Joy buoys Syria’s first Friday prayers since Assad ouster, but hardships loom

DAMASCUS, Syria — Jubilant crowds gathered in cities across Syria for the first Friday Prayers since rebels toppled President Bashar Assad, including at the historic Umayyad Mosque in the capital, where civilians and fighters worshipped side by side and joyful chants erupted over the collapse of a long authoritarian dynasty.

People waved revolutionary flags, posed for photographs with friends and shouted, “God is great!” as one of the largest crowds in memory filled the marble courtyard of the mosque, where the Assad security forces had long suppressed anti-government demonstrations with brutal violence.

Not all the chants were religious, reflecting the country’s newfound sense of liberty, as some outside the mosque sang, “Hold your head high, you are a free Syrian!”

Fighters in military uniforms — members of the rebel force that ousted Assad over the weekend — joined others at the mosque, their guns beside them or leaning against pillars nearby. The towering prayer hall was so crowded that some men could not touch their foreheads to the carpet. Instead, they touched them to the backs of the people in front of them.

In a sermon delivered from the pulpit, the newly appointed prime minister of Syria’s rebel government, Mohammed al-Bashir, praised the rebellion’s victories; mourned those who had been killed during the war; and called on Syrians to build a new state based on freedom, dignity and justice.

“The chains of humiliation have been broken,” al-Bashir said, his voice cracking at times with emotion. He also condemned the oppression of the Assad regime and spoke of revenge against the “criminals” who had been part of it.

Many people said they had not come to the mosque in years because they had been scared they could be arrested by the Assad security forces, which crushed protests during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011.

Abdullah Suleiman, a history professor at a Damascus university, said after the prayer that he could not recall ever having seen such a large crowd at the mosque, the oldest and best known in Damascus, the capital.

“It is a victory for the Syrian people who have been oppressed for 50 years,” he said, referring to the combined tenures of Assad and his father, Hafez. “For 50 years, we were deprived of these moments.”

“We hope for a state for all Syrians that does not exclude anyone or privilege anyone,” he added. “And the ballot box is the only way to accomplish that.”

Similar scenes of joy played out after Friday Prayers in other parts of the country, even ones that were considered loyal to Assad, like the coastal city of Latakia, the heartland of the Alawite minority sect to which the Assad family belongs.

There, in a main square, thousands gathered to celebrate the end of the Assad era. “The people of Syria are one, one, one!” the crowd chanted, waving the flag of the Syrian revolution. On a nearby stage, representatives of different religious groups gave remarks in an effort to convey national unity.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Sunni Islamist group that led the fight to oust Assad, has signaled that it will work with people of all religions and ethnicities, but there are fears that Syria’s new rulers will favor observant Sunni Muslims and oppress others. While Syria is a majority Sunni country, it has significant communities of Christians and Druse, as well as others who adhere to different sects of Islam.

In Idlib, a city in northwestern Syria that has been under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham for years, couples, families and young men in camouflage, a few carrying Kalashnikov rifles, descended on a main square, singing the same song heard in Damascus — “Raise your head high, you’re a free Syrian.” Many also waved the flag of the Syrian revolution.

The rebel commander who led the offensive against Assad, Ahmed al-Sharaa, said Friday that Syrians should gather in city squares to “express their joy.”

“Then we will turn to building the country,” al-Sharaa said in a videotaped statement on Telegram. He asked people, however, not to fire into the air, a day after people were injured by gunfire during celebrations in the northern city of Raqqa, according to local Kurdish authorities.

The celebrations across the country belied the monumental challenges facing Syria’s new leaders. Much of Syria’s governing administration has evaporated; there are competing armed factions vying for power; and after more than 13 years of war, the country faces widespread food shortages, crumbling infrastructure, the spread of disease and insufficient funds to provide basic services. There are also millions of Syrians living abroad who fled the civil war and now wonder if it is safe to return home.

Russia, which backed Assad’s government, appeared to be preparing to withdraw military forces from at least some parts of Syria, according to videos posted online and verified by The New York Times, as well as satellite images. It was unclear whether those forces were just relocating to Russia’s two main bases in Syria, along the Mediterranean, or if they were leaving the country.

With so much uncertainty about the country’s future, the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, pressed ahead with American diplomatic efforts to work with regional powers to help guide Syria on a new path, avoiding both instability and extremism.

On Friday, Blinken met in Turkey with the country’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and then flew to Baghdad and met with the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani. He said that Washington was trying to encourage Syria’s rebel leaders to respect human rights, protect minorities and to ensure that Syria does not become a base for terrorist groups like the Islamic State.

International efforts are also underway to find those who disappeared during the Assad regime’s violent reign. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was urging Syria’s new leaders to preserve evidence of the fate of tens of thousands of people who have vanished and may have been tortured or killed.

The Red Cross said it had documented 35,000 cases of people who had disappeared in Syria, but believes there are many more who were detained and never heard from again, and whose families had no chance to report their fate or contact the Red Cross. The organization has opened two hotlines this week to help reunify former prisoners with their families.

“We have been approached by tens of thousands of families who have come to us with what we call a tracing request,” said Stephan Sakalian, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Syria delegation.

“Let’s make no mistake: Giving answers to people will take weeks, months and maybe years, given the amount of information to process,” he added.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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