Leila Molana-Allen:
These thriving Damascus suburbs used to be home to millions of people, but the Assad regime systematically targeted rebels and their families here with airstrikes, shelling and chemical weapons, eventually clearing them out. They’re now free to come back, but, in this shattered wasteland, most of them don’t have homes to return to.
Leaving Damascus to drive north to Homs, the highway is a patchwork of carnage, some former neighborhoods now little more than dust. Abandoned Syrian army tanks litter the road, scattered with remnants of the fallen regime. But now this road, once a feared path lined with risky checkpoints, teems with life, excited families heading home, rebel fighters reinforcing the country they now run.
In the wreckage of Homs city, a lone figure wanders. Mohammad is home after 12 long years. In this hollow shell where he was born and raised, he remembers how life gave way to fear and death at the hands of Assad’s army.
