The Night Assad Fell

By: Nayla Kazibra, Civil Defense volunteer.

June 2025

The poster is designed by the cartoonist Amani Al-ali.

Sunday, December 8^th, 2024. Syria without Bashar al-Assad. At last, the tyrant had fallen.

It was almost impossible to believe. For years we had waited for this moment, watching province after province slip from the regime’s grip. We expected the same brutal reaction as always, with Russian warplanes, helicopters and artillery pounding civilians. Yet this time there was only silence. The tyrant had fled, the revolution triumphed, and Syria was free at last.

In a single night, more than half a century of Assad rule collapsed. Bashar al-Assad was banished into history.

It felt like a dream, the shock filling every thought and every hour; it still does. A week later in Aleppo, I asked friends whether they would return. “We’re still thinking,” they said. Two weeks after liberation we began preparing to go back, urged on by calls from our family: “Come to Aleppo, we want to see you”.

I had imagined being overwhelmed when I arrived. The day was glorious, festive in spirit. Family called throughout the journey, asking where we had reached. The road was rough and barely fit for cars, and security forces were out to guide people safely through. The convoy from the liberated north slowed, uncertain which way to turn. Security forces warned us away from one dangerous route and directed us to a safer one. 

At last, we entered Aleppo. The joy of reunion, with family, relatives, and father’s house still as if I had never left.  For a moment I forgot the long years of torment. The real jolt was seeing how much the children had grown. My nieces and nephews crowded round, asking who each person was. One I remembered at five is now eighteen! So, I said, “All right, introductions. Tell me your name, and whose child you are”.

After a long day moving between relatives’ homes, we returned to Azaz. My children kept asking whether we were equal to those who had stayed in their homes. “We were the ones uprooted,” they said.

My son, Abdulbari, now 24, asked me how wounds heal after war. Once among Aleppo’s top students, he had dreamt of becoming a doctor and I had made sure he had private tutors for every subject. But during his final exams, Russia waged an intense attack to enable regime forces to re-seize control. We fled with nothing but the clothes we were wearing. That year, our home and shop were reduced to rubble, and my son never had the chance to sit the exam.

Instead, to support us, he learned to fix engines, and he learned to live with the fear of what was to come. Depression took hold. “How is it fair that I’m holding a spanner instead of a scalpel?” he would say, often in tears. In time, he abandoned any thought of study and focused on earning enough to pay the rent and afford food. My salary as a medic barely covered the essentials.

Any mention of getting back to his studies would plunge him into despair. “Don’t, Mum,” he would say. “I used to be the best in class, and now I just can’t”.

It broke my heart to watch him suffer, and the whole family suffered with him. In 2023, when his younger sister passed her exams, it seemed to rekindle something in him. “I’ll take mine next year,” he said.

Thankfully, he did. He passed with a high mark and went on to study Architecture, a field that demands both precision and artistic skill, qualities he has in abundance. Until now, whenever he achieves a high mark, it still gives me a deep sense of pride.

He is back on track, though he should have graduated with his peers. Yet liberation brought old wounds to the surface, and with them the memory of everything he, and all of us, had endured.

“Mum”, he asked again, “how do wounds heal after wars”?

“Transitional justice”, I said.

“And who will give us back our home? Who will make up for all the years of hardship and displacement”?

I clarified, “An independent commission will investigate, the media will play its part, and those responsible will face trial. There must be compensation, financial and moral, for those who’ve suffered”. 

I want a commission I can go to with my case, to ensure I receive restitution that will help me face life’s hardships. I will not settle for gestures of justice. I want justice that is real, and that lasts.

I am Nayla Kazibra, a medic for eight years with Syria Civil Defence, Assad’s sworn enemy, with records and evidence of his crimes.

I have seen cases that would chill anyone’s blood. Once I treated a boy whose leg was attached by skin alone after a bombing, and all the way in the ambulance he begged: “Don’t let them take my leg. I want to go to school; I want to walk”.

I have lived war’s hardship at home, with my children, and I have lived it at my work.

Transitional justice is not just a slogan. It is deep repair. It is not only about bringing children back into classrooms, but about ensuring education with dignity; it is the redress that restores every right and builds stability for us and for our children.

I call on the new government to stand for justice and accountability for the detainees, the wounded and the martyrs. Honour their memory in ways that ease the grief their mothers carry, allowing them to know their children’s sacrifices are remembered and respected. Do not forget the many who suffered through this revolution, who endured so much to rid the country of a tyrant; name schools in their honour, raise monuments to preserve their legacy.

We, the family of the White Helmets, Syria Civil Defence, celebrate our country’s liberation and look ahead to a Syria that leads by example in the Arab World, driving reform, appointing capable ministers to revive the national economy, and building institutions that meet the needs of its people. At the heart of this new chapter stands our own ministry, the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management, which on 1 June 2025 formally incorporated Syria Civil Defence.

By: Nayla Kazibra