Syrians have more freedom after Assad, but could they lose it?

On the morning of 8 December 2024, I waited anxiously at the Lebanese border, hoping to get into Syria as soon as the crossing opened, not knowing what to expect.

Bashar al-Assad, the president of 24 years, was gone. Opposition fighters had advanced towards Damascus, taking major cities including Aleppo. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Syria was free.

Like many Syrians, I’d only ever known the country under the rule of Assad and his father Hafez, who had been in power from 1971 until 2000. Life under the Assads had meant more than 50 years of disappearances, incarceration – and the civil war that began in 2011 had claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

I’d been detained at the start of the uprising that year, and several times afterwards; I witnessed men lined up to be beaten and heard screams of torture. Even after I left the country in 2013, I learnt that security forces had broken into my apartment in Damascus and vandalised it.

I assumed I’d lost my home country for good, then suddenly last year the dictatorship was toppled in just over a week. As I crossed the border into the country without fear of arrest, and watched rebel fighters shoot celebratory gunfire, while people rejoiced on the streets, I felt like laughing and crying at once.

For weeks, Damascus’s main Umayyad Square became a hub of celebrations. Young and old talked freely about politics and everywhere Syria’s future was debated openly; among street vendors and taxi drivers, boys cleaning shoes. All of this was unthinkable under Assad, as Syrians could never protest freely for fear of reprisals.

Only now, four months on, the situation is more complex. Though great strides have been made in gaining some social freedoms, there are growing concerns around what democracy will look like but also around the role of Islam in the new regime.

So, how long might these social freedoms remain – or could, as some fear, the newly won liberties be short-lived?

At Rawda Café in central Damascus, just across the road from Parliament, intellectuals gather around long tables to smoke shisha and discuss culture. Under Assad, political activists were picked up and arrested there. Rumour had it that some waiters were regime informants.

Today, it’s a very different picture. The café hosts talks and music plays. Prominent figures who once fled the country have returned too – many are greeted by a band playing traditional songs with a giant drum.

Syrian journalist Mohammad Ghannam is one of them. He tells me that he spent months in prisons during Assad’s regime and later moved to France; his euphoria at returning is palpable.

“I think everyone who can come back, should come back to rebuild the country,” he declares. “There is a window to do whatever you want now compared with before 8 December 2024.”

Reflecting on the past, he adds: “Even preachers in the mosques needed to get approval and know what they were going to preach. [Now] it’s completely free. [At] Friday prayers the Imam was talking about how your personal freedom shouldn’t step on other people’s freedom.”

Odai al-Zobi has also recently returned to Syria after 14 years – he left to study but says he was unable to come back before now because he was outspoken about the regime.

“My books were banned here,” he tells me. “Now there is no censorship, you can read whatever you want. I was very surprised that a lot of people want to read and want to know more.”

“This is a big change,” agrees Ali al-Atassi, a Syrian documentary-maker and son of former Syrian President Noureddine al-Atassi. (His father was deposed in a coup by Hafez al-Assad.)

“It changed the rules of the game, and opened a lot of perspectives for the country.”

Syria’s vibrant arts and culture scene has long been a source of the country’s pride: the Assads supported it, wanting to present a rich culture to the world yet some artists and writers were killed for their views on the regime.

Even carrying certain books was once cause for arrest. Today, however, all kinds of books are on display in shops around the capital – even political titles. Cinema clubs screen films that were previously banned too.

For weeks after Assad’s fall, the caretaker government didn’t appoint a Minister of Culture, but musicians and artists grouped together to protect the culture scene.

Now, however, there are fresh concerns: while Syria under Assad saw political debates repressed, some worry that repression by clerics could end up forbidding some forms of art…