I was hunted by the Assad regime. Now I can return.
Human rights campaigner and journalist Ghias Al-Jundi fled Syria nearly three decades ago after being hunted by Bashar Al-Assad's father, Hafez. He tells us what it feels like to watch their fall
By Ghias Aljundi
I have been in exile for twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years ago was the last time I was in Syria. I last saw Syria twenty-seven years ago. And, apart from a brother and his family in Germany, the rest of my family and life is still in Syria. Because we have historically been anti-regime, we have been targeted by the Assad regime.
I’m writing this from Jordan - attending an annual journalism conference. Whenever I’m here, I always want to visit the border areas to take a quick look at my broken country, knowing I can’t enter. This year was different. It was marked by escalating events - opposition fighters were nearing Damascus! I felt excitement, hope and fear. I was scanning the news, hyper focused on everything. My dream of seeing the fall of the most brutal Assad regime was happening minute by minute and I didn’t sleep for three days.
The news arrived at 2am - reports that Assad fled Syria leaving behind him a country in fragments filled with eighteen million devastated and wounded people and over four million scattered and displaced around the globe. All my ears heard were the sounds of people celebrating, chanting and expressing the end of the culture of fear. It was almost unreal. Then I saw it - jubilant Syrians bringing down statues of Hafez al-Assad which are spread across the country - symbols of the despotic regime carried on by his son Bashar with equal cruelty. And my first thought was “I need to be there for this.” I wanted to be with people in squares, on the streets, in the towns and villages to witness the end of something I never stopped fighting against. I want to join my fellow Syrians in their triumph and declare the end of my forced exile. The rules, as we have known them throughout Assad’s brutal security apparatus, have changed. As Assad’s family flees, I can return.
I also miss Syria. It’s a feeling shared with the thousands of others who are trying to find a way back since the day Assad fell.
I’ve had hundreds of supportive and congratulatory messages sent by friends from all over the world. Many of them express concerns about the new rulers in Damascus. My answer is that no rulers can be worse than Assad. No one can dare to do what Assad has done. His Ba’athist party ran seventeen different, equally brutal secret service apparatuses. Prisons overflowed with activists and human rights defenders. Journalists were targeted, imprisoned or killed. Corruption was global - as much of the footage we are seeing on the news and in social media shows, the Assads enjoyed extraordinary wealth and privilege while average Syrians couldn’t afford to buy bread.
Despite the poverty, the threats and the atrocities, Syrians rose to demand the end of the Assad family regime. His overthrow didn’t start in December 2024. It started after painful, bloody years of bombing and persecution.
Any new rulers are more than aware that the Syrian people overcame their fear, and they also know that they will be moved on if a transitional government violates human rights, establishes a new dictatorship or imposes religious laws. Not long ago, the new acting Prime Minister appeared with a religious flag behind him. Syrians protested against it as a sign of imposing an Islamic government. A short while later, the same Prime Minister was on Al Jazeera with the new Syrian flag behind him. It appears, to many Syrians, that this new government seems ready to listen. And, like me, my Syrian friends and family all say “no one will be worse than Assad.”
The majority of Syrian people, myself included, are aware that we are looking ahead to turbulent times. Recovery will not be instant. Wounds need to heal. Society is scattered and shattered and our infrastructure is damaged. We had fifty-four years under the Assads. All of this needs to be rebuilt. We have a long to-do list that includes the important work of establishing strong foundations for a functioning and transparent civil society to be the bedrock for democracy. We need to do this under the canopy of co-existence because there isn’t a universal Syrian “type” - we all come from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. We need to form a mechanism of transitional justice that will hold the regime’s perpetrators to account. The victims of this unbearable trauma will not rest otherwise. And we will need support to do this - but that support needs to come with no strings attached.
Since leaving Syria, I’ve forged a new life for myself. But no one goes into exile without leaving a part of them behind. I now have a family who have never seen some of the people who love them the most in the flesh. So, of course, I have to find a way to dig up the parts of myself I left behind and rebuild.
