LEILA FADEL, HOST:
In Damascus, Syria, where we're asking what a new Syria without Bashar al-Assad may look like. There are the questions about what people lived through as Assad used chemical weapons and barrel bombs on his people, the grief and desperation as tens of thousands of families search for their disappeared.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
FADEL: And the joy as Syrians finally feel like they can criticize, hope and speak freely with their friends and family without fear of imprisonment. It's a joy that manifests itself physically with impromptu dance parties in the streets.
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FADEL: But there are also the worries that lurk under it all among Damascenes in the capital about the new conservative Islamist leadership in charge and what kind of Syria they will build. One man told me if you're trying to find the truth, it will be hard. People were afraid before, and they're afraid now. With an NPR team of correspondents on the ground, we've been fanning out to tell pieces of Syria's story in this historic moment of transition. So I thought I'd bring those pieces together. NPR's Ruth Sherlock and Jane Arraf are here with me in Damascus. Hi to you both.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Hi, good morning.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Hi, Leila.
FADEL: Hi. So, Ruth, I'm going to start with you because you've really been focused on understanding what happened in Assad's most notorious prison. And that's the first place you went when you arrived in Damascus.
SHERLOCK: That's right. So we've seen, you know, the scenes of families searching for the missing - people that were disappeared into that prison. But then we tried to build a bigger picture of what happened inside those prisons. So we tracked down prisoners to talk to them about what happened. These prisoners told us that on a Saturday, guards would call the names of some prisoners. Those people would be taken into separate cells. They would be starved of food and water for three days. Then, they would be taken out and beaten in the corridors in front of the other prisoners. And then they would disappear.
And what we're learning from an Amnesty International report from 2017 is that they were taken into a different building, and they were hung. And we've been speaking to people who can verify, can corroborate that report, but, you know, right up until recent years, were trying to build a picture of how many people died this way, and it seems as though it is in the tens of thousands.
FADEL: So, I mean, you're describing mass executions. Where do all these bodies go?
SHERLOCK: I think the answer for that, Leila, is mass graves. They are being discovered across Damascus, across Syria. We reached one man who was a bulldozer driver, and he was forced to work on one of these mass graves, and he described digging these trenches that went several feet down and then bodies coming at night in trucks, trucks filled with corpses, being pulled by hand into these trenches. They said that these bodies came from Sednaya Prison but also from the dozens of other intelligence branches across the regime of Syria.
FADEL: Jane, I want to pull you in here. I mean, it's hard to believe that Assad was only deposed just over a week ago. And I've been wondering, how are things still functioning when this huge transition is happening? What are you seeing?
ARRAF: Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, it still does feel unreal. And going in the streets of Damascus and seeing things like - I saw a guy outside the governor's office who had plastered photos of Bashar al-Assad on the sidewalk, so people had to step on his face. I mean, you're seeing those outward explosions of...
FADEL: Yeah.
ARRAF: ...Pure relief, but at the same time, you're seeing - what we've been seeing are the very specific crucial minutia of what it takes to rebuild a state. In Daraa province, for instance, that's where the uprising started in 2011. And there, what we saw were little kids - roughly the same age as the ones who were pulled into Assad's prisons and tortured starting that uprising - painting stars of the new flag. And then right next to that, what would seem like quite a boring scene, but which felt incredibly momentous, were, like, hundreds of customs officials who had been brought back to work and businessmen, and they were all trying to figure out how to reopen that border and get commerce flowing.
FADEL: And you're about to head to Aleppo. And even though Damascus feels united, at least on the surface, under the new authority here, that's not the case in all of the country, right?
ARRAF: No. As you know, this country is extraordinary for its diversity...
FADEL: Yes.
ARRAF: ...For its ethnic minorities, for its religious minorities. It's also why a lot of people are really concerned about how all of that is going to fit together. One of those areas of concerns is northeastern Syria, a Kurdish-led autonomous administration which broke away from the al-Assad regime. They've been supported by U.S. forces. And, Leila, I spoke with a senior U.S. military official this week. He didn't want to be named because he's not authorized to speak publicly, but one of the things he said was there can't be any autonomous regions in this country anymore. The Kurds will have to decide that they're part of Syria.
Right now, we're seeing fighting between Kurdish forces and Arab-led forces in the opposition - what used to be the opposition. Now actual forces. And we're going to be probably seeing a lot of that. It's going to take a lot to reassure the Kurds and particularly minorities that supported the al-Assad regime because they thought they were safer, that they will be equally safe in this new Syria.
FADEL: And not to mention all of the outside influences, right? Turkey's influence. Israel has been striking the military capabilities here, despite the new leadership saying they don't want a war with Israel. So they're dealing with all of that. And I can't help but think about Iraq. I mean, Jane, you and I covered that war. I mean, you covered it from even before. You covered Saddam's leadership - another Baathist leader - where people felt like if they said a word, they would go to jail. And I can't help but think about what happened there and whether it might happen here. Are you feeling that too?
ARRAF: Yeah, there's always that shiver of apprehension. And when I was speaking to some of the people at the border, the customs officials. They were saying, you know, it's a beautiful feeling to be free, but that doesn't erase decades of fear. And you're still seeing a little bit of that fear. One of the extraordinary things here, though, I find, is that, for instance, people are obeying traffic lights. I mean, can you...
FADEL: Yeah.
ARRAF: ...Imagine that in Baghdad in 2003? And I think the real difference is this was not a regime change that happened with a foreign army with tanks and guns and civilians not knowing what was going on and being killed in many places. This was a very different dynamic. And although it will take a lot to make this work, it seems to have a better chance than Iraq did.
FADEL: Yeah, maybe. That's NPR's Ruth Sherlock and Jane Arraf with me in Damascus. Thank you to you both.
ARRAF: Thank you.
SHERLOCK: Thank you.
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