Years of reporting on Syria, the road to Damascus and the fall of al-Assad. syrian war

I have covered Syria for years, from the beginning – when anti-regime protests began in March 2011.

We were in Deraa in southern Syria. It was Friday and people called it “Dignity Day.” They took to the streets to protest against the deaths of dozens of people killed by security forces in the past few days.

The protests began due to the detention and torture of children for spray-painting anti-Assad graffiti on their school wall.

This was almost unimaginable in Syria – a tightly controlled country where people were afraid to speak a word against the regime.

Yet “enough is enough” was what I heard again and again. Other words that people kept chanting were “justice and freedom”. The Arab Spring had reached Syria.

Thirteen years later I found myself at the Omari Mosque in Deira, the epicenter of the protest movement – ​​where the excitement was palpable. The regime had collapsed; The al-Asad dynasty had ended.

I couldn’t believe I was back.

road to damascus

December 8, 4 am: We made our way from Beirut to the Masna border with Syria as reports were coming in that Damascus had fallen. When we reached the crossing less than two hours later, we saw Syrians celebrating the news. Some were even preparing to go back home.

I didn’t know that we would be able to enter Syria that morning. I didn’t know whether the Lebanese border officials would let us in or who would be waiting for us on the other side. Are government forces still deployed on the border? Will opposition fighters welcome us?

I contacted a friend in Dera who was an opposition activist. I asked him if he could meet us at the Syrian border and take us to Damascus. “I need an hour,” he told me.

We crossed the border when the border opened at 8 am. It is a 40-minute drive from Bashar al-Assad’s center of power. The last time I traveled on this road was in 2011.

As we walked towards the central Umayyad Square, we saw people tearing down symbols of the regime. Abandoned tanks were found on the highway, army uniforms were scattered along the roads.

The streets were still not crowded; People were still at home, scared, still unsure who they were dealing with.

We went to Umayyad Square. I needed to pinch myself to believe that I was actually there.

The celebratory firing was almost intermittent. Opposition fighters were from all over Syria. He too looked surprised. But what you realized was that they were breathing again.

That first live from Umayyad Square

Now it’s time to do our part… get those images out to the world. I think we were among the first international journalists at the square that morning.

But we had major communication issues. I managed to send some video clips from my phone to the news desk in Doha but we could not broadcast live.

Syrian state TV was located on Umayyad Square. I asked the opposition fighters guarding the building if they had any means of helping us. “You have to help us,” I told them.

He didn’t know how to operate a satellite truck so he started looking for employees. About an hour later an engineer came to work and helped us report live on history in the making.

It was almost surreal that we used the resources of a channel that had been used for decades by a regime to control the narrative – to tell the world that there is a new Syria.

Torture, and false hope

The regime fell and secret doors opened. The prisoners were freed by opposition fighters but many others were still missing.

For years I reported on enforced disappearances in Syria, on unlawful and arbitrary arrests by security forces, and on the suffering of victims’ families. We talked to them, to human rights lawyers, and to activists for so many years.

And then I found myself in Sednaya prison. The story was in front of us. It was real.

Thousands of people were heading towards the detention centre, which was at the top of a steep hill. They walked for about three kilometers (two miles). Everyone had the same story – they came hoping to find a loved one. They came from all over Syria.

It was the second day after Damascus was “liberated”. Those who were inside the prison, believed to number a few hundred, were freed.

Where are the other people?

According to Syrian human rights groups, more than 100,000 remain unaccounted for.

We saw their families – father, brother, mother, wife and sister – clinging to false hope.

There were rumors of secret chambers and hidden cells underground, although a White Helmets civil defense volunteer told us this was not true. “We checked the entire area.”

“Then why are you still digging?” I asked him.

“Can’t you see them? They are so desperate… We have to do something, even if it’s false hope… just for them.

The family members were reading every newspaper in the hope of finding some clue.

There was nothing but unimaginable horrors in this pitch-black prison, which the people there told us was the “hanging chamber.”

As we started walking back to the car, more people were arriving.

“Did they find anyone? Did they find anyone?” They will ask us.

if the dead could speak

More doors have opened since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Mass graves were being dug.

We were told that there were many people in the city of Qutayfa, north of Damascus. After years of silence and fear, locals began to speak out.

Among them was the caretaker of the city’s cemetery who told us he had prayed for dozens of bodies buried there by security forces in 2012. Another person told us that the regime’s men had used its bulldozers and machinery to dig graves.

He told us, “Yes, I saw them dumping the bodies inside the graves in refrigerated trucks, but we could not talk, otherwise we would have been killed too.”

Where did he show us? We were standing at a mass grave.

stand and testify

This was not the first time I reported on regime atrocities in Syria. In Aleppo in 2013, we saw Syrians in the opposition-controlled east of the city removing dozens of bodies from a river that was flowing through government-held areas on higher ground.

There were bullet wounds on his head and his hands were tied. Then we saw relatives in the school courtyard trying to identify them.

I had trouble sleeping that night. I even had difficulty sleeping after visiting Sednaya Prison.

I tried to put myself in their place and thought: “How is it possible to go so many years without knowing where your loved one is, to think about the tortures they went through and to see the execution chamber, in the same room To stand by” …and then imagine what they had to endure?”

We cannot change what happened. We can only document the history and hope that the victims and their families will one day find peace, justice and accountability.