DAMASCUS: For decades, any Syrian daring to broach political topics got used to speaking in hushed tones and with a watchful eye trained for a listener among the crowd.
“There were spies everywhere,” Mohannad Al-Katee said in Al-Rawda cafe in Damascus, adding almost in disbelief: “It’s the first time that I sit in a cafe and I can talk about politics.
“It was a dream for Syrians,” said Katee, 42, a researcher in political and social history.
Until now, he like thousands of others had grown accustomed to watching for the proverbial flies on the walls of Damascus’s renowned cafes.
Today, those same cafes are alive and buzzing with the voices of patrons speaking freely about their country for the first time.
Such discussions “were banned under the previous regime, then there was a relative opening during the Damascus Spring,” Katee said.
He was referring to the year 2000, when Bashar Assad took over from his late father Hafez and slightly loosened the reins on political life in Syria.
Initially, the young Assad had opened up an unprecedented space, allowing for political salons to flourish alongside calls for reform in a country that had long grown accustomed to fear and silence.
“But it didn’t last,” said Katee.
A few months after his succession, Assad rolled back those gains, putting an end to the short-lived “Damascus Spring.”
In the subsequent years, according to Katee, informants were ubiquitous, from “the hookah waiter to the man at the till, it could have been anyone.”
“Political life consisted of secret meetings,” he said. “We were always taught that the walls have ears.”
Today, “Syrians can never go back to obscurantism and dictatorship, to accepting single-party rule,” he said.
A little further on, in the Havana cafe once known as a meeting point for intellectuals and activists in a distant past, Fuad Obeid is chatting with a friend.
Himself a former owner of a cafe he had to shut down, the 64-year-old said: “The intelligence services spent their time at my place. They drank for free as though they owned the place.”
For over 50 years, the Assads maintained their vice grip on society, in large part through the countless informants that walked among the population.
On Saturday, Syria’s new intelligence chief, Anas Khattab, announced that the service’s various branches would be dissolved.
Obeid said: “I used to keep a low profile so they wouldn’t know I was the owner. I told customers not to talk politics for fear of reprisals.”
Now, he noted, in Havana cafe as in others, the difference is like “night and day.”
Back in Al-Rawda, discussions are in full swing over hookahs and games of backgammon.
The owner Ahmad Kozorosh still can’t believe his eyes, having himself witnessed numerous arrests in his own cafe over the years.
“I am now seeing almost exclusively new faces,” he said. “People who had been sentenced to death, imprisoned.”
To celebrate the new era, he is holding weekly symposiums in the cafe, and will even launch a new political party to be named after it.
Real estate agent Nesrine Shouban, 42, had spent three years in prison for carrying US dollars, a punishable offense in Assad’s Syria.
Alongside thousands of others who found freedom when the doors of prisons were flung open, she was released on December 8 from the notorious Adra prison.
“They had dangled in front of us the possibility of an amnesty” from Assad’s administration, she said. “Thankfully, the amnesty came from God.”
“At cafes, we didn’t dare say anything. We were even afraid that our phones were bugged,” she said.
Now, for the first time, she said she felt “truly free.”
Despite concerns over the extremist background of Syria’s new rulers, a breath of freedom has washed over the country for the first time, with public demonstrations being organized — an unthinkable prospect just one month earlier.
“We are not afraid anymore,” said Shouban. “If Jolani makes mistakes, we will denounce them,” she added, referring to Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani.
“In all cases, it can’t be worse than Bashar Assad.”
For the first time, Syrians ‘not afraid’ to talk politics
https://arab.news/wdw87
For the first time, Syrians ‘not afraid’ to talk politics
- For over 50 years, the Assads maintained their vice grip on society, in large part through the countless informants that walked among the population
Syria’s Sharaa calls for united efforts to rebuild a year after Assad’s ouster
- Sharaa’s Islamist-led alliance launched a lightning offensive in late November last year, taking the capital Damascus on December 8
DAMASCUS: President Ahmed Al-Sharaa on Monday urged Syrians to work together to rebuild their country, still marred by insecurity and divisions, as they marked a year since the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
The atmosphere in Damascus was jubilant as thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, AFP correspondents said, after mosques in the Old City began the day broadcasting celebratory prayers at dawn.
“What happened over the past year seems like a miracle,” said Iyad Burghol, 44, a doctor, citing developments including a warm welcome in Washington by President Donald Trump for Sharaa, a former jihadist who once had a US bounty on his head.
“People are demanding electricity, lower prices and higher salaries” after years of war and economic crisis, Burghol said.
“But the most important thing to me is civil peace, security and safety,” he added, taking a photo of people carrying a huge Syrian flag and sending it to his friends abroad.
Sharaa’s Islamist-led alliance launched a lightning offensive in late November last year, taking the capital Damascus on December 8 after nearly 14 years of war and putting an end to more than five decades of the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule.
Since then Sharaa has managed to restore Syria’s international standing and has won sanctions relief, but he faces major challenges in guaranteeing security, rebuilding crumbling institutions, regaining Syrians’ trust and keeping his fractured country united.
“The current phase requires the unification of efforts by all citizens to build a strong Syria, consolidate its stability, safeguard its sovereignty, and achieve a future befitting the sacrifices of its people,” Sharaa said following dawn prayers at Damascus’s famous Umayyad Mosque.
He was wearing military garb as he did when he entered the capital a year ago.
‘Heal deep divisions’
As part of the celebrations in Damascus, hundreds of military personnel marched down a major thoroughfare as helicopters flew overhead and people lined the streets to watch.
Sharaa and several ministers were in attendance, state media reported.
Monday’s events, including an expected speech by Sharaa, are the culmination of celebrations that began last month as Syrians began marking the start of last year’s lightning offensive.
Multi-confessional Syria’s fragile transition has been shaken this year by sectarian bloodshed in the country’s Alawite and Druze minority heartlands, alongside ongoing Israeli military operations.
In a statement, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that “what lies ahead is far more than a political transition; it is the chance to rebuild shattered communities and heal deep divisions.”
“It is an opportunity to forge a nation where every Syrian — regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender or political affiliation — can live securely, equally, and with dignity,” he said in the statement, urging international support.
On Sunday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which investigates international human rights law violations since the start of the war, warned the country’s transition was fragile and said that “cycles of vengeance and reprisal must be brought to an end.”
The US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control swathes of northeast Syria said Monday that “the next phase requires launching a real, inclusive dialogue... and establishing a new social contract that guarantees rights, freedoms and equality.”
The Kurdish administration in the northeast has announced a ban on public gatherings on Monday, citing security concerns, while also banning gunfire and fireworks.
Under a March deal, the Kurdish administration was to integrate its institutions into the central government by year-end, but progress has stalled.
On Saturday, a prominent Alawite spiritual leader in Syria urged members of his religious minority, to which the Assad family also belongs, to boycott the celebrations, in protest against the “oppressive” new authorities.
