With One Regime Gone, Syrians Must Now Recreate Their Government
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Today on State of the World, with the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, what is next for the country and how will a new state be formed?

You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they are happening. It's Wednesday, December 11th. I'm Christine Arismath. It's been less than a week since a coalition of opposition fighters overthrew the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Already, opposition leaders and government workers who have remained are trying to create a new country, rolling back decades of repression and corruption to build a functioning state. A key part of that is securing the country's borders and regulating trade.

NPR's Jaina Raf reports from Syria's Daraa province near the Jordanian border. The day before, this border checkpoint had been deserted, completely empty apart from a couple of fighters with rifles.

Some of those same fighters are now manning a checkpoint they had set up, leaning into car windows to check IDs and register the names of people leaving Syria. No computer system, mind you, so they were taking photos of the IDs to save onto a computer. There was another fighter opening and closing a blue iron gate with the original Syrian flag tied to it.

the one before the al-Assad family changed it and changed the country. The fighter's name was Amran Khatib, 24 years old, a kid when the uprising that turned into civil war started here in Dara province. He says, is there anything more beautiful than this happiness? That after 14 years we can smell the scent of freedom? This was a dream that came true.

Mohamed Al-Qadri is head of the border regions of Dara province for the opposition coalition, the South Military Command. We protected everything immediately after the collapse, he tells us. We closed the entire border wall and we closed the entrances and put guards everywhere.

And we asked the employees of Border and Customs to come back and make a new start and build Syria together. In one of the customs buildings, officials and customs agents, freight forwarders, business people have gathered to speak to administration officials. The head of customs gathers them in what was a VIP waiting lounge. High ceilings and velvet sofas along the walls. A couple of hundred men crowd in.

There's no electricity yet, and in the dim light, cigarette smoke curls towards the ceiling. My brothers, we came here to serve you and this country. We have a goal for this country to stand on its feet for our sake and the sake of our children, the official tells them. He tells us he doesn't want to give his name and doesn't say why.

He tells them they have to work together to get the border up and running, to get exports flowing again. Everyone's talking about customs fees and transit fees and inspection procedures. This is how history is made. This is how a state is recreated. A couple of hundred guys in a dimly lit room, smoke rising.

Everyone has an idea, everyone has a problem, everyone has an opinion. But one of the differences now is they're allowed to express those opinions. I asked one of the customs officials, Ehab al-Hatam, how he feels. I can't say anything now. I can't say. It's hard to hear him over the crowd. Too early because it's a divided country. We want to be one people in one country from north to south, from east to west, he says.

But he says he isn't sure that Syria's neighbours want a strong country. A little further up the road at a border checkpoint a group of boys and their fathers are painting the restored Syrian flag on concrete traffic barriers.

They mix cans of green and white for the colours of the flag, and then paint red stars with a stencil. The boys are about the same age as the children who were arrested and tortured by regime forces in 2011 here for writing anti-government graffiti on a wall. The father of one of the boys was killed in 2011. Everyone here says they're indescribably happy at the fall of the regime, but they know there's a lot of work ahead.

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