HOMS, Syria — A year ago, Mohammad Marwan stumbled barefoot and dazed out of Saydnaya prison on the outskirts of Damascus after rebel fighters pushing toward the capital threw open its doors. Arrested in 2018 for evading compulsory military service, he had passed through four other jails before arriving at Saydnaya, a complex that became synonymous with some of the worst abuses under the now-ousted Bashar Assad.
Marwan recalled new arrivals met by a gauntlet of beatings and electric shocks. “They said, ‘You have no rights here, and we’re not calling an ambulance unless we have a dead body,'” he said. His homecoming on Dec. 8, 2024, to a house full of relatives in Homs province was joyful. But the year since has been marked by efforts to recover from six years behind bars: chest pain and breathing problems that proved to be tuberculosis, crippling anxiety and insomnia.
He is receiving treatment for tuberculosis and attends therapy at a Homs center dedicated to rehabilitating former detainees. Gradually he says his health has improved. “We were in something like a state of death in Saydnaya,” Marwan said. “Now we’ve come back to life.”
Across Syria, recovery has been far more complicated. Thousands took to the streets to mark the anniversary of Assad’s fall, but the country faces deep wounds left by 14 years of civil war that killed an estimated half-million people, displaced millions and fractured the state.
Assad’s downfall shocked many, including insurgents who unseated him. In late November 2024, northwest groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose then-leader Ahmad al-Sharaa now serves as interim president, launched an offensive on Aleppo aimed at preventing an anticipated government assault on Idlib. The Syrian army instead collapsed with little resistance in Aleppo and subsequently in Hama and Homs, opening the path to Damascus. Rebels entered the capital on Dec. 8 while Assad was evacuated by Russian forces; he remains in exile in Moscow. Russia, long a Syrian ally, did not mount a military defense of Assad and has since engaged the new authorities while keeping its bases on the coast.
Hassan Abdul Ghani, a Syrian Defense Ministry spokesperson, said HTS and allies had reorganized after government gains in 2019–2020 and that the Aleppo push aimed to expand the battlefront and protect liberated areas. He noted the insurgents timed the offensive while Russia was preoccupied with Ukraine and Hezbollah, another Assad ally, was weakened after conflict with Israel.
Since assuming power, al-Sharaa has pursued a diplomatic campaign to rehabilitate Syria’s international standing, reaching out to Western and Arab states that had shunned Assad and even visiting Washington in November — the first Syrian leader to do so since independence in 1946. But diplomatic advances have been shadowed by renewed sectarian violence: hundreds of civilians from Alawite and Druze communities were killed by pro-government Sunni fighters, and local Druze groups in Sweida have established their own de facto administration and armed forces.
Tensions persist with Kurdish-led forces in the northeast despite a March agreement meant to integrate forces. Israel remains wary of the Islamist-led government; it seized a former U.N. buffer zone in southern Syria and has continued airstrikes and incursions, stalling talks on a security arrangement.
Remnants of the war litter the landscape. The Mines Advisory Group reported at least 590 people killed by landmines since Assad’s fall, including 167 children, putting Syria on track for the world’s highest landmine casualty rate in 2025. The economy remains weak even after most Western sanctions were lifted. Gulf promises of reconstruction investment have produced little, and the World Bank estimates rebuilding will cost about $216 billion.
Most repair work has been piecemeal, paid for by individual owners fixing homes and businesses. Yarmouk, the once-vibrant Palestinian camp on Damascus’s outskirts, still looks like a moonscape after years of occupation by militants and bombardment. Since Assad’s fall some residents have returned; damaged buildings that are structurally sound are being patched and shops have reopened, but fully reconstructing the most devastated areas remains distant.
“It’s been a year since the regime fell. I would hope they could remove the old destroyed houses and build towers,” said Maher al-Homsi, repairing his home despite no water connection. His neighbor Etab al-Hawari urged patience. “They inherited an empty country — the banks are empty, the infrastructure was robbed, the homes were robbed,” she said.
For some Syrians life is freer than under Assad. Bassam Dimashqi, a Damascus dentist, said, “Of course it’s better, there’s freedom of some sort.” But he and others stress that security is the essential prerequisite for investment and recovery. “The job of the state is to impose security, and once you impose security, everything else will come,” he said.
The U.N. refugee agency says more than 1 million refugees and nearly 2 million internally displaced people have returned since Assad’s fall. Yet without jobs and meaningful reconstruction, many may leave again. Marwan, who finds the post-Assad situation “far better” than before, struggles economically. He sometimes finds day labor paying 50,000 to 60,000 Syrian pounds — roughly $5. He plans to finish tuberculosis treatment and then leave for Lebanon to seek better-paid work.