Recalibrating Hope and Revolutionary Temporality in the Wake of Al-Assad’s Downfall

To be honest, I can’t describe my feelings now; it is a historical moment. Syrians finally feel they can breathe, and I believe that justice is closer than ever! It is the moment when families can finally mourn their relatives, celebrate those who were freed, reunite with their loved ones after being displaced. Some will have the opportunity to find their beloved’s graves and cry loudly for the first time … I am sure that the days ahead will carry a lot of challenges, but at least we start to hope for a better future!” wrote Mohammad to Charlotte on December 7.

Since Aleppo’s liberation, Mohammad only thinks of one thing: going back. Mohammad was part of the non-violent revolutionary movement: he participated in protests in Daraa, his hometown, organised protests, treated injured protesters in field-hospitals, and co-founded a grassroot organisation in Aleppo, where he studied. 

Until the liberation of Hama, Mohammad and his friends stayed cautious: “We felt extreme joy and worry at the same time: joy to see parts of Syria liberated and worry to open the door of hope after a long time of being hopeless … We were still worried that the regime might bomb the freshly liberated cities. But Hama was different: it had never been liberated. It is a strategic location, so it was a clear indicator that the battle didn’t follow the usual agreements … Seeing people celebrating in Hama, after all this city went through since 1982, we felt hopeful again that the regime might actually fall!”

This text is a dialogue between Mohammad, a Syrian revolutionary, and Charlotte, an anthropologist who has written a monograph about the Syrian revolution, entitled Waiting for the Revolution to End. When Mohammad left for Syria on December 9, he told Charlotte that he would document his crossing of the country through audio and video recordings that he saw as the basis of a co-written piece. This text is based on translating Mohammad’s messages and discussing their resonance with Charlotte’s ethnographic work. It questions revolutionary temporality and the possibility of the 2011 revolution’s repetition. 

Hopes for Justice and Truth

With news of Military Operation Room’s advance, Mohammad was particularly impatient to hear of detainees’ fate, as he feared they might be killed before prisons are reached. The opening of prisons and security branches reignited hope, as relatives of former detainees and the disappeared dared to believe they might reunite with loved ones, or at least to learn their fate.

Detainees’ families rushed to the newly opened prisons. Mustafa, a friend of Mohammad, was in Sednaya and described how people started to look for answers about their relatives searching through cells and documents. Umm Ahmad, a long-term interlocutor of Charlotte whose three sons were disappeared in 2012 but who would not assume them dead until proven, returned to Syria on December 9^th: “I didn’t hear anything yet,” she said, “the situation is very chaotic, I don’t know who to ask for help, but I am hoping to finally know what happened to them!”

Prisons were a cornerstone of the Syrian regime; detainees and the disappeared became central revolutionary figures, and claims for justice centre around them.

Yassin, a friend from Daraa who was detained for eight years in Sednaya before the revolution, called us soon after the regime’s fall, and shared his joy and hope seeing the detainees freed. But he was also cautious: “Daraa hasn’t seen any detainees come back yet. We fear they might all have been killed”; and when asked about possible secret underground prisons that seem to have sparked new hope for those who didn’t find their relatives yet, he said, “those who haven’t reappeared by now were killed; in the prison you hear everything, if they had been digging underground, everyone would have heard it …”

Prisons were a cornerstone of the Syrian regime; detainees and the disappeared became central revolutionary figures, and claims for justice centre around them. Mohammad’s first visit in Aleppo was actually to the security branch where he was first detained for organising a protest at his faculty in 2011. “I could finally reconnect with a part of myself: being able to stand there and enter the building, I felt that all fear had finally left me … When the young man guarding the entrance of the cells told me I couldn’t enter because the people who had arrested me were now jailed there, I felt that some justice had happened”.

Of Revolutionary Cycles

Joy, hope and relief were shared widely: after the regime fell, Syrians flooded the streets in all liberated cities. Revolutionary songs, dances and emblems now appeared openly. 

Is this the start of a new revolutionary cycle, the end of its first phase or the beginning of something new?

As Mohammad expressed, hope for a new start and for a better future is very high among his friends, relatives and comrades. Yet, this hope is accompanied by doubts about the caretaker government and strong demands for justice and accountability. Civil society is now trying to reorganise, occupy the ground and unite quickly in order to be able to exert pressure on how the future constitution is shaped. 

Many displaced revolutionaries and civil society organisations are rushing to Damascus and Aleppo to establish their offices and open communication channels with the new rulers. There are many files that need urgent attention and the goal is now to impose the values and legacy of the revolution. The challenge thus seems to situate these events on the continuum of the 2011 uprising rather than making it a different project. 

Seeing the revolution’s symbols being displayed by the liberation forces since the regime’s fall brought to mind some of Charlotte’s interlocutors’ reflections on the temporality of revolution: “the cycle of anger will start again (…) we are waiting for a second revolution!” Abu Zein once told her. Intense hope that the revolution has now succeeded but also doubts about HTS in light of its ruling of Idleb leave one to wonder if this is the start of a new revolutionary cycle, the end of its first phase or the beginning of something new?

This questioning of revolution’s time and temporality – that has occupied much of Charlotte’s work – was brought back by Mohammad, with the seemingly ending of the 2011 revolution and the emergence of different repetitions. The repetition of forms of mobilisation among revolutionaries and civil society organisations, the return of hope and the reactivation of waiting: waiting for detainees and forcefully disappeared to come back, waiting to go back home and waiting to see the end of the revolutionary cycle opened in 2011. But in this specific iteration of revolutionary moments, that encompass local and regional events going back to the 1920s, the focus is on justice, accountability and truth about and for the regime’s crimes.

Featured image: Aleppo Citadel December 2024, photo by Mohammad Khalili.

Abstract: Since Aleppo’s liberation, hope grew among revolutionaries. Was it the start of a new revolutionary cycle, the end of the first or the beginning of something new? Many were boiling to return to Syria and feverishly awaiting what was next. With the fast and unexpected collapse of the regime, new horizons opened and unprecedented joy exploded on the streets, while people still search for missing relatives, wonder about possible justice, and stay cautious about Damascus’ new rulers.