This city is a hidden gem in the Arab world. How could such beauty and turquoise waters exist in Syria without us ever seeing them before? That’s because these areas were off-limits to many Syrians.
This city is called the "Bride of the Coast. " It’s Latakia, on the Syrian coast. Who would’ve thought we’d be able to come here?
There are people seeing this sea for the first time. Straight ahead in that direction lies Cyprus. This is the Mediterranean Sea.
-Where are we? -Latakia. My city.
This is the Syrian coastline, stretching for more than 180 kilometers. Just an hour away from the coast is Homs… We own this land! …the capital of the revolution and Syria’s largest province.
How did people live here? Look around at the area. Look over there.
Look at the houses you pass by. Most of the city looks like this. 60% of this city is destroyed.
This is Homs. This is Homs! It has suffered massive destruction, just like many other Syrian cities.
Syria needs us now to heal its wounds and be rebuilt, with the cooperation of its people and the support of Arab brothers in any way. We'll rebuild Homs. Homs is our paradise.
We're now in Hama. Today, in this special episode, we will meet the leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, at the Presidential Palace in Damascus to better understand how the Syrian people feel now. "At dawn on December 8th, the light of freedom shone upon the Syrians.
" In just 11 days, by God’s grace, Syria was liberated from north to south and from east to west. -Hello. -Welcome.
How are you? What was the best feeling for you? After a long struggle, 14 years of revolution, or 21 years of struggle for me personally, the greatest feeling that wipes away all the exhaustion of those years is seeing a man reunite with his mother after 14 years.
There were many videos like this on social media, someone seeing his brother after 10 years, another meeting his mother after 14 years, others reuniting after 8 years, and many others crying in joy. Families were torn apart. But now, families are coming back together, and that’s why people are happy.
It’s as if they were in a prison and visitation was forbidden. The streets are like a festival. I saw people joyful and celebrating.
Everyone is happy and hanging out. Do you know how hard it is to be forcibly displaced from your home? By nature, humans have an instinct for possession.
Humans have an innate desire to possess. But they seized people's houses, forced them out with nothing but their clothes and sent them to Idlib, or to refugee camps in Lebanon or Jordan, countries already struggling economically and burdened further by these crises. Three and a half million were sent to Turkey, and others crossed the sea, drowned, including women and children.
Then they’d arrive in countries that may or may not welcome them, or confine them to closed camps, issuing them ID cards and collecting their fingerprints. And it doesn't stop there, in some countries their camps were burned. It’s a truly heartbreaking scene.
So now you can tell these people, “Your lands have been restored. ” -Your country has been returned. -Yes.
It's true that it is destroyed, but there are people who have pitched tents on their land and they feel as if they have the world in their hands. I am certain that within two years, the Syrians in exile, the 15 million displaced Syrians, I believe that only 1 million to 1. 5 million of them will remain abroad.
People will return. What’s even better is that when we took over military areas, their residents didn’t flee, instead, people moved there. No one fled from those areas.
Not a single a Muslim, Christian, Kurd, Alawite or Drze. The residents remained in their regions. The battle was marked by mercy and reunited families, so how could people not be happy?
Some organizations and individuals in Idlib were asking us to start reconstruction efforts there, as one third of Idlib’s population lives in camps, another third in rented houses, they are not locals, and the remaining third are native residents. So, I used to tell them that Syria was built over 7,000 years, and construction is a cumulative process. When you displace someone, you take them back to square one.
They had nothing but their clothes, so they have to rebuild their life from scratch, if they even have enough morale to start over. Unfortunately, Syrians have been humiliated, and the Syrian passport has become one of the weakest in the world. And the most expensive one.
-You pay a lot to obtain it, right? -It’s the most expensive passport, yet the weakest in ranking. The problem is that the previous regime turned the people into its enemy.
They were constantly afraid of them. So, they designed all their institutions to trap the people. Their concept of authority meant controlling every aspect of a person’s life and later exploiting it.
So, how did they achieve that? For example, in some relatively developed countries, governments control their people intelligently. They provide tools to guide them, educate the public, and shape a specific ideology to create certain convictions.
