Damascus appeared to be adjusting to a new normality a week after Islamist-led rebels forced president Bashar al-Assad to flee the country, with schools and universities reopening on the first day of the working week.
Ali Allaham, the dean of Damascus University’s arts faculty, told AFP that 80% of staff and a “large number of students” had arrived on campus. About 30% of children had returned to one school, a staff member said, and that was expected to rise in the coming days.
Petrol shortages also appeared to ease, with cars queuing to fill up and people stopping to buy plastic containers from street vendors, while shopkeepers were busy scrubbing the old regime’s flag from their premises, repainting walls and shutters white.
Sunday church services were conducted as normal, and by nightfall in Bab Touma, a Christian part of the Old City area of Damascus, restaurants and bars opened for the first time since Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other rebel groups stormed the capital.
The performance of the Syrian pound also augured well – it strengthened by 20% against the US dollar on Sunday, its best performance since the economic crash of 2021 and a huge boon in a country where 90% of the population live below the poverty line.
It is hoped the airport in Damascus will reopen later this week.
Celebrations have by no means stopped; there was a spontaneous gathering in the main courtyard of Damascus University, where students vandalised and stamped on a toppled statue of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, who seized power in 1971.
Others waved the three-star opposition flag and chanted slogans and sang songs associated with the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests in 2011. The faces of many schoolchildren in uniform were painted in the green, red, black and white of the flag’s colours.
Meanwhile, early attempts at accountability and justice for the regime’s crimes against its people are gathering pace amid warnings from the UN’s special envoy to Syria, Geir Pederson, that justice must be delivered through a “credible system” rather than revenge. Desire for retribution against Assad officials and members of his Alawite sect are strong: Hafez al-Assad’s tomb in Qardaha was burned down by armed men last week.
The Islamist HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has repeatedly called for unity and respect among Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities and emphasised that HTS will help the country rebuild. He has also promised that the state will take control over all weapons and a new government will be formed.
The international community is cautiously engaging with HTS, which remains a proscribed terrorist group in many western states. The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, said on Sunday that the UK has already had “diplomatic contact” with the group.
“Using all the channels that we have available, and those are diplomatic and, of course, intelligence-led channels, we seek to deal with HTS where we have to,” he said.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, also confirmed there has been direct communication between Joe Biden’s administration and HTS. Blinken has just finished talks with Jordan, Turkey and Iraq with the aim of trying to shape the future of a post-Assad Syria by building consensus in the region, even as Turkey remains at loggerheads with Kurdish factions based in Syria and Israel has seized control of a formerly demilitarised zone in the disputed Golan Heights.
In a joint statement, the US, Turkey, the EU and Arab countries called for a Syrian-led transition to “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process”.
A delegation from Qatar, which backed Sunni Arab rebels in Syria’s war, was due to arrive in Damascus on Sunday, while France said that it would send a team of diplomats to the Syrian capital next week to assess the political and security situation.
Turkey, which supports an umbrella of Sunni Arab rebel groups but not HTS, has already sent intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin to Damascus for talks with al-Sharaa, and has reopened its embassy.
