The building represents everything. A large formerly glazed tower stands on a yellow stone base. The building is iconic: the governor’s office of Aleppo, Syria’s second city. Its current state, however, is far from the past.
The stained glass windows of the tower – completely abandoned since 2016 – are almost all broken. There, during the siege of the city, snipers from the regime Damascus They had established their base and were shooting at the rebel neighborhoods. The tower, despite the fact that conflict in Aleppo it was completed in 2016, it was never repaired.
But the base, where the governor’s office was, yes. There the luxury was clear and ostentatious and the office, a room about 100 square meterswas equipped with everything. But now the regime Bashar al-Assadthe previous Syrian president, has fallen and the new tenants of Syrian power – both in Damascus and in this building in Aleppo – seek to change everything: create a state from scratch.
They have very little to hold on to. Assad’s systemhis proposal for a State, never existed. His government—with the exception of his first two years, in 2000in which he promised hope and progress—was never based on ideals to defend, progress to achieve, or a vision to protect or export. No.
Photographs of Assad found by a militant in a palace of the former Syrian president in Damascus. / ADRIÀ ROCHA CUTILLER
Assad created a system whose glue and sole reason for being was enrichment from those above through the robo to those below; squeezing to the maximum, ruthlessly, all the possible juice from an entire country. In recent decades—especially in the last years of civil war—, the fruit was dry, bitter. Destroyed after more than 600.000 muertos y seven million displaced abroad from a country of 22 million.
But as long as the fruit yielded, extraction had to continue, whether through theft or with the production and distribution of the captagona amphetamine cheap whose world production, mostly, came from Syria. More specifically, from Assad’s inner circle.
Now, after the fall of the regime, everyone says out loud what they have had to keep quiet in recent years, and examples abound: every family has stories of a missing or detained family member —or kidnapped, because there is not much difference—by the security forces, who demanded a ransom of several thousand dollars in exchange for releasing the prisoners. If the money did not arrive, the prisoner fell into the bottomless pit of Syrian prisons. This practice spread throughout the war.
The Syrian president, before the world and before the population under his control, presented himself as the lesser evil: life can be difficult, even unfair, he accepted, but rebels—all jihadistsall ‘neckbreakers’, their media claimed – are much worse. So resist the hardship you live in, Syrian people, because the alternative is much worse. You are welcome.
This argument, however, cracked in two weeks of rebel offensive: the depression in Assad’s territories was such that when the supposed rebel ‘neckbreakers’ began to advance southward, not only was there no civil resistance, but the Locals celebrated the arrival of the rebels while Assad’s soldiers – without the support of the russian aviation— decided that it was not worth fighting and dying for a non-existent regime, which had forced them—also—to mistreat and be mistreated by his superiors.
A Hayat Tahrir al Sham militiaman. / ADRIÀ ROCHA CUTILLER
A new model
And this is the point that Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS)the former Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria and the largest and best organized of the Syrian rebel militias, has understood perfectly.
“The security It is our main focus and our main concern. After this, we focus on the population having access to food and services. But above all we focus on providing the security. “That people are safe in their homes and in the streets and markets so that they can work without problems and without anyone bothering them,” they explained from the Aleppo governor’s office. Mohammad Zakaria Labibidi, Fawaz al Hilal, Abdul Wahab Da’as: the triumvirate of men who now rule the second Syrian city on behalf of HTS and its Syrian Salvation Government.
The change is radical, revolutionary. The Syrians who are celebrating now are not doing so for the victory of a radical islamist militia —that despite being asked hundreds of times if she wants to impose the islamic law throughout the country does not give a clear answer, although it implies that no, but that we will see—but rather they celebrate that, finally, when one goes to do a bureaucratic procedureyou won’t have to bribe half a government office to do it; They celebrate that one, when traveling by car, will not be threatened by soldiers and police who offer one-way tickets to Syrian prisons if one does not pay a large sum of money; They celebrate that one, when leaving home, will not be randomly detained and remain disappeared indefinitely in places like Sednaya prisonwhere torture and death It was something ordinary.
HTS has understood all this and the only thing it has proposed so far—two weeks after its victory—is just end the system of Assad. Nothing else. That’s all. “We have not overturned or changed any laws. We have kept the previous officials. And where we see that there is a hole in the management, we try to cover it. Close to the 95% of workers of the old regime in the services sector are already working for us and the new administration. We have only given very clear orders to end any type of corruptionand we are committed to pursuing those who attempt it,” explained the men of the triumvirate of governors of Aleppo.
A uniform of an Assad regime soldier abandoned on a highway guardrail. / ADRIÀ ROCHA CUTILLER
A kidnapped minority
Not all celebrations, however, are from the pure heart. The Alawite minority of the mediterranean region from Syria—where the Assads came from—she now fears that she will be the target of the revenge of the rebels and the sunni majority of the country, incredibly punished by the regime.
This minority, during the brutal years of the reign of Hafez y Basharfather and son, was overwhelmingly favorable to the regime, and many of the senior officials in Assad’s Army and Government came from this group.
This does not mean that the Alawites did not suffer under the Assad regime. “Many times we tried to talk to the Government to ask it to invest in the region of Latakia and its surroundings. This place is very beautiful; It could receive a lot of tourism. But they didn’t do anything. They abandoned us, and without work or opportunitiesthe only recourse for young people was to go to the military service“he said Brahim Isaan Alawite representative of the people of Qardahathe birthplace of the Assads.
The trap of the Alawis, Isa and many in the region considered, was a kidnapping: the regime convinced them that the rebels – the worst evil – would put them all to the sword at the slightest opportunity, and counting on the default support of this group, Damascus economically abandoned the region, which ended up forcing the young Alawís, without alternative, to participate in the system and enter the Army.
The salary of a soldier, 20 dollars, thus, left no other way of survival than steal, plunder, mistreat and squeeze. Everything allowed—and demanded—by the officers, who had to take their part (and deliver another part higher up). If a young soldier did not want to participate in this chain, his fate was sealed.
Only time will tell if Syria’s new masters will be able to completely put an end to this system, and satisfy the human and democratic needs of a population, the Syrian, tortured and punished during 50 years of Assad rule. But this, now, is still far away: Syria is still celebrating.
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