2024 in Review: Syria before the fall of Assad
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Al Jazeera Podcasts. Hi, Malika here. This week and next, as we say goodbye to 2024, we're revisiting 10 of the episodes that shaped our year. When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled the country on December 8th, the sudden end of decades of Assad family rule came as a shock.

But it was much earlier this year, on the 13th anniversary of Syria's uprising, that we reflected on where Syria was in 2024. After protesters took to the streets in a call for change, the government's brutal crackdown eventually became a war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced over 12 million people. Many of them are now beginning another new chapter in their lives.

This episode originally aired on March 15th, 2024. So all dates and references reflect that time. Here's the episode. Today, as focus shifts to other conflicts, has the world forgotten Syria? They didn't ask for the overthrow of the regime, they asked for reforms. There were choices made by the regime to not engage with its people.

As Syrians mark 13 years of war, we hear about their struggle since the 2011 uprisings. I'm Malika Bilal, and this is The Take. Today I'm speaking with Alia Malik. She's the author of two books. The latest one is The Home That Was Our Country, a memoir of Syria.

I am a journalist, but I also direct international reporting at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. And I am speaking to you from my apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

Thirteen years ago this week, Syrians in the city of Dara'a began protesting for more rights under the government of President Bashar al-Assad. On the capital, protesters chanted against President Bashar Assad, including slogans like, May God curse your soul and bye-bye Bashar. Protesters demanded the end of the regime, ripping down a statue of the president's father, bracing to see the reaction of heavily armed government security forces.

Those demonstrations, which were peaceful, eventually led to the civil war that is still unresolved, in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 12 million Syrians have been displaced. Assad, who people were trying to overthrow, is still there.

This is a huge topic and 13 years worth of things to talk about. But it's also one that you experienced firsthand as a journalist and as a Syrian American. So can you take me back 13 years ago? Where were you? 13 years ago, I would say I was still euphoric about

over what had happened in Egypt and Tunisia. The Arab Spring blossomed across North Africa and the Middle East as old regimes were swept up by winds of change, fanned to a large extent by activists using social media like Twitter and Facebook. And I was packing my bags. All eyes were on Syria. I had a lot of doubts that Syria would unfold as neatly and as nonviolently as Egypt had had.

Our family has had experiences with the regime and the Syrian regime had been in power a long time and its methodology was not unknown to many Syrians. And I went ahead and moved to Damascus because I actually just had a great cover story. My parents had taken back the home that was meant to be my mother's and that had been denied us because of the intricacies of Syrian property law.

And as someone who had been a human rights lawyer and then a journalist, these are occupations that are quite hazardous to your health in Syria. So I'd only been a visitor multiple times in Syria, but never had a chance to live there. And I thought Syria was on the precipice of something. I was hopeful and optimistic, and maybe that was naive. I just wanted to be in Damascus in that moment.

So when it was clear that these weren't just peaceful protests that were going to be allowed to continue throughout the country, they were going to be met with violence. Syrian forces shelled the town and the country's restive north and opened fire on scattered protests nationwide.

What was that like for you? What were you thinking then? I think like many Syrians, and it depends like which, you know, violence is hardly monolithic. And like there were so many stages of escalation in the violence. You know, with Syria, it was sort of a bottomless pit. You kind of kept thinking nothing could be as bad as...

as what had just happened. But it did seem at the time that the future had an unstoppable momentum and that the future had finally arrived in the region, and that included Syria. And it didn't seem that those sorts of repressive behaviors that the regime had used to maintain power in the preceding decades stood a chance against the sort of momentum of that future.

You left Syria in 2013 and you began writing about the country's refugees, millions of refugees who were displaced and who had to flee. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have settled in Europe with some torturers managing to slip through the net.

