In the days after Syria’s government fell and President Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, Syrians celebrated the sudden end of a dynastic regime that had kept them in fear and poverty for five decades.
In Damascus, the capital, and Aleppo, they pulled down statues, tore up portraits of the Assad family and ransacked the presidential palace, denouncing Mr. al-Assad’s opulent lifestyle in a country where most people live below the poverty line.
The government’s fall, on Dec. 8, was the end of a brutal civil war that began in 2011, when Mr. al-Assad cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring. An estimated 618,000 people have died, and some 12 million — more than half the country’s population — were displaced. Tens of thousands more disappeared into a prison system that was notorious for its abuses.
Families have been flooding back into Syria from Lebanon, where they sought refuge during the worst of the war. They are eager to start rebuilding. In cities across Syria, jubilant crowds gathered for the first Friday Prayers since rebels toppled the Assad regime.
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