It was a cold, wet day in December 2016 when teacher and activist Abdulkafi Alhamdo slumped over on the porch of his Aleppo apartment across from heaps of rubble. Pro-government forces, backed by the Russian military, advanced on the last rebel-controlled areas of the Syrian city. He had spent months documenting the death and destruction around him in hopes that other nations would bring an end to the violence. Before evacuating with his wife and their 10-month-old daughter, Alhamdo gave his final dispatch from Aleppo.
Staring into his phone camera, he spoke of losing faith in the international community, expressed concern for his family, and grieved the scenes of pro-government soldiers celebrating on the dead bodies of rebel fighters. Gunfire rang out in the background. “At least we know we were a free people,” he said before signing off.
For the past eight years, Alhamdo has been living in the town of Darat Izza in the rebel-held countryside around 20 miles outside Aleppo. He is raising his three young children — 8 and 6 years old, and 19 months — and is teaching English literature at Free Aleppo University. He often spoke of his home in Aleppo to his children and students, and about his desire for freedom from President Bashar al-Assad’s government. And he promised to himself that if the city were ever liberated, he would be among the first to return.
Last Friday, as rebel forces advanced on Aleppo, the country’s second largest city, in a surprise offensive, Alhamdo hopped into his car and drove with a friend toward the city. Rebel fighters warned him that fighting was still going on, but he insisted and made it through a checkpoint. His first stop: his old apartment. While there, he recorded a new video, showing the exact spot where he sat in 2016, this time, to celebrate his return.
“You cannot imagine what my feelings were,” Alhamdo told The Intercept. “I was running like a child. I was crying and crying.”
Photo: Ugur Yildirim/DIA Images/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP
Alhamdo is among the many in Syria who celebrated the opportunity to return to Aleppo for the first time in nearly a decade, where they were able to reenter their homes and reunite with relatives and friends. The civil war had been in something of a lull since 2020 after the Syrian government, alongside the Russian military and Hezbollah fighters, had beaten back rebel militants to regain much of the country.
But with Russia’s attention drawn toward its war in Ukraine and Hezbollah weakened in its clash with Israel, rebel forces have made a fierce push over the last week. Rebel militants, led by the most significant faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, are moving south toward Damascus, the capital, and have claimed another major city, Hama. On Friday, they threatened to retake the city of Homs, a vital link connecting Syria to Lebanon, Russian naval bases, and Damascus.
The United Nations has since called for a ceasefire, citing mounting humanitarian concerns. More than more than 280,000 Syrians have been internally displaced by the recent fighting in Syria, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program. An additional 500,000 Syrian refugees have recently returned to the country from Lebanon, after fleeing from Israel’s bombing campaign there. And in the first week of renewed fighting in northwestern Syria, at least 98 civilians have been killed, including 85 civilians in Russian airstrikes on rebel-controlled Idlib and the Aleppo countryside, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. (The ongoing rebel offensive was preceded by an escalation of Russian-Syrian strikes on Idlib and other parts of northwest Syria.)
The Assad government is responsible for war crimes and oppressive tactics such as torture and the mass incarceration of civilians who have disappeared within the country’s prisons. The leadership of HTS previously had connections with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, though its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, says his group has since severed those ties, has evolved from its jihadist roots, and is accepting of the country’s religious and ethnic minority groups.
Alhamdo said he has spoken out against HTS for some of its past actions but has welcomed its evolution. While walking around Aleppo this week, he said he does not align with any specific rebel group and is only concerned with fighting “against oppression, whatever its form is.”
It’s a balancing act for Syrians, such as Alhamdo, said Mai El-Sadany, the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “It can be true that you are a die-hard opponent of the Assad regime, which has committed war crimes of horrific nature, or celebrate the fact that these are serious challenges to that brutal regime that has silenced so many, that has displaced so many, that has separated families, that has turned what began as a peaceful uprising into a proxy war,” El-Sadany said. “You can recognize all of that while also taking a wait-and-see approach, or while also organizing and insisting that folks will not accept a society in which all citizens are not equal.”
Photo: Omar Haj Kadou/AFP via Getty Images
In 2011, amid the Arab Spring when many Arab countries rose up against their governments, Syrians started to protest against the Ba’athist dictatorship of the Assad family, which has ruled the country for more than 50 years.
Alhamdo had joined the pro-democracy marches in 2011 in Aleppo, which hoped to peacefully bring an end to Assad’s rule. “My life started with the revolution,” he said, with the protests breathing meaning and hope into him and his friends. “Before that, I don’t consider myself alive.”