And as part of that reporting, I know that you've been writing about efforts in Europe to bring war crimes charges against members of the Syrian government. To meet the threshold of crimes against humanity, prosecutors have submitted evidence and testimony that details the industrial scale of torture employed inside Syrian government prisons. What do Syrians who've been displaced, who are now refugees, what do they say when you talk to them?

Yes, since then, my focus has really been on sort of following the unraveling of Syria to all the places that it has gone and where I can report from. A regime control there is a no-go for me. You know, I think everything has its context. Initially, the war crimes charges, at least the people who are involved and when I spoke to Syrians about it,

They recognized it was a drop in the bucket and it was holding individuals, you know, cogs in like a massive machine accountable for crimes that also went way above them and were much bigger than them. It marked the end of the first global trial over state-sponsored torture in Syria. On Thursday, former Syrian intelligence officer Anwar Raslan was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity.

And so the idea of like, is that justice? I think, you know, people modify justice

what they think justice is. And I think what comes out of those trials is that at least by meticulously going through the evidence and the testimony, it's pretty hard to refute the idea that the regime was responsible for these mass disappearances and for these mass murders and the use of torture as a means of execution. And, you know, part of the problem with Syria and why there is an attrition of attention is

to it or let's just say even if it's a good faith and ability to understand what's going on is that the narrative has completely been obfuscated and I think the trials while of course not delivering any kind of true justice there is a kind of at least a narrative justice. You mentioned how going back to government controlled parts of Syria is a no-go for you. How easy is it to talk to people who are there and for them to speak freely about what life is like right now?

Yeah, no, that is still remarkably not difficult. I mean, people are obviously quite angry. Our only demand is the peaceful transfer of authority so we get rid of this ruling gang without any sedition or bloodshed. Please go away, Assad. The matter is over.

I mean, the inflation is out of control. The lack of access to electricity, out of control. Meanwhile, like the regime really hasn't changed its same corrupt practices. So people are complaining and you're seeing protests in places like Sueda and Daraha again. The same chants heard from a pro-democracy movement more than 12 years ago before the country descended into war.

And you also see similar responses. I think it was just last week the regime detained a nine-year-old for scribbling on a picture of Bashar al-Assad. And because we have WhatsApp and Viper and people are still posting things on Facebook, so we are aware of what the situation is like inside Damascus. And it's bleak. This is what I mean when I say that I think Syria in many ways is the model for the future that we can expect.

is that impunity is part and parcel of what happened in Syria. And I think you're going to continue to see impunity across many countries or many parts of the world where people are still being subjected to these sorts of treatments. And what's different, I think people are no longer buying into the idea of deliverance from any kind of international community or international norms.

And you are seeing people really exercising an incredible amount of agency and taking their destiny into their own hands. And migration has become like the last sort of card that a lot of folks can play. This is the largest mass migration in the history of Europe since World War II. This is the front lines of it. And the Syrians played it very effectively in 2015, freaked out all of Europe, almost brought the European Union to like disintegrate.

They bought off Turkey to keep all the Syrians there. But like all those folks crossing the southern border here in the United States,

And I'm not talking about Syrians. I'm talking about globally. I think this model of impunity, you know, asking people to pay the price for these sorts of regimes and them refusing that and sort of pointing out the failures of the international community by these mass movements. I think that is the future of the world that we live in currently. What do Syrians in exile hope for as the war goes on? That's after the break.

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Learn more at apu.apus.edu slash military. So, Alia, in October, you were reporting on Syrians in Turkey, a country that hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees. So tell me about the work that you were doing there and what you were hearing from people. Yeah, I mean, you know, when the earthquake happened,

It was sort of like, are you kidding me? A series of deadly earthquakes ripped through southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing nearly 60,000 people and leaving millions homeless as buildings collapsed around them.

Syrians kept saying, you know, the only thing we have yet to see are dinosaurs and volcanoes. Because at that point, by the time of the earthquake, they had seen, you know, the violence of the regime. They had seen the violence of those who would inherit the regime from, you know, your Al Qaida's to your ISIS folks. They had seen heads on stakes, you know, in the so-called Islamic State. They had seen chemical attacks.

