeing accountability for those who had committed crimes.

2:17And in the past year, al-Shara has launched an international charm offensive, becoming the first Syrian leader in history to visit the White House. But has life improved for ordinary Syrians? And has al-Shara proven that he's the reformer the West so desperately wants him to be? From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. And today on The Global Story, how does a country rebuild after the fall of a dictatorship?

2:59Before we dive further into today's episode, we just wanted to let you know that it contains descriptions of violence. Jeremy Bowen is the BBC's international editor, and he's covered Syria extensively. I'm speaking to you from Damascus in Syria. And I was here exactly a year ago, actually, when the Assad regime fell. But I'm back here because it's 12 months later. So the day that Bashar al-Assad's government fell, I think it's fair to say it took a lot of people by surprise. He was a dictator who seemed rather invincible. And I recall seeing those images, Jeremy, there was huge jubilation. And then we saw this new leader by the name of Ahmed al-Shara who took over.

3:46And I want to get a sense from you when you walk down the streets now, what do you see? And are you getting a glimpse of a nation trying to rebuild and recover? Well, only a few days after the Assad regime fell, actually, the traffic started moving, the shops opened up. But actually, that mustn't distract from the fact that this is a country that was absolutely broken by the war. The Assad regime, President Bashar al-Assad and his family and his close allies and supporters, they essentially decided that to save the regime, they were prepared to break the country. And that's what they did in this war that lasted for, well, a total of 14 years up to a year ago.

4:34and in the last, well, week or so that I've been here, we've been going around revisiting places that I went to during the war, places I went to a year ago. And what you see actually in terms of reconstruction is very little change. There is a massive amount of rubble and people here mostly, the economy's perked up a bit, but most Syrians are still living in really difficult lives in poverty. Well, I want to focus today, Jeremy, on some of your reporting you've been doing during this trip to Syria and on two specific stories and places that I think highlight the current tensions inside the country as it tries to rebuild.

5:12And I'd love for you to begin with a trip that you took to a place in the south, right? Is that right? Beijing. Can you describe why you specifically went there? Well, we went there because, well, it's a small village, and it is right on the edge of the area that Israel has seized since the fall of the Assad regime.

5:34Jeremy Bowen:This village, Beijing, is right under the eyes of the Israeli observation posts in the Golan Heights, very close to the boundary line of what was a demilitarized zone.

5:52Jeremy Bowen:And these people have lived very close to the IDF for many, many years, actually. What the Israelis did, immediately Assad fell, was first of all they moved into Syria. They seized what had been a demilitarized zone and some territory beyond that. And they also did bombing raids against military positions to try and get rid of any military supplies of the new administration it was going to have. Hi, good morning. Good morning, who's this? We're being given a tour of Beijing by Hamid Kamal. He describes himself as a 38-year-old shepherd. Like a lot of the guys around here, he wears sort of olive khaki-type clothing.

6:41So we went there to Beijing because, well, it's now a couple of weeks ago, the Israelis raided the place.

6:46Jeremy Bowen:So this is from the attack, right? He's pointing up at a damaged building full of bullet holes. They got a welcome there they did not expect, I think. There was quite a heavy gun battle. There were, I think, half a dozen Israeli troops were wounded quite badly, and they had to retreat in a hurry. In the course of that, local people were killed, including children. These raids, are they carried out by IDF soldiers? And has the Israeli government addressed at all these injuries that have taken place during the raids? Well, yeah, the Israelis have said that they did the raid to try and pick up some people they claimed were part of a Sunni Islamist group, which is mostly actually based in Lebanon.

7:33And they said that they had some suspects they wanted to pick up because these people were also in cahoots with Hamas, and they believed that they were planning attacks on the Israelis. One of the results of the last two years of war since the 7th of October attacks is that Israel has taken a very forward military policy towards its neighbors, regularly bombing despite the ceasefire they have in Lebanon. And also, it's conducted a lot of raids in Syria. And this is something which, of course, it seems that, certainly in the case of this village in Beijing, that local people who are armed, they reached for their rifles and opened fire when they saw that the Israelis were in town.

8:19You know, the debate in Israel appears to be, do they want to have, would they rather have a stable Syria that could, they think, become a threat or a weak Syria that couldn't be a threat? Well, can you tell us a little bit more about who specifically you met there? So one that really sticks in my mind, we were doing a bit of filming and then I saw that there was a car that had slowed down and there was, and they were looking at us and there There was a guy in the front passenger seat. He'd clearly been wounded, and his arm was in plaster, down to, really, from his shoulder right down to his wrist.

