We drove the backbone of Syria, north from Damascus through Homs and Hama to Aleppo, and then south west, through the towns and villages of southern Idlib.
The scale of the devastation is almost impossible to comprehend. Yes, there is daily life and markets and bustling commercial life in the city centres.
But there are also ghost towns stretching on for mile after mile where frontlines were fought over and positions abandoned, tanks left to rot, minefields to maim.
The gutted carcasses of millions of homes, the signature of horrific firepower, Russian air strikes and Assad’s barrel bombs, flung at civilian life.
Eleven million people fled their homes during Syria’s 13-year civil war. This is the rubble and dust they left behind.
Kafr Nabl was an activist town in southern Idlib known, in the early years of the war, as the heart of the revolution.
Now there is not a soul about, but graffiti artists have been through since the fall of the regime and left a celebratory message: “The revolution is an idea. Kafr Nabl is free!”
On a hilltop nearby, Um Abdo and her husband Abu Abdo are busy pruning back olive trees next to what was an Iranian position, and before that their home.
“How are we going to be able to rebuild if we don’t have enough to eat,” says Um Abdo tearfully. “Look behind me, it’s all ruins. Where do we even start?”
She seems more upset about the destruction of her olive and fig trees than she is about her home. They are an elderly couple and they have been through hell.
Um Abdo lists thirty family members who were killed during the war, most of them, her two brothers included, by barrel bombs. Her husband spent three years in jail.
When he came out he found his village destroyed and his family living in displacement camps.
Now Assad is gone, they have decided to try life back home with their olive trees and their little grey puppy.
Their sons fight with HTS, and they are fans of its leader Ahmad al Sharaa. “He’s such a decent man with great manners,” Um Abdo says.
“A man of religion, a man with morals. Everything about him is moral. If he takes over, the entire country will be fine.”
A man we meet trying to fix his motorbike says: “Wherever he is there is security. Things are good.
“He doesn’t have an ego. He’s not strict. He doesn’t, for example, go around saying ‘execute this guy, execute that guy’. There’s none of that.
“He doesn’t go around saying you’re not allowed to smoke, we all smoke, it’s fine!”
It’s a message we hear repeatedly, that al Sharaa has brought stability to Idlib. That even those living in the huge displacement camps around Idlib feel safe, thanks to his Salvation Government.
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One of his signature achievements in Idlib was to stop the fighting between warring factions and bring them under one authority. His challenge now is to do the same across the whole of Syria.
He remains a wanted terrorist with a $10,000 bounty on his head. He was a jihadi, setting up Al Qaeda’s network in Syria – but he says he’s changed.
Idlib is run according to Sharia law but he seems to be suggesting that won’t be the case across the country. Suffice to say, it depends on what he does, not what he says.
What is painfully clear is that he takes on an utterly broken nation. As we’re driving towards Idlib, a van loaded down with family possessions makes its way towards us through the bombed-out streets.
We ask the mother inside what her plans are. She wants to go back to her home, even though it’s destroyed. She has a tent with her for her family, a little boy and a girl.
Her husband was arrested nine years ago and taken to Sednaya prison. She found out last week that he was dead.
“I went blind from all the crying”, she says. “They killed him after torturing him and starving him. Do you know those iron presses that they used?
“My son was only one year old when they took him away. He doesn’t know anything about his father.”
Her son tries to soothe her. “Softly, softly,” he whispers as she sobs.
He is only ten. He shouldn’t have to do this.