Thus, public opinion is sometimes guided in advanced countries. But here, the regime guided people by exploiting basic services, their daily lives, and using security forces, torture, killing, and intimidation. This method of control is effective, people follow out of fear, not conviction.
That’s why you see people celebrating after the regime fell. Of course, I do not support those who say, "These people are just bandwagoners. " I try to keep having good faith.
I try to keep having good faith, and tell myself that some people have been exposed to the anti-revolution propaganda for years. Before that, for almost 35 years, they were subjected to propaganda against certain sects. They were told that if those people ruled, they would kill you or eliminate you.
This propaganda, heavily funded by the regime, collapsed in just 11 days. It collapsed, because people are more influenced by reality and facts than by words, right? This is called delivering ideas through actions.
So, when you actually practice good morals, you can influence people more than by just preaching them, right? If you preach morals without practicing them, your message won’t reach them, it will just be empty words. Good deeds affect people much more than just talking about them.
Good deeds are practical and tangible, not just words. What you've done is really great. How do you feel now, being in Damascus, knowing how much you love this city?
I mean. . .
If you want to maintain success, you must keep a sense of caution and alertness. You shouldn’t feel too secure, because danger often emerges amidst a feeling of safety, right? Those working in public affairs and leaders, in general, must always be cautious.
Of course, not excessive caution that leads to doubt and accusations, but caution that motivates you to work harder and give more. We now face many challenges within the country. We need to establish stable political relations.
We must put special focus on internal affairs so that people can live together in peace, love each other, and trust one another. This is an extremely important challenge. Thankfully, vengeful behavior isn't part of the Syrian character.
Throughout this major battle, the motto was, "Lord, grant us a victory free from vengeance," because a vengeful mindset cannot build. We have many problems. There’s a widespread crisis, so you can’t achieve immediate justice except in obvious and severe cases.
Sometimes in major battles, the right to revenge is relinquished, except in certain cases, like the officials of Sednaya Prison, security branch heads who tortured people. Pilots who carried out raids. .
. Those who dropped bombs on civilians, and those who committed massacres. Nevertheless, justice must be sought through the judiciary and the law.
-In court. -Not by individuals. We must respect the law.
If we don’t respect the law, the law of the jungle will prevail. If justice is restored through the law, everyone’s rights are guaranteed, -the victim's and the offender's. Right?
-Yes. Because when the offender is imprisoned, they still have some rights regardless. But if matters are left to revenge, the law of the jungle will prevail.
Of course, real life isn’t perfect. Some incidents occurred on the side, but they are minimal and decrease daily as security control improves. We also rely on the community’s awareness and sound judgment.
I understand them deeply because of the pressure they had been under for over 50 years. People are influenced by how they’re governed. We’re talking about entire generations, around six generations lived under that regime.
Right? So, there’s no magic wand to solve these problems. The situation requires patience and long-term strategic plans in education, higher education, social relations, religious discourse, cultural platforms, and media outlets, on all levels.
People used to live in suspicion and fear of one another. They'd say, "Be careful, someone might hear you and report you. " This is what the life of a Syrian citizen was like.
Along with corruption. Now, people can trust each other again. Anyone can express their opinion freely, as long as they don’t break the law, damage public property, or disrupt the social life.
Today, there is significant social harmony in Syria, capable of creating a new life that people haven’t experienced in nearly 50 years. For the first time. They'll experience this for the first time, living together with love.
Hey, everyone, Bashar has fallen! The first thing we did, we announced amnesty since the beginning of the battle, and this amnesty greatly helped the people. So now that we've won, we can't arrest people and prosecute them, because we must maintain our credibility.
We have a credibility. We gave people our word and we cannot go back on it now. If we didn’t uphold this, it'd have been overwhelming for people.
They would have been afraid, nervous, and much blood would have been shed. The policy of amnesty during the battle had a positive impact and helped avoid a lot of bloodshed. They all left their clothes behind and fled.
