Hassan stands thoughtfully on the edge of a cliff in the mountain overlooking Damascus. Hands in his pockets, he scans the capital which stretches as far as the eye can see, finding it hard to believe that just two weeks ago, Bashar Al-Assad still reigned there.
“It all happened so quickly”notes in a neutral tone this former soldier of the Syrian army. Enlisted in 2012, he served for twelve years as a driver and bodyguard for a state security officer.
At dawn on Sunday, December 8, when the dictator was announced to be on the run, Hassan took off his uniform and returned to his home, in Ouch Al-Warwar, in the north of the capital, an Alawite neighborhood, the religious minority resulting from Shiism to which the Al-Assad clan belongs. “From Saturday, there was a strange atmosphere. An entire branch of our service had withdrawn from Ghouta [dans la banlieue de Damas]. At 5 p.m., we were regrouped inside our headquarters, in Kafr-Sousah [dans le centre de la capitale]. We were 200 to 300 soldiers. Our superiors told us: “The first one to escape, we’ll smoke him.”confides the 32-year-old man.
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