Masnaa, Lebanon – At Lebanon’s Masnaa crossing, the gates into Syria have opened for the first time in over a decade. On Sunday, thousands flooded to the crossing point to celebrate the downfall of a figure, who only a week ago, seemed untouchable.
Initial figures state that at least 1,500 Syrians have left Lebanon so far to return, although the number will certainly rise in the coming days. An estimated 1.5 million Syrians currently reside in Lebanon, having fled their country following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.
Many have not been able to return home for over a decade, but as of Sunday, the gates of return have now opened.
Assad’s $100 entry tax has been waived, and with scant checks, the border guards are waving through everyone.
“Anyone who wants to go can go, there are no restrictions now,” one Lebanese border official told The New Arab.
Amid a cacophony of fireworks, ululation, and celebratory gunfire, young men hoisted up by the crowd screamed takbirs to the gleeful rapture of co-patriots. Others chanted the music of the opposition, songs of resistance that had become poor friends for those cold hard years of exile amid the wilderness of a dead revolution.
Yet on the border on Sunday, the spirit of the opposition took hold once more with a fervour not seen since the early days of the protests, amid a sense of shock and delirium.
“No one knows how this happened,” one person told The New Arab. “We are all shocked, how can we be free now after so long.”
“I never thought I would live to see this day,” interjected another amid tears. “The people can return to Syria, and now Syria can return to the world”.
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Local shop owners, who only two days prior had been grumbling about the lack of traffic passing through the town, came to hand out sweets.
“We have had a difficult year in Lebanon,” says Jalal, a local Lebanese clothes shop owner cloaked in the three-star flag of the opposition. “But now I kiss the hands [of the rebels] and tell them they represent the basis of a free Syria.”
Scenes like this were repeated across Lebanon. In Tripoli, a largely Sunni city, with a large Syrian population, tracer rounds have lit up the night sky over the past few nights heralding the advance of the rebel factions, and on Sunday, crowds gathered in similarly jubilant celebration.
A new Syria
Syria’s brutal war has cast a pall over an entire generation of young Syrians who have never known home, yet for some this new chapter is also fraught with uncertainty.
“Our nightmare is over, the liberators have come and now Syria is free,” beamed Khaled, 13, a child of the revolution, born under the shelling of Assad’s siege of Daraa in 2011. Khaled escaped the siege as an infant with his family.
Fleeing to Lebanon, he grew up in Masnaa, within sight of his homeland but unable to return. For Khaled, although happy about the downfall of the regime, the prospect of return is held apprehensively.
“I have never known Syria, I don’t even know where my home is. I’m from Masnaa, I work all the different jobs here, I know everyone, but my family wants to go home so I guess I will leave.”
A kaleidoscope of flags sprung up from out of nowhere at the crossing, reflecting catharsis and the vindication of a decade of despair.
One individual called for “the establishment of a civil state”, and the “freedoms we marched for” in the early days of the revolution.
“We don’t want another military regime, or another dictator. We call for a free civil Syrian state,” he said.
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But another shouted over him, “this is the revolution of the Mujahideen, they are the ones who kept the revolution alive, and now they have delivered us victory”. At least for now, both visions were clearly able to coexist among those celebrating.
Many families, too poor to afford a taxi, walked through the crossing, carrying suitcases and backpacks, stuffed full of their most prized possessions. Carrying their lives and their futures with them, they doggedly began the long 8km trek across no-man’s land, towards a new Syria.
Whilst some held aloft pictures of their lost loved ones, Raja held a picture of her son. “I lost him, they took him from me years ago, and I don’t know where he is now, I pray to God that he is alive,” she said. “I will go home now, God willing I will meet him there.”
For some, like Ahmed – who asked for his name to be changed – return represents the closure of a circle. The revolutionary-turned-father, surrounded by his wife and five children, all swaddled against the biting wind coming up through the Bekaa Valley, is now going home to rebuild his life.
“We won,” he says. “Finally” with a wry smile. “Assad detained me three times for my role in the protests, after the third time, my wife and I left. That was 11 years ago now. Khalas, it’s done, now we can go home. The revolution is over.”
Yet merely metres away from the revelry, in an area fenced by barbed wire, sat families exhausted by their late-night flight from Damascus. Ringed by armed guards of the Lebanese General Security, the Syrians amongst them had been prohibited from entering the country.
One man, presumably scared to draw the ire of his previously exiled compatriots, quickly scratched away at a bumper sticker on his car depicting the flag of the Assad regime, wreathed by swords and garlands.
Others, huddled together, sat with their babies in their arms, and their heads on their laps. Their own futures are now unknown. Most were reluctant to speak, some offered a few words only.
“I don’t know what’s happening, we heard the sounds of fighting so we left, who knows what will happen now,” one man said.
Cian Ward is a journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, migration, and humanitarian issues
Follow him on X: @CP__Ward
