Expelled from Aleppo as children, these fighters returned as its liberators

Aleppo, Syria – When Abdallah Abu Jarrah was 13, he dreamed of becoming an engineer or a lawyer.

But his home city of Aleppo was besieged by Syrian regime forces, aided by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.

“The situation was terrible with bombings, beatings and killing,” the now 21-year-old told Al Jazeera. “I remember the regime’s massacres, the killing, and the hitting of bakeries and hospitals.”

Eight years later, a series of images went viral on social media. Youth, displaced by the regime in 2016, had returned as fighters to liberate the city of Aleppo. The side-by-side photos showed children boarding buses in one photo. In the next photo, they are young men smiling broadly, wearing military fatigues and carrying rifles.

On December 22, 2016, a four-year battle that pitted regime forces and their allies against the opposition ended with the evacuation of thousands of opposition forces from East Aleppo on buses.

War crimes were rife.

The al-Assad regime besieged opposition areas, which included thousands of civilians, while the Russian air force bombed hospitals and bakeries. The regime used internationally banned chlorine bombs, according to the United Nations, killing hundreds.

The UN reported in November 2016, a month before the end of the battle, that East Aleppo had no working hospitals.

“The brutality and the intensity of the fighting was not seen before,” Elia Ayoub, a writer and researcher who covered the fall of Aleppo, said.

The UN also criticised opposition groups for indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas “to terrorise the civilian population” and for shooting at civilians to try and keep them from leaving the areas.

At least 35,000 people were dead and much of the city destroyed by 2016 – most of it still in ruins eight years later. At least 18 percent of the dead were children.

“I thought we would never come back,” Abu Jarrah told Al Jazeera.

Capital of the Syrian revolution

When a peaceful uprising demanding reforms broke out in Syria in 2011, al-Assad responded with brutal force. The opposition took up arms and challenged the regime around the country.

The regime relied on foreign intervention. Hezbollah and Iran joined the fight in 2013 and the Russian intervention in late 2015, ostensibly to counter ISIL (ISIS), pushed the opposition back.

“Symbolically, Aleppo was the capital of the revolution,” Ayoub said. “Its fall was preceded by other cities and it was this final nail in the uprising’s coffin at that time.”

The city would stay under regime control for almost eight years. Many who fled Aleppo moved to Idlib in Syria’s northwest and huddled in displacement camps, where they suffered years of air attacks by the regime and its allies.

In November, opposition fighters led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army launched an operation to retake Aleppo.

Among the factors in their favour was that the Syrian Army was possibly weaker than it had ever been and its allies were preoccupied with their own battles – Russia in Ukraine and Iran and Hezbollah with Israel.

‘I felt human again’

On November 30, the Syrian opposition reentered Aleppo for the first time in eight years and quickly took control of the city.

Among the returning fighters was Abu Jarrah, who had joined a faction in the Free Syrian Army when he was about 16.

“I felt human again,” he told Al Jazeera, his eyes shining outside the city’s historic citadel, dressed in military fatigues adorned with Syria’s green, white and black flag, with three red stars. “Today is an indescribable joy.”

Standing not far away was Abu Abdelaziz, another Free Syrian Army fighter who had fled the city when he was 17. He wore fatigues and a black face mask with a skull imprinted on the front, and carried a rifle.

“They forced us to leave, displaced us and cursed us and we returned to where we were raised, where we spent our childhood with our friends and school,” he said. “It’s a great feeling of great joy. You can’t measure it.”

Abu Abdelaziz said the first thing he did when the city was liberated was visit his old school.

“When I was young I wanted to be a heart doctor,” the fighter who is now 24 years old said. The war, however, took a heavy toll on him. His family was killed and his house in Aleppo was destroyed. Still, he said, he wanted to stay in Aleppo and become a doctor.

“Now, God willing, I will complete my studies,” he said.

‘We will build this country together’

Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and historically among the Middle East’s most economically important. Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols, Mamelukes and Ottomans all ruled it before it became part of modern Syria. Before the civil war, it was Syria’s capital of industry and finance.

Parts of Aleppo have largely fallen into disrepair. Locals told Al Jazeera that even before the war, the regime had stopped investing in the city. But very little of the damage from the fighting from 2012 to 2016 has been repaired. Even its crown jewel, The Citadel of Aleppo, was badly damaged and left to rot. Buildings destroyed by air attacks are still visible from the foot of the Citadel today.

Even in the city’s rif – or periphery – entire neighbourhoods are completely abandoned. Collapsed roofs and crumbling facades rest behind empty pools as wild dogs roam the ghost towns.

Now that the war is over, the city’s returning fighters hope to trade in their guns to help fix their city.

“If a field of study opens up I want to complete my studies,” Abu Jarrah said. “And we will build this country together.”

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