8:57So we spoke to him, and it turned out that his house had been caught up in the shootout. He had been hit. I was in my house with my children. We were trying to find a safe place. They shot at my two daughters. He had a daughter who was back at the house, who we then went to go and see, a nine-year-old. who had also been hit and was wounded, and his 17-year-old daughter had been killed.

9:23Jeremy Bowen:OK, can we go to his house, see the daughter, maybe? So it's about 300 metres far away from me. Do you want to walk? Let's just walk up there, yeah. So we went up to the house. They invited us in. The little girl was lying on the couch with bedclothes pulled up to her chin, looking, as you can imagine, You know, not very well at all. I mean, she was conscious and she's going to get better. She's had an operation. But also there were the women of the family, including the mother, who, you know, were, of course, deeply sad about the loss of the 17-year-old daughter. What's the name of her daughter who sadly died?

10:05Hiba, Khalil Abu Tahir.

10:07Jeremy Bowen:Hiba. Hiba. Abu Tahir. What happened? What happened? What happened?

10:17She'd been hit in the stomach and bled out very quickly. And as the mother said, there was nothing that we could do for her. She died very quickly. And then because the shooting was still going on, they were there alongside with the wounded nine-year-old, the wounded father, and the dead girl for two hours before someone was able to get to them and take them to the hospital. So, you know, they'd gone through a real ordeal and they were, I think, very shaken up by it. And I said to the mum, I said, well, look, how do you see the future? And she said, well, look, we'd like a clinic. We haven't got a clinic.

10:56We haven't got a doctor. We've got no schools. We want to live in our homes. Our children are living in hell here. There is no safety for them. We go to sleep and wake up afraid. So these are traumatized people, and essentially they need a great deal, and they're not getting it because this is a country with no money. Jeremy, that to me is such a striking story because it shows how some people in Syria are trying to rebuild, and they are not just dealing with domestic challenges. It sounds like they are also dealing with external threats. Sure. I mean, there are multifaceted challenges here, not just for the government of Ahmad al-Shara, but also for, of course, every Syrian.

11:48And in no particular order, well, let's start with the economy. One reason the economy can't restart is because there is so much damage after so much war. But there are still residual sanctions. President Trump signed some sanction waivers, but some of the big sanctions are still there. and the government is pushing to have all the sanctions lifted because then it's going to make investment easier. Because the rubble has got a lot of unexploded ordnance inside it, that makes rebuilding very difficult because all that has to be cleared before they can rebuild. The government would say if they get the economy right, and they are getting promises of investment, so things are happening, but it's down the pipeline and clearly it hasn't affected people's lives.

12:31But there's the external factor as well. And the big external factor is that they have a large and aggressive neighbor. And President Shara is trying to say that they don't regard Israel as an enemy. They'd like to have normal relations. But I think Israel is not at all clear or in public anywhere about whether it regards Shara as an enemy because of this jihadist background. They're demanding that the south of Damascus, the place that we were talking about just now, that area becomes demilitarized. They've seized territory there. And the argument being made by the Syrian government is that there is a perfectly good agreement that actually lasted a long time, which was an agreement that the US then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated in 1974, separating Syrian and Israeli forces around the Golan Heights.

13:22And that lasted until the war, basically, the recent war. So it was one of the quietest borders in the Middle East for decades. And so the Syrians are arguing, let's go back to that. The Israelis are saying, no, we want to change in the status quo. Well, Jeremy, let's move to another place that you've traveled to. And I want to talk about it because it seems to be a bit more of a story of recovery and hope. I know you say it's a very uphill challenge to rebuild in Syria. But this reporting to me struck a bit more optimistic tone, and that is Duma. Can you tell us about where that is and why you decided to report from there on this trip?

14:00Duma is, if you like, a sort of satellite town of Damascus. So I wanted to go back there for a number of reasons. First of all, earlier on in the war, I was able to cross over the front line through nefarious means to go from regime-held Damascus to rebel-held Damascus. I was also there in 2018 when the rebels there were finally forced to surrender and they were all bussed off to Idlib, which was the last province controlled by rebels in Syria. That was part of the deal. The Russians basically made these deals with rebels and the government. And then the place was absolutely in ruins. So how has it changed?

14:39Well, there's still a great deal of ruination, rubble, but there is rebuilding going on.

14:49People are coming back there. I saw families getting off buses who had made an eight-hour trip from Aleppo in the north because they were trying to find ways to come back to their homes.

