Hours after Syrian rebels swept into Aleppo on Friday night, Abdulkareem Laila ventured into the city for the first time in eight years. The insurgents had set up checkpoints and imposed a curfew and the fighting with regime forces, whose ranks seemed to fold before the lightning offensive, had only just subsided.
But Laila was determined to return to Salaheddine, the once-bustling southern district of Syria’s second city which he fled with thousands of others in 2016 after a brutal months-long bombing campaign and siege by the regime.
“To feel dignity and freedom inside your neighbourhood, these are feelings that so many Syrians have lacked,” said Laila, an administrator for the syndicate of doctors in nearby opposition-held areas.
But the elation felt by Laila and other supporters of the opposition, which has presented itself as a benevolent liberator, has been tempered by trepidation. It is unclear how the main rebel faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group once affiliated with al-Qaeda, will govern the multicultural city, and residents are bracing for a devastating fightback by the regime and its Russian and Iranian allies.
Aleppo, an ancient metropolis of 2mn and once Syria’s industrial heart, was divided between the rebel-held east and regime-controlled west in the years following the 2011 mass uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s government, which morphed into civil war.
Assad, together with Iran and Russia, retook the entire city after a bloody offensive in 2016 during which thousands in the east fled to nearby opposition-held countryside under a shaky evacuation deal.
The city was under Assad government control for years before HTS-led rebel militants took over last week with an apparent ease that left many stunned. Tens of thousands in the province have been displaced by the offensive, according to the UN.
Russian and regime warplanes have already begun to pound the city in a counteroffensive, with many fearing this is just the start of Assad’s wrath.
In the heart of the city, a shopkeeper cautiously reopened despite the sounds of warplanes and distant bombing. While most businesses in his downtown neighbourhood closed the day the rebels entered, he said about half had reopened by Monday.
“In the streets there’s movement. It resembles normalcy. It’s not normal, but it resembles it,” he said, asking not to be identified by name for security reasons. “Just about everyone is sticking to their neighbourhood and not venturing beyond it except in case of necessity . . . We’re in an unknown situation, so that by itself instils fear.”
One resident of a village on the outskirts said they had been under HTS curfew since the rebels swept in, with bakeries and a local hospital shut.
“We made our peace with the regime a long time ago but that doesn’t mean we’re with them,” the resident said. “And we’re also not with the rebels. We’re tired of war and chaos — we just want to live our lives normally.”
While those who support the opposition say it has given them a chance finally to return, regime sympathisers see the rebels as pillaging invaders. State news said on Monday that “terrorist organisations” were engaging in sabotage, theft and kidnapping in the city. Civilians have been killed in both rebel and government-forces attacks, the UN said on Tuesday.
One Aleppo resident told pro-Assad channel Al Mayadeen she burnt all of her belongings that might mark her out as a government supporter, like books and pictures, lest rebels find them in her home.
One of the great unknowns is how HTS — which in recent years has tried to rebrand itself as a moderate Islamist group — will rule the city.
“There are reports of services resuming in Aleppo,” said Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, on Tuesday. “But there are also fears about what it will mean for service delivery, if designated entities oversee de facto administrative arrangements in a city of 2mn people.”
Pedersen added: “There are videos and testimonies of detainees — men and women — being released from detention centres, including some who say they were detained for over a decade. But equally there have been videos of large-scale detention of prisoners of war by HTS and armed opposition groups.”
HTS has governed its stronghold of Idlib, a region of 3mn to 4mn people, via a civilian-led administration called the Syrian Salvation Government. Experts said that while the group has created a measure of stability, it has also ruled with an iron fist and in Aleppo may impose a version of Islam too conservative for many residents.
Karam Shaar, a political economist at New Lines Institute think-tank who is originally from the city, said that while HTS had proved effective at governing Idlib, Aleppo would be a bigger challenge.
“While HTS is far more radical . . . it’s nonetheless the most competent [opposition authority] in terms of governance, I would say across the country,” he said. “The Salvation Government has managed to achieve stability in its region — a modicum of economic growth, even.”
“Despite that . . . I think they would nonetheless struggle to govern Aleppo,” he continued. “Aleppo is much larger, much more complex, has more minorities.”
The incoming rebel forces have said they are setting up a bureaucracy, their official channels offering numbers for Aleppo residents to call for ministries ranging from transport to electricity, even designating a general director for real estate matters.
They promised to restore basic services and reopen bakeries, and have pushed a narrative of religious tolerance. Pro-rebel media have showed residents in Aleppo’s Christian quarter insisting all was well under their new rulers and shopping for Christmas trees.
“It is forbidden to touch anyone, or to attack your property, no matter the sect, not just Muslims — but also others, whether Christians or Armenians, or any other sect in Aleppo,” a commander of one of the rebel factions said in a filmed speech at a mosque in the city after the takeover.
In the Christian neighbourhood of Suleimanieh, tense calm prevailed with residents still bewildered by the incursion. “No one understands anything, that’s why they’re scared,” said one restaurant owner, who shut his chicken eatery for lack of customers. “We have no idea what to expect: is it going to get better or worse?”
One particular source of concern, however, is the fate of Kurdish-run districts in Aleppo.
HTS’s Turkish-backed allies have in the past days taken over nearby territories held by Kurdish factions, and the rebels have offered Kurdish fighters inside the city safe passage out. But some Kurds see this as a way of forcing them out of places where they have lived for years.
“The area is completely besieged by these factions,” said Mervan Qamishlo, a spokesperson for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, claiming that Kurdish civilians were in danger.
But for many Syrians, like Monzer, a medical worker who fled from Aleppo in 2016 and returned from exile in Turkey on Friday, the end of regime control was exhilarating.
“For the first time, I saw my home, my old workplace, people I haven’t seen in a long time,” he said, adding that he returned right away to try and help. “We went to the security branches where they arrested us, beat us, tortured us, and disappeared our friends.”
Yet Monzer’s homecoming was fleeting. After just a few days in his city, frightened by the intensifying regime bombardment and rising tensions between the rebels and Kurdish factions, Monzer made a fateful decision: he left Aleppo and returned to Turkey.
Additional reporting by Raya Jalabi and cartography by Steven Bernard