The attack on Khan Sheikhoun produced terrible images of children poisoned by nerve gas and rescue workers struggling to help. They had seen multiple displacements, first internally and then finally across borders. They had seen the sea and the drownings at sea, and then the earthquake came. And so, you know, I really wanted to understand where people saw their future and also just how do you survive, you know,

multiple crisis after crisis. And why would the solutions that we usually offer refugees no longer be adequate, especially in a place like Turkey that's been lauded for having one of the better approaches to a refugee population?

And in March when I was there, you know, everybody's still, their eyes were still focused on Europe and, you know, this idea of Germany as a place of much less racism than they face in Turkey. And whether, you know, Europe could still be a destination because I think people want to be able to plan their lives. They don't want to be in situations of

precariousness anymore and I think we have this idea that a refugee once they have physical safety or safety from bombardment then that's enough we don't live in a world where people think oh like Alhamdulillah I got to like Turkey and this is great and nobody's gonna bomb me and this is enough no people want lives they want full lives

Many of the millions of Syrians displaced outside the country say they can't go back because they're afraid of the government, which has imprisoned and killed tens of thousands of its own citizens. For a vast number of Syrians, this is the last time they'll be seen by anyone. Whatever the government of Bashar al-Assad considers an offense, protest, or combat, the punishment is often torture or execution. But despite this...

What is Bashar al-Assad's current standing in the international community? I mean, I think he's still viewed as somewhat toxic, but only because he's

I think the West is finding its hands tied by its own human rights standards. That is making it difficult to deport people back or to say that Syria is safe. But I think they would more than anything love to normalize Assad and just return these people and say that the situation is safe.

Assad means to confront his backers, who are Iran and Russia for the most part. And I think there's clearly no appetite for that. And I think what you're seeing happening in Syria is similar. Those sorts of proxy battles are happening in other countries as well.

I think there's an appetite for stability much more than there is an appetite for accountability. Syria feels much more like the playbook of what is happening globally. So, Adia, I wanted to ask you about what we've seen with the international community and how they've responded to Syria vis-a-vis what we're seeing in Gaza. Because despite pledges to protect civilians, concern and attention eventually faded for Syria.

Do you see parallels between what has happened in Syria and what is happening now in Gaza? Well, this is like...

A silver lining, I hesitate to even call it a silver lining. I mean, what is happening in Gaza is, you know, I'm sure you have people who can express it much more poetically, but my first time in Gaza was in 1998. This is a place I know and have been moved by, and Syrians are, you know, very connected to Palestinians. My own family, extended family, includes Palestinians.

But if there is any kind of silver lining, is I think, whereas in Syria, there's no clear narrative for people, I think it is almost impossible to deny that the Palestinian narrative appears to have made massive leaps and bounds in global recognition. I think it's really hard for there to be any obfuscation on the narrative in Gaza. But...

Where there is similarity is that, you know, Syria is not a humanitarian crisis. Neither is what is happening in Gaza. Are there, you know, these humanitarian catastrophes that are happening? Yes. But the essence remains like a fundamental injustice and lack of accountability.

That is the same in Syria as it is in Palestine. Like the reason people are living these situations, like none of these band-aid solutions are going to change anything. And I think that's what people keep thinking in Syria. Oh, if you just if it's just quiet enough, people will go back. Also forgetting that, like in the quiet, many worse things happen. All right. And that's The Take.

This episode was produced by David Enders and Chloe Cayley, with Nagin Oliayi, Sonia Bagat, Farhanisa Kampana, Khalid Sultan, Zaina Badr, Sariel Khalili, Miranda Lin, Ashish Malhotra, Amy Walters, and me, Malika Bilal. Alex Roldan is our sound designer. Alexandra Locke is the Take's executive producer. And Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. We'll be back.