After Assad: A Journey Through a Shattered Country

Amid the rubble of Saraqib, some of the wall graffiti dating back to its time as a centre of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising remains. "The revolution will go on," one reads. "Tomorrow the sun rises," says another.

- Bethan McKernan

Soon after the astonishing rout of Bashar al-Assad by rebel forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), this small town of concrete, red earth and olive groves in Syria’s north-west was a stop on the Guardian’s 280-mile journey along the M5, the highway threading all of the country’s major cities and six provinces together. Suffering was palpable everywhere, from children rummaging through bins for food in Aleppo and Homs, to relatives searching for loved ones in Damascus’s prisons, to displaced people still living in tents in Idlib.

There are huge challenges ahead for HTS’s transitional government, and in some places, sectarian violence has already re-emerged.

Yet after 13 years of sacrifice, blood and exile, the appetite for freedom that fuelled Syria’s

popular revolution has endured. In dozens of interviews across Idlib province, the HTS stronghold, as well as the newly taken Aleppo, Homs and Damascus, stories tumbled out of people amazed that they could talk openly after more than 50 years of dictatorship.

“We paid a high price for basic human rights, for our dignity,” said Hussein al-Khaled, 37, who fl ed Saraqib for the relative safety of Idlib when the city fell to Assad in 2020 . “We have been waiting for this moment for decades.”

Retaking Saraqib on the M5 was a key victory for Assad, allowing the regime to relink the capital, Damascus, with the economic centre, Aleppo, and forcing Sunniled opposition forces to retreat to the north-west. In December, the same route also became the rebel road to victory.