AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Today, Syria celebrates the first anniversary of the fall of its repressive former regime. In just 11 days last year, cities held by the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies fell until opposition forces reached Damascus and took power. Correspondent Jane Arraf sends this report from the country's capital.
(CHEERING)
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Dawn prayers this morning coincided with the moment President Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus a year ago under Russian protection.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting in Arabic).
ARRAF: This was a mosque in the Midan district of the capital as worshippers filed out - the men chanting, the women expressing their happiness, the sheer joy and relief of victory after decades of repression.
(SOUNDBITE OF FIREWORKS EXPLODING)
ARRAF: That was fireworks.
(CHEERING)
ARRAF: A lot of fireworks over...
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE WHISTLING)
ARRAF: ...The past couple of days. This neighborhood was one of the centers of the uprising in 2012, and all along the walls of the mosque, for more than an entire block, are the photos of hundreds of people, mostly young men, who were killed in the government crackdown.
LUTIFA MUHYADIN: (Speaking Arabic)
ARRAF: "Every day since the criminal regime is gone, we have joy and freedom," says a neighborhood resident, Lutifa Muhyadin, "every day." And then she beckons me back to thank the United States for lifting sanctions.
MUHYADIN: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "Trump stood with us," she says. "We thank him and the administration and all the people who love us."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT AHMED AL-SHARAA: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a one-time al-Qaida fighter, told the nation he would work hard to fulfill Syria's promise.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
AL-SHARAA: (Through interpreter) The people granted us their trust after years of oppression and injustice and entrusted us with responsibility. So let our motto be honesty and our pledge be construction.
ARRAF: In Damascus, most people have been celebrating for days ahead of what is now a new national holiday. Syrian American activist Mouaz Moustafa worked for years towards what often seemed an impossible dream of toppling Assad.
MOUAZ MOUSTAFA: The pure joy that everyone sees here is just an expression of how much evil they lived under. And so it's just really, really, really rare that good defeats evil.
ARRAF: Bashar al-Assad, threatened by revolt against his regime's widespread repression, killing and corruption, called in the help of Iran and Russia to put down uprisings. The fighting lasted 13 years. The U.N. says about half a million people were killed and hundreds of thousands are missing.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
ARRAF: At a mass grave discovered just a few months ago not far from Damascus, activists estimate there might be 20,000 bodies. A former soldier who was forced to drive a truck filled to the brim with bodies of people executed or tortured to death shows us the site. He chain smokes as his wife, known as Um Ali, talks about a mass grave she saw herself.
UM ALI: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "All the bodies were stuffed together," she says. The testimony will likely be used in war crime trials, and neither she nor her husband, Abu Ali, want their full names used.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ARRAF: Although Syrians now have relatively immense freedom, some are more afraid than they were before. President Sharaa's new security forces include former militants who have been implicated in revenge killings on Druze and Alawite minorities. A June suicide bombing claimed by a militant Sunni Muslim group at a church has also left many Christians in fear. In many places, though, there's a new sense of possibilities.
I'm walking into this car showroom - marble floors and cars so shiny, they're almost blinding. A lot of them in bright colors - there's turquoise and bright green and seafoam colored, and they are all electric.
AFRA SHARIF: We are old company in Syria.
ARRAF: Afra Sharif is the CEO of 77 Auto, which imports the cars from China. The old regime had approved their factory to assemble them in Syria, and two years later, it inexplicably shut the factory down.
And it's not just people who are well-off who are happier. In one of Damascus' many second-hand markets, Bilal Filaha says he earns about $5 a day. His family home was destroyed, and at 40, he's never been married. You can't propose to someone without a house to live in.
BILAL FILAHA: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "Things will get better," he says, "but people have to work hand in hand with the state." The vendors point out that they come from almost every ethnic and religious group, and they all get along. On this muddy, noisy street, despite all he's lost, Filaha sees a better Syria.
FILAHA: (Speaking Arabic).
(SOUNDBITE OF MOTORBIKE)
ARRAF: "Love is what builds a country," he says.
For NPR News, I'm Jane Arraf in Damascus.
(SOUNDBITE OF PAPA CHURRO'S "LA OFRENDA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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