Now that God has blessed us with victory, we cannot start shedding blood and arresting people, as that would destroy our credibility. We must balance between individual rights and general amnesty. The amnesty must be comprehensive.
Thank God, He granted us victory at minimal cost, and this is the greatest form of victory. What would we have gained if we had won but Damascus was destroyed? What would we have gained if we had won but Aleppo was destroyed?
The regime entered Khan Shaykhun and Maarat al-Numan, but they were empty after being completely destroyed, turning them into uninhabitable cities. Can we call that a victory? No, it wasn’t.
They merely seized land, while we won over the people, and that is true victory. Victory is achieving great outcomes with minimal losses. So, it’s unacceptable to deceive people by announcing amnesty and then later holding them accountable.
First, we must recognize that God honored us this way and that we must uphold our moral integrity and keep our promises. Another important point is that we must have clear priorities while building the new country. What are those priorities?
The priority is to build institutions that achieve a good level of justice among people and prevent past mistakes from being repeated. We must build the country properly. So, if personal rights claims hinder this process, then I'd say that building the country takes precedence.
We need to let people breathe for a while, rebuild the country together, and prioritize forgiveness, except for those who committed systematic and organized crimes, like those who carried out the Houla massacre, those who raped women, tortured detainees, or committed other crimes. Those are excluded. In the first place, these individuals didn't return to their homes, they didn't accept the amnesty.
They fled immediately once we reached them. So, they didn’t respond to the amnesty, and I don’t consider myself morally obligated towards them. As for everyone else, they cannot take justice into their own hands.
There are courts, a judiciary, and laws. Complaints can be filed properly. If the accused was among those included in the wartime amnesty, then our moral, religious, and logical duty is to say we no longer have a claim against this person.
When people say we neglected their right to revenge I respond with, "We gave you back all of Syria. " We restored to you the greatest right. The name of Damascus has returned to the forefront.
Right? Today, the media says, "Syria says this and that. " Damascus has returned to the international stage.
We have repositioned a country that once disturbed the entire world. But today, we have restored the foundations of this civilization and returned it to its strategic, political, economic, and social standing. So, you cannot waste this great opportunity just to take revenge.
I must protect everyone's rights, even if it costs me my life. I have never avoided delivering justice to anyone in my entire life, even if it was at my own expense. But now, our priority must be to adopt a state mentality.
The mentality of the state must prevail. A revolutionary mindset cannot build a country. The revolution is characterized by agitation and reactionary behavior, which may work for overthrowing a regime but is not suitable for building one.
That’s why I say today that, for us, the revolution is over. It’s part of our history that we cherish and celebrate, but we shouldn't carry its mentality over into this phase. Imagine trying to build the country with factions.
-Would that work? -No. So, the country must have institutions, a president, a parliament, an executive government, and strategic plans.
We must have short-term, medium-term, and long-term strategies. We must have targets and figure out how to achieve them, such as developing economic infrastructure, education, healthcare, telecommunications, and innovation. We must catch up with the world within a few years.
God willing, the Syrian passport will have significance in a few years. Well said! What pained me the most was seeing people scramble for passports and how badly they were treated at airports.
Syrians felt inferior to other nationalities, because a citizen’s strength comes from their country’s strength. And our country was filled with corruption and social oppression. It was a country without weight in the world.
For the first time, I feel that they respect us. Syrians everywhere feel pride now. Syrians around the world feel pride today.
The wars of the oppressed have not succeeded in the last 100 years. There is widespread Arab solidarity now. That's true.
Today, we have written a new chapter in history. We fought a war of the oppressed with no resources, and yet we managed to get our rights back, because rightfulness is far stronger than falsehood. Rightness itself is a power that pushes you forward.
All you need is to work on yourself properly, take the right steps, and trust in God, as long as you are truly on the side of truth. And you must be wise, of course, because sometimes even rightful people can be reckless. Right?
You must be both righteous and wise. You also need to understand the meaning of leadership, which is to know when to act and when to hold back. You must know where to stand.
Right? Thank you very much. Thank you for your time.
I wish Syria a bright future. Translated by: Abdalrahman K. Mostafa.
