Years of reporting on Syria, the road to Damascus and the overthrow of al-Assad | Syria’s war

Years of reporting on Syria, the road to Damascus and the overthrow of al-Assad | Syria’s war


I have reported on Syria for years, from the very beginning – when the protests against the regime began in March 2011.

We were in Deraa, southern Syria. It was a Friday and people called it Dignity Day. They took to the streets to protest the deaths of dozens of people killed by security forces in recent days.

The demonstrations began because children were arrested and tortured for spray-painting anti-Assad graffiti on the wall of their school.

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

But I kept hearing “enough is enough.” Other words that people kept chanting were “justice and freedom.” The Arab Spring had reached Syria.

Thirteen years later, I found myself back in the Omari Mosque in Deraa, the epicenter of the protest movement – where the euphoria was palpable. The regime had collapsed; The al-Assad dynasty was over.

I didn’t believe I was back.

The road to Damascus

December 8, 4 a.m.: We set off from Beirut to the Masnaa border with Syria because reports were coming in that Damascus had fallen. When we reached the border crossing less than two hours later, we saw Syrians celebrating the news. Some were even preparing to go home.

I had no idea we could enter Syria that morning. I didn’t know if the Lebanese border authorities would let us in or what would await us on the other side. Were regime troops still stationed at the border? Would the opposition fighters welcome us?

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

We crossed the border when it opened at 8am. It is 40 minutes by car to the center of Bashar al-Assad’s former seat of power. The last time I drove this road was in 2011.

As we made our way to the central Umayyad Square, we saw people tearing down the regime’s symbols. Abandoned tanks remained on the highway and army uniforms lay scattered on the side of the road.

The streets were not yet crowded; People were still at home, scared and still didn’t know what they were dealing with.

We drove to Umayad Square. I had to pinch myself to believe I was actually there.

The celebratory gunfire was almost continuous. The opposition fighters came from all over Syria. They also looked shocked. But you had the feeling that they were breathing again.

The first live from Umayyad Square

It was time to complete our task…transmit these images to the world. I think we were among the first international journalists on the square that morning.

But we had major communication problems. I managed to send a few video clips from my phone to the newsroom in Doha, but we couldn’t broadcast live.

Syrian state television was located in Umayyad Square. I asked the opposition fighters guarding the building if they could help us in any way. “You have to help us,” I told them.

They didn’t know how to operate the satellite truck, so they went looking for the employees. About an hour later, an engineer came to work and helped us provide live coverage of the story as it was being made.

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

The atrocities and the false hopes

The regime fell and the secret doors opened. Prisoners were released by opposition fighters, but many others remained missing.

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

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

Thousands of people made their way to the detention center, which was located on a steep hill. They walked almost 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 since the “liberation” of Damascus. Those who were in prison, probably several hundred, were released.

Where are the others?

According to Syrian human rights groups, more than 100,000 people are missing.

We watched as their families – fathers, brothers, mothers, wives and sisters – clung to false hopes.

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

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

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

Families read every newspaper they could find, hoping to find a clue.

There was nothing in this pitch-black prison except the unimaginable horrors of the “execution room,” as the people there told us.

As we returned to the car, more people arrived.

“Have you found anyone? Have you found anyone?” they would ask us.

If the dead could speak

Since the end of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, more doors had opened. Mass graves were dug up.

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

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

“Yes, I saw them throwing the bodies that were in refrigerated trucks into the graves, but we couldn’t talk or we would be killed too,” he told us.

He showed us where. We stood on a mass grave.

Stand up and bear witness

It wasn’t the first time I reported on the regime’s atrocities in Syria. In 2013, in Aleppo, we saw Syrians in the opposition-controlled east of the city removing dozens of bodies from the river that had flowed from government-controlled areas on higher ground.

They had gunshot wounds to the head and their hands were tied. We then watched as relatives tried to identify them in a schoolyard.

I had trouble sleeping that night. After visiting Sednaya Prison, I also had trouble sleeping.

I tried to put myself in their shoes and thought: “How is it possible to live all these years without knowing where your loved one is, thinking about the torture he went through and seeing the execution room “To stand in the same room?”…and then imagine what they had to go through?”

We can’t change what happened. All we can do is document history and hope that the victims and their families will one day find peace, justice and responsibility.



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