“Your turn is coming, doctor”, chanted the demonstrators in the first days of March 2011, during what would become the Syrian episode of the “Arab Spring”. Ten years of civil war, of “conflict”, we say modestly among the loyalists, and Bashar Al-Assad is still there. The only survivor of a wave that had swept away the autocrats in the region, kept in power at the cost of relentless brutality and external Russian and Iranian support for his regime.
Ten years old, and the one whose first name no one pronounces in public is everywhere, in all forms: smiling father of the nation, austere soldier, mustachioed, clean shaven, alone, with his brother, his father; in small, large, on official buildings, roundabouts, schools, shops, as a decal on the rear window, framed, hung, on paper posters stuck to the wall … The Syrian president made his person the spearhead of state propaganda.
The iron curtains are painted in the colors of the Syrian flag, a “suggestion” from the authorities, a facade of loyalty for a population stifled by the economic crisis. In Damascus, seat of power, all the curtains are painted, without exception. In Aleppo, in Homs, we notice that a few are missing. You have to leave the Syrian capital, by the M5 motorway, the one that goes to the north, through the suburbs of Damascus, Homs then Hama, bastions of opposition to the regime, to discover the price of this civil war which has so far killed 500,000 and displaced 12 million (according to Amnesty International).
“Those who have left the country can no longer return, and those who have left often return to ruins. So I stay here, and I wait. »Nabil, resident of West Aleppo
Make the four-hour drive to Aleppo, through the territories reconquered by the regime, and see through the window the succession of emptied villages, razed infrastructure and collapsed buildings, to understand the great mess of the war. “Welcome to Aleppo, the queen of the world! “, launches, mockingly, the young Nabil, installed in a restaurant in the western part, ironically recalling that the city is one of the oldest cities of humanity.
Living in West Aleppo, he did not leave during the fighting. “Where did you want me to go? he pretends to inquire. Did you see how those who left were greeted? “ And he enumerates the list of his friends who fled the city or Syria. “Those who have left the country can no longer return, and those who have left because of the fighting often return to ruins, he explains, fatalistic. So I stay here, and I wait. ”
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