Only a year ago, Syria was a forgotten land, teetering on the edge of time; a rusted regime and a heavy shadow. A people endlessly drained and a country torn between the scars of history, the lure of geography, the weight of devastation, and the pain of suffering. Then came that day, not merely a shift in the balance, but the collapse of a wall that had for years seemed impervious to fracture. A moment when air suddenly surged into the nation’s lungs and, from it, a black dust receded.
A year has passed since the disintegration of the Assad regime, and since Ahmed al-Sharaa assumed his place in the palace, a place long soaked in torrents of blood, a silent witness to bombs hurled from Qasioun onto the belly of Damascus, and to wounds inflicted upon the shoulders of its Ghouta.
So much has happened in only the one year that has passed that it feels like a decade. With careful steps and defiant dignity, Syrians have begun to craft a new narrative—one not imposed onto them, but born from the ashes of their own pain and suffering.
Over the past year, the machinery of fear began to unravel. Voices that had once shattered against the harsh wall of silence and dissolved into darkness now rise into the public sphere, debating, clashing, and contending. The breathing space that emerged this year is far from perfect, yet it exists. That alone is a modest miracle in a country long suffocated.
