“I had resigned myself to the idea that I’d never see my family or my city again.”
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EASTERN GHOUTA, a few miles from Damascus — At a police station seized just a few weeks ago from overthrown dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces, young HTS soldiers lean against the hood of a pickup truck, an enormous machine gun mounted in the back. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), also referred to as Tahrir al-Sham, is a Sunni Islamist political organization and militia involved in the Syrian civil war.
It’s almost a holiday atmosphere. The soldiers are laughing. One of them, his suntanned face wrapped in a black-and-white keffiyeh, sips a small cup of tea. Beside him, another fiddles with his Kalashnikov.
It has been less than two months since the forces of HTS overthrew Assad. Fifty-two years of dictatorship ended in less than two weeks. Since then, the celebration hasn’t stopped. Regime symbols have gradually disappeared, one after another, and thousands of refugees have returned along the M5 highway, the major north-south road linking Damascus and Aleppo. It is the first time in years that they have been able to come home.
Abu Rami, 33, is one of them. He made the trip from Idlib to Eastern Ghouta at the head of an HTS column, and he still wears a combat knife and ammunition clips strapped to his uniform. His homecoming to this suburb of Damascus is bittersweet. “No one was waiting for me at home,” he says. “My parents died during the siege, along with other members of my family. I couldn’t even find my house because the neighborhood had been destroyed.”
Just a few miles from Damascus, Eastern Ghouta was the epicenter of anti-Assad protests in 2011, and it soon became the site of one of the Syrian civil war’s deadliest and most violent battles. In a bitter counterattack, the Assad regime — its troops supported by Russian airpower and pro-Iranian militias — laid siege to the town in 2013.
“I first served in Assad’s army,” Abu Rami explains. “Then I left to join the opposition. I wanted to defend my neighborhood.” He says that he can barely remember those years. Everything is a blur.
From 2012 to 2018, Abu Rami and his fellow fighters in Faylaq al-Rahman, a moderate Islamist group, endured daily bombings, starvation, and sarin gas attacks. “The Russians destroyed everything in Eastern Ghouta,” Abdul Rahman, a friend of Abu Rami, explains. “They made a specialty of targeting hospitals and civilians. Their goal was to force us to leave. That’s why they used sarin nerve gas against us.”
In 2018, after an overwhelming attack by Assad’s forces, the fighters of Faylaq al-Rahman, exhausted by five years of siege, finally surrendered in exchange for safe passage to Idlib and what they expected to be permanent exile in northwestern Syria, a region outside the control of Assad’s forces.
“I never thought I’d return here one day,” Abdul Rahman, 24, admits.
Rebuilding Amid the Ruins
Seven years later, Abu Rami, his bulletproof vest tightly strapped to his shoulders, walks through the debris that is all that is left of his past. He is accompanied by two of his comrades.
There is a deep undercurrent of melancholy to their return. “The first hours after the liberation were so intense I could hardly breathe,” Abdul Rahman recalls. “Everyone welcomed us as heroes. People were firing into the air, playing drums, and organizing feasts. But it was hard to come back home afterward. Our entire life here was destroyed by Assad and the Russians.”
Wandering through the maze of streets, Abu Rami stops in front of a mosque under construction. “This used to be an 11th century mosque. The Russians destroyed it. Farther along, there’s the church that was bombed. Assad claimed he was protecting Christians, but he was killing them too.”
A hundred yards away, his eyes mist over. “My father and mother died here on this street,” he says. “They were killed by a Russian Iskander missile.”
Nearby, on what remains of a central square, Abdul Rahman points to a building. “That was my home. The Russians destroyed it.” He climbs the stairs, one by one. At one point, he stops, and after a few moments of silence, he uses his boot to push aside a stone. “This is the room where my sister and mother died.”
Since their return, the two men, along with other comrades from Ghouta, have been assigned to defend and secure their neighborhood. Their commander, Abu Fahed, a 40-year-old former member of the Free Syrian Army and the Al-Nusra Front, explains their mission: to protect the Syrian people. “All we want is for Syrians to finally lead their own country.”
But he admits they face many challenges.
“Beyond policing, we are tasked with identifying and dismantling sleeper cells of Daesh in the region, as well as former Assad regime groups. [Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State, or ISIS.] We arrest regime criminals and prevent the risk of attacks, whether car bombs or other threats. Generally, we combat any possible threat to the new government and the Syrian people.”
However, Abu Rami highlights that the primary threat still comes from groups loyal to Assad’s regime. “The main threat is in Latakia or Tartus, where members of the Alawite community [the religious group of Assad’s family] continue to attack HTS forces daily. As for Daesh, all I can say is that if anything happens, it would be a good opportunity for [our] enemies to undermine HTS’s legitimacy and attack [us].”
The Return
In a room of his house, destroyed by a Russian bomb, Nasser, a young HTS soldier recently returned from exile, feeds sunflower seeds into a small central stove. The stove manages to heat only one of the few renovated rooms in the family home. Part of his family stayed behind after 2018, while he went into exile in Idlib.
“I hadn’t seen him since 2012,” says his uncle, Ayman, who escaped north before the siege of Ghouta began. Nasser is still trying to adjust to being back. He tries several times to describe the emotions he felt upon returning. “I can’t believe it. My body is here, but my heart can’t grasp what’s happening. I think no one expected the regime to fall so easily or that we’d be back home so quickly.” Between cigarettes he admits, “I had resigned myself to the idea that I’d never see my family or my city again.”
“I met my nephew for the first time last month,” Nasser says, pointing to the young man. “Look how tall he is. He has a beard. He’s a man now.” Wissam, Nasser’s nephew, barely knew he had an uncle in Idlib. “Because of Bashar, we didn’t call each other. We were too scared to talk. We knew they were there, but we never hoped we could speak. Seeing each other now is like living a dream.”
Still, Ayman, his round face worn by years of hardship, acknowledges the difficulties exiles face when returning to their neighborhoods. “There are two big problems: housing and jobs. Over 90 percent of the buildings have been destroyed, and there aren’t enough jobs for everyone.”
For now, Abu Rami, Nasser, and their comrades are stationed in Ghouta, but they don’t know for how long. As soldiers, they could be sent to another city or neighborhood at any moment. So, for now, they take things day by day, savoring the chance to be home.
“I dream of bringing my children here,” sighs Abu Rami. “I have three. They’re with my wife in Idlib. Inshallah, they’ll come here soon. The only thing I long for is to live in peace in my neighborhood and never leave it again.”
