Salah He says that he couldn’t believe it, that it seemed impossible to be there, that his eyes were seeing those same streets – different, of course, so many years later – that he had finally returned to what was, before all, his home. , his birthplace.
But it was happening: Salah, a middle-aged Syrian man, returned to his home this Saturday for the first time in eight years. Aleppo native. “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s something inexplicable. I left like everyone else, after enduring the months of city site in 2016terrified of the Russian planes, of the Shiite militiamen… But today, here I am. “We have returned,” says Salah, who has lived, during all these years away, a few kilometers north of Aleppo, in the region of That iscontrolled by the Syrian rebel militias.
Few kilometers, short distance. But a line—the front line—that was impassable for this man. “I am nobody. I have never been activistis journalistnor have I fought. I am someone normal who always wanted, since the beginning of the war, that the syrian president, Bashar al-Asadleft. But that didn’t matter to them. During all these years Asad and his friends, Russia e Iranthey have been bombing and attacking us. They ruined our lives. But today we have returned home,” says Salah, whose previous home, however, no longer exists.
It all happened in a matter of days. This Wednesday, the Syrian rebels – led by the militia Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)they launched a military offensive against the forces of the regime of Damascuswho has seen as his allies, Tehran and their militias and Moscowhave been decimated and distracted in Lebanon the ones and in Ukraine the others.
At first, HTS assured that the offensive was only to recover territory lost in 2020, before the last cease-fire. But the rebel militiamen advanced; Assad’s soldiers fled. Just three days later, with hardly any fighting, the Syrian opposition this Saturday took almost all of Aleppo, Syria’s second city. Syria and what was, before the beginning of the civil war of the Arab country, its economic capital.
But there is more: the fear of Assad’s soldiers is such that the militiamen have taken over, in a matter of hours, this Saturday night, the entire city of Hamalocated just over 150 kilometers south of Aleppo and which was one of the cradles of the Syrian revolution in the arab spring 2011. Following the confirmation of the fall of Hama, several shootings and sporadic combats —supposedly between factions within the Regular army Syrian – have been declared in the capital, Damascus.
Fear of those who arrive
“The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Aleppo was that the people I was afraid of us”explains Abdulfakia native of Aleppo and a non-combatant member of the Syrian opposition militias. “Many people were suspicious, and were convinced that we had come to kill them. Then they realized that no, all we want is liberate the city. They have told us that Assad and his acolytes had been telling them for days that we are barbarians, murderers. That we would cut everyone’s throats. “They lied, of course.”
Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the largest of the rebel factions carrying out this offensive against the Damascus regime, is the militia that controls the opposition region of Idliband was the former subsidiary of Al Qaeda in Syria. But in 2017, with the rise of its current leader, Abu Mohammad al Jolanithe group decided to give up jihadism and the international terrorismand focus on the fight only within Syrian borders.
Al Jolani, in recent years, has been characterized by showing himself in images and public places in ‘European’ button-down shirt and with a trimmed beard, and sought to be recognized as a fundamentalist and deeply Islamic leader – in Idlib prevails ‘sharia’— but tolerant of religious minorities.
“Eight years have passed in which the world thought that syrian revolution I was dead. Many of us thought so too. But we have continued. And the first thing that came to mind when entering Aleppo, this Friday night, were all the memories of the pastfrom my childhood. Everything I experienced as a child; all the friends who have died here at the hands of Assad and his bombs,” says Abdulfaki.
Falls and contrasts
In Aleppo, the past and the present collide. Eight years ago, when the Damascus regime took the entire city, it did so after months of siege, bombings by the russian aviation and syria against tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the opposition neighborhoods there. According to estimates of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH)in the battle of Aleppo, which ended in January 2016, more than 30.000 personasmost of them civilians.
The contrast with the opposition takeover of Aleppo this Saturday, with hardly any combat and civilian deaths, is evident. “I think the big difference is that we, the opponents, are the inhabitants of this city. I lived most of my life here,” says Salah, and like him, many members of the militias and civilians who currently live displaced in rebel areas.
“The rebel militias, with their flaws and great defects, are made up of local people, born here,” Salah continues. And as such, they love this city. We Aleppo residents love Aleppo. But Assad and his regime, with Russia and the iranian militias…they didn’t care about the city. They destroyed it in 2016 because they only cared about military victory. This is our difference: they wanted to crush the rebellion. We, go home.”
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