In a sittingroom in Syrian city Hama, a family gathering was taking place.
Until this month, no one here could have imagined this moment would come so soon: in the room were three rebel fighters, several former prisoners, and a mother who spent more than a decade longing for her family to be together again.
All across Syria, emotional reunions are taking place following the shock fall of the Assad regime. Tens of thousands of detainees have been released from prison. People who expected to disappear if they ever crossed Syria’s borders can return to the country. Rebel fighters and their families, who spent years based in Idlib in Syria’s northwest, are able to walk freely around their home towns and cities.
That does not mean Syria is “safe”, refugee advocates are at pains to emphasise. Instability continues and the future is far from certain. But, over juice and cakes, this family was celebrating finally being in the same room.
“It’s like a festival or party,” said Ghada Alali (60). At the same time, “We’re not believing this is happening. We need some time to come to terms with it.”
Alali has seven children in total: four male, three of whom were rebels.
The shock offensive by the opposition coalition, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), began on November 27th. Within days, the fighters had taken Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, and in just over a week, they also controlled Hama, Syria’s fourth largest.
The taking of Hama was particularly symbolic. Hama was the site of a brutal massacre in 1982, overseen by former president Hafez al-Assad, when Syrian forces killed between 10,000 and 40,000 people, according to various estimates, in a bid to quash rebellion. It is often referenced as an early indication of the extent of violence the Assads were willing to use to maintain their grip on the country.
Alali remembers it well, including the terror among soldiers forced to carry out killings, knowing they would be killed too if they didn’t obey orders. Her own cousin disappeared at that time; no trace was ever found. “There was no mercy,” Alali said.
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Alali’s husband, Mohammad Ogit (66), was in the military himself then. He says he hid in a hospital to avoid taking part in the murders.
Both parents would again come under the brutal force of the regime after the 2011 war began. Mohammad was detained for seven days in 2012, his family says, during which time he was tortured, including being hung from the ceiling while hot water was poured on his neck.
Alali says she was detained years later because of her sons’ opposition to the regime. She says she was blindfolded and “threatened with an electric chair,” but let out later because the family had “wasta” – a connection to someone senior in the security forces.
Their older son, Ahmad (38), was previously held in the notorious Sednaya prison for “insulting Assad”. He was one of the three who joined the opposition.
Moustafa (32) was conscripted into Assad’s military but says he ran away because “they wanted to kill innocent people and arrest them and I refused that”. He joined rebel fighters in 2012.
Both Moustafa and his older brother Alaa (35) lost their wives in the February 2023 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which devastated much of Turkey and Syria – including opposition-held Idlib, where they lived. Buildings there were already weak from constant regime bombardment, the brothers said, meaning structures easily toppled. Their hometown Jinderis, close to the border with Turkey, was particularly badly affected, the UN said. In total, more than 59,000 people were killed across Syria and Turkey.
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Moustafa’s wife and Alaa’s 27-year-old wife and three children – aged five, two and one – were among those killed. Alaa pulled out his phone, displaying photos of their small bodies wrapped in shrouds. He counted them as being among the regime’s victims.
Today, the brothers are back living in their family home, where their proud mother filmed on her phone while The Irish Times interviewed them.
When asked how the rebels managed to advance so quickly, she chimed in: “prayers”.
Despite concerns about the future of women and minorities in Syria, given the extremist origins of militant group HTS, the brothers said they have faith that the new transitional authorities will respect the rights of everyone.
They also said they are unaware of any revenge killings, and would arrest anyone who tried. When they took the city, one said, they were ordered not to “take hostages and not to take blood. If someone was accused of criminal acts and taking blood we had to take him to the higher leadership who would judge him”. At the moment, their concerns are more related to looting and robbery.
Alaa was wearing his khaki uniform, with a gun slung across his front, even in the family home. He led us around the city later, making “v” signs from his motorbike. “We can’t relax now, we want to make the city safe,” he said. Even at night, he is out “tracking thieves”.
Children stood in the streets, waving revolutionary flags at any car that beeped at them. The rebel-turned-security forces had set up a base in a local school, but said it is temporary and children can use it again “after some days”.
One of them, Kalil Alhzyne (34), kissed the ground when asked how he felt being in his home city after more than a decade away. “We’re just tools of Allah,” he said, beaming. Another said he was glad to be back but half his family died while he was away.
At their base’s entrance, the men posed with a cat they had named “Shaheed”, or “Martyr”.
With the fall of the Assad regime came a desperate search for more than 100,000 people believed to have disappeared into prisons, where torture and executions have long been documented. One relative of the brothers, Abd Alrazzaq Taftanazy, was released on December 8th when rebels took control of the area he was held in. Sitting in the family home, the 44-year-old said he had been arrested multiple times and held in 13 locations in total.
His ordeals began in 2016, when he came under suspicion for owning clothes from Turkey. When the regime tried to conscript him, he said, he refused and that created further problems.
My mother, when she saw me, she fell over. My happiness can’t be described ... I can’t describe the feeling
— Abd Alrazzaq Taftanazy
He was moved between military and civilian prisons – in one of the military ones, he said, 200 people were crammed into “half of the size of this room” with “holes in the doors where they’d give us food”.
Without phones, TVs, or anything to occupy their time, “we were just listening to the drops of water and turning our face to the wall when someone new came in, as we were scared”. This meant prisoners “lost their minds ... they just became like dogs”.
On his final night of incarceration, Taftanazy suspected change was afoot because “something unusual happened ... This was the first time they locked [the door] without counting us”. About two hours after “the police escaped”, at about 2am, the rebels arrived, he said. “We were hitting [the cell doors] from inside trying to crack the locks, and the rebels were hitting them from the outside.” Eventually the doors were open. “We heard ‘Allahu akbar’ [God is great]. We couldn’t believe it was happening.”
He described walking for four hours in the direction of his home, 190km away, without feeling tired. More distance was crossed on the back of a water truck (“God sent that,” Taftanazy said). When he arrived home he startled his wife, sick mother, and neighbours.
“I didn’t call [ahead] because I didn’t want to worry them. I didn’t know if the regime and military would return. My mother, when she saw me, she fell over,” he recalled. “My happiness can’t be described ... I can’t describe the feeling.”
Like all of the others around him, Taftanazy was still processing what he had been through. “What’s the thing you’re most afraid of in your life?” he questioned. For many of the Syrians who lived to see the fall of the regime, he said, “we sacrificed our family”.
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