Aleppo – Three Months After Assad’s Fall

Three things struck me immediately when I arrived in Aleppo in March 2025.

The city was clogged with loud, foul-smelling cars. Hungry people, including children, searched through garbage bins for food and recyclable plastic. And everywhere, young masked men carrying Kalashnikov rifles patrolled the streets and cafés.

The contrast with my previous visits in 2019 and 2023 was overwhelming.

The former police officers and soldiers who had served under Assad’s government had been dismissed almost overnight, many without pay. Syrians I spoke to described how entire families suddenly lost their income. The poverty this created was visible everywhere.

Traffic was so unbearable that I eventually got out of my taxi and told the driver to continue to my hotel with my luggage while I walked the remaining distance. It was faster on foot.

I had already sensed that Syria had changed while driving from Damascus to Aleppo along the M5 motorway. Passing through Homs took nearly an hour because of the traffic. Six years earlier the roads had been almost empty.

Cheap Cars and Bad Fuel

In Aleppo I began asking why there were suddenly so many cars.

Several locals told me that the many cars had arrived from nearby Idlib with the arrival of HTS fighters in Aleppo. Some added that the cars originally came from Dubai after failing technical inspections there,  and were then imported second-hand through Turkey. I could not verify these stories independently, but everyone agreed on one thing: the number of vehicles had exploded.

Under Assad, owning a car had been prohibitively expensive because of taxes and import restrictions. The new authorities relaxed those rules, making cars much more affordable.

Gasoline was more easily available. During my journey I saw convoys of tanker trucks transporting fuel from northeastern Syria towards Damascus. That was even before Rojava, the autonomous northeast was conquered by the new regime.

Video trucks

The result was chaos.

Cars parked on sidewalks and in traffic lanes. Drivers squeezed through impossibly narrow streets already crowded with pedestrians, pushcarts, minibuses, mopeds and motorcycles. Every intersection became a contest of patience and improvisation.

The fuel was just as striking as the traffic. Thick exhaust fumes hung over the city. Several Syrians complained about the poor quality of the gasoline, even using a local nickname for it.

That was very different to 2019, when people lined up for days trying to get some gasoline at the few gas stations that were open. Gasoline was actually rationed, as a consequence it  was smuggled on a large scale from Lebanon and sold for twice the price.

Some people got very rich that way, some mansion in Anjar, right on the Lebanese/Syrian border are.

A City Still in Ruins

What had not changed was the destruction.

Driving through Homs in 2025 felt almost identical to my journey in 2019. We passed street after street of bombed-out buildings, many still standing as empty shells after years of war. Reconstruction had barely begun.

One building stood out.

One building stood out. Chalid-ibn-al-Walid-Moschee rose almost untouched above the devastation. During my first visit I wondered whether it had somehow escaped the fighting by miracle. Later I learned that it had been extensively rebuilt with financial support from the Chechen government. Several destroyed churches had likewise been restored through donations from Christian communities in Lebanon.

Amid the ruins, these restored religious buildings stood in sharp contrast to the surrounding neighborhoods.

Hunger on the Citadel Square

On my first afternoon in Aleppo I walked to the square below the Citadel, where a large Turkish aid truck had parked beside the ruins.

Volunteers prepared to distribute food packed in white styrofoam containers.

A long queue had already formed. Men and women stood separately according to Sharia law, with children waiting between them. The line kept growing, yet no food was handed out.

Eventually the children received plastic bags filled with food. I watched a little boy, perhaps five years old, carefully unpack his bag. Everything inside was individually wrapped in plastic. Nothing resembled a healthy meal.

 

 

Especially the women grew increasingly impatient. They started complaining and pushing.

 

Only then did I understand why the volunteers had delayed the distribution. It was Ramadan, and they had apparently been instructed not to hand out the meals until Iftar.

Watching hungry people wait while food sat ready only a few metres away was deeply disturbing.

When the muezzin finally called for the Maghrib prayer, the distribution began. It was slow and disorganized.

What disturbed me even more was seeing a photographer documenting the event. Some volunteers encouraged the crowd to smile and cheer for the cameras, but most people simply ignored them. They looked exhausted and hungry.

Masked young men carrying guns moved through the crowd, trying to maintain order by pushing people back.

The entire scene felt more humiliating than celebratory.

Only weeks earlier, in January 2025, four people had died and several others were injured in a crowd crush outside the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus during the distribution of free meals. Several Syrians later told me the same heartbreaking sentence:

“People now die for a plate of rice.”

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When I mentioned that I had never seen children searching through garbage during my earlier visits, friends in Aleppo told me that it had become increasingly common around 2018, although mostly in poorer suburbs. Now it was visible in central districts as well.

The children searched not only for food but also for plastic that could be sold. Garbage often remained scattered around overflowing dumpsters, with the wind carrying it through the streets.

A Different Syria

The changes had already begun at the Masnaa border crossing from Lebanon.

The giant portraits of Bashar al-Assad that once covered almost every government building had disappeared.

Inside the immigration office, passport control appeared improvised. One official wore a bright pink T-shirt with a humorous slogan. The office was in such disarray that officials did not collect the visa fee, saving me sixty US dollars.

Outside, two bearded men welcomed arriving travellers by handing out sweets. They smiled proudly when I asked if I could photograph them.

Another change was impossible to miss.

Many more women wore full-face veils than I remembered from previous visits. Niqabs had become a far more common sight, with only the eyes visible and, in some cases, even those hidden behind dark glasses.

There were  no uniformed police officers or soldiers.

Instead, security was provided by young masked men carrying Kalashnikov rifles.

One afternoon I was sitting in a café with a Syrian friend when one of them walked in. He stopped beside our table and stared silently at me for several seconds before continuing on.

It was a brief moment, but it left a lasting impression.

During all my previous journeys through Syria, including the years of civil war, I had never truly felt afraid.

In that café in Aleppo, for the first time, I did.