15:01Jeremy Bowen:Do you think that you and your family can have a good future here in Dubai? And they were in a good mood. They were positive, actually. They were saying, look, yeah, of course it's going to be difficult, but we'd rather we're here. This is where our families are. This is where our roots are. This is where our homes are. and what people are enjoying is the fact that without the regime, they are able to move around. They don't have to live in fear. They can pay a visit to Duma, try and sort things out a bit, go back to where they've been staying, try and prepare for the final big move. But it still looks war-torn, I have to say.

15:36While they have made a lot of progress since the Assad regime fell, Well, the fact is there is a huge lack of money. And I spoke to a man who had been a commander in the Sunni Islamist militia that controlled a Duma for many years, which is called Jesh al-Islam. And he said the rebuilding that's been done has been done by individuals, by families themselves. There haven't been government funds going into there, because there aren't any. And he said, if we're going to rebuild, we're going to have to do it ourselves. It's going to take a while. But I said, is this what you fought for? And his son was killed fighting as well.

16:21And he said, my son meant more to me than Syria. He said, if I had to choose between Syria and my son, I'd have chosen my son. But my son was killed. And he was still very upset about that. And afterwards, he was emotional. And, but he said, look, I personally lost everything, but we have a chance to begin again. And that's good. And that's what we were fighting for. And God willing, these people are religious. When they say God willing, they mean it. They will be able to make themselves better lives. This is not a bad thing, unfortunately. Thank God, we have reached our goals and our dreams are good.

17:01And now we are... I think considering starting from such a low base in general, Syria could be in a much worse state now a year on from the fall of Assad than you might have expected. Because there were all sorts of desperately apocalyptic predictions of jihadist groups like ISIS, Islamic State, in other words, reconstituting themselves, perhaps carrying out waves of assassinations against the government, maybe large bombs. and while there have been some attacks from them, they are weakened and they haven't been able to do these things. And I think there is no appetite for civil war or indeed for any kind of war in this country outside, of course, of small groups of deeply ideological extremists.

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19:03Jeremy, you mentioned ISIS. And that's been on my mind a lot because I do also recall, I mean, frankly, ISIS controlled a good chunk of what is the state of Syria, territory within there. And so I want to understand from you what happened to ISIS. We have heard reports, I've seen reports, that the group is attempting to rebuild in Syria. Yeah, well, let me give some credit to my knowledge on this comes from some extraordinary reporting that's being done by a group we have in the BBC called BBC Monitoring, who, among many other great things, they monitor the social media and the mainstream news broadcasts and newspapers, you name it, and not least from jihadist groups.

19:49And they've been briefing me on this. So, essentially, the situation is ISIS, IS, whatever you want to call them, Islamic State, they still do exist here. They are much weakened. they're trying to recruit people by saying that Ahmed Ashara, the president, even though he may have started off as an Islamist fighter, a jihadist, that he has turned his back on them. One thing that has really enraged them is the fact that Ashara has joined the US-led coalition against Islamic State. And they are trying to say that Shara has betrayed what he claimed to believe in. He has not brought in Sharia, religious law, in the way that they wanted him to.

20:39This is the argument that they are making, trying to turn religiously inclined people against him. And right now, it's not actually working. It doesn't seem to be at all. Because I think a lot of Syrians are saying, look, this guy is the best bet we have. We've discussed the new leader of Syria a couple of times here, Ahmed al-Shara. And when he was in his jihadist past, there was a U.S. bounty on his head. But since he's become the leader of Syria, I will say the Trump administration seems to have welcomed him with open arms as a reformer. He came to the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September, and he was welcomed with warm arms, not just by the United States, by other world leaders as well.

21:25Well, I've had an agreement with him. He's a very strong leader. He comes from a very tough place and he's a tough guy. And he visited the White House here in Washington, D.C. in November. We want to see Syria become a country that's very successful. And I think this leader can do it. I really do. I think this leader can do it. Has Ahmed Al-Shaira proven yet that he is the reformer that so many, certainly here in Washington within the White House, believe him or hope that he is? Well, in a sense, they don't have a choice. He's basically the only game in town. And I think from the very outset, though, he's presented himself as a man who has been on a journey.

22:10He's changed. and I certainly found that. I interviewed him just a couple of days after he took power a year ago. Did a long interview with him actually in Assad's presidential palace where I'd interviewed Assad, which was kind of an interesting juxtaposition of memory for me.

22:28Jeremy Bowen:You've made a lot of promises. You said that you'll respect the mosaic of different sectarian groups here in Syria, minorities as well. Are you going to keep those promises?