The government crackdown on protesters was harsh, as government soldiers fired into crowds of civilians and bombarded the streets with tanks and heavy weaponry. The revolution eventually devolved into the ongoing civil war, which over the past decade has become a proxy war for various nations with imperialist aspirations and interest in the region, such as Russia, Iran, Turkey, and to a degree, the United States. The civilian death toll has exceeded 300,000, the vast majority killed by the Syrian government and its allies in punishing bombing campaigns that leveled large portions of many cities, including Aleppo.
When he returned to Aleppo this past week, Alhamdo visited the graves of friends killed in the war. While there, he cried, offered prayers, and asked for forgiveness for leaving them when he was forced out in 2016. Later, he visited the Queiq, an ancient waterway that runs through the city, where in 2013, at least 230 bodies had washed up from government-controlled areas, many with gunshot wounds to their heads, their hands tied behind their backs, and mouths taped shut. Human rights groups have blamed the Assad government for their deaths.
“We found them in our areas, dozens of bodies, dozens of souls that are still crying for justice, that’s why we’re back in Aleppo, to achieve some justice for those people who didn’t have it,” Alhamdo said in a video as he stood in front of the river. “World, you’re also responsible for getting these people who made such crimes accountable.”
When rebels entered Aleppo, they gained control over its prison and freed its incarcerated population. Many said they were falsely imprisoned by the Assad regime, which wrongfully accused them as members of oppositional forces. One man, interviewed by a Syrian journalist, said he was freed this week after spending eight years imprisoned. He reported being tortured after he was accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. After breaking down during the interview and screaming “Damn al-Assad” through his tears, the man said he planned to return to his wife and two children who he hasn’t spoken to since his arrest.
Similar scenes took place in Hama, where rebels freed dozens of other political prisoners. Capturing the city also held a profound impact on its residents who are still healing from a 1982 massacre in which Assad’s father, Hafez, oversaw the killing and disappearance of at least 10,000 people. Earlier this year, Switzerland issued an arrest warrant on war crimes charges against Hafez’s brother, Rifaat al-Assad, who still lives in Syria, for his involvement in the massacre. Videos posted to social media showed people in Hama cheering as a crane toppled a large statue of former President Hafez al-Assad.
Photo: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images
Alhamdo’s return to Aleppo has also allowed him to reunite with his sister, aunt and uncle — as well as his father, who he hadn’t seen for 20 years. His father moved to Saudi Arabia in 2004 and returned 10 years later, but he lived in a regime-controlled area of the city, while Alhamdo lived in a rebel-controlled part. When they reunited, his father, 85, held him tightly and kissed him over and over again, saying that he didn’t think he would live to see him again.
The return also meant that Alhamdo was able to show his children where his family is from. They met their grandfather for the first time. He also brought them to key landmarks, such as the ancient Aleppo Citadel. He had spent the past eight years showing them photos of the city, sharing memories and telling them that even if he can’t make it in his lifetime, they would one day visit.
“After liberating Aleppo, they found that yes, they have roots,” Alhamdo said. “They have history, they have relatives.”
Despite the newfound freedoms, many of his family still fear Assad’s government. Before the recent offensive, government intelligence officers would visit the home of Alhamdo’s father, asking him for the whereabouts of his son. Alhamdo suspected that they’ve identified him as an enemy due to his outspokenness against the Assad regime online and to Western media. He said his father has had to bribe the officers to leave him alone.
When he tried to visit relatives after his return, his uncle refused to open the door. Several friends have also texted Alhamdo, telling him not to say hello should they see each other in public. Alhamdo said his family and friends worry that if the Assad government were to retake Aleppo, they would be punished for associating with him.
Alhamdo likened the reach of the Assad regime to Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel “1984,” which he teaches in his English literature classes at Free Aleppo University. Similar to Big Brother, a leader of a totalitarian state in the dystopian novel, Assad’s photo is omnipresent throughout the city. “And people are afraid of him, all the time, even if he is not there,” he said.
In class, with many of his students too young to recall the early days of the revolution or civil war, Alhamdo uses the book to teach his students about why Syrians rose up against the government. Big Brother is made by our silence, he tells them.
Before returning to Aleppo, Alhamdo said he’d have a recurring nightmare, one that he said many displaced Syrians share. In the nightmare, he was living inside Aleppo or another government-controlled city, but was trapped with no way to get out. When he returned to the city last week, walking past buildings with pro-government slogans still covering the walls alongside photos of Assad, he recalled his nightmare. And he had to remind himself that he was awake.
“When I was there for the first time,” he said, “I always prayed to God, ‘Please tell me this is not a dream.’”
