It was a cold, wet day in December 2016 when teacher and activist Abdulkafi Alhamdo slumped over on the porch of his Aleppo apartment across from heaps of rubble. Pro-government forces, backed by the Russian military, advanced on the last rebel-controlled areas of the Syrian city. He had spent months documenting the death and destruction around him in hopes that other nations would bring an end to the violence. Before evacuating with his wife and their 10-month-old daughter, Alhamdo gave his final dispatch from Aleppo.
Staring into his phone camera, he spoke of losing faith in the international community, expressed concern for his family, and grieved the scenes of pro-government soldiers celebrating on the dead bodies of rebel fighters. Gunfire rang out in the background. “At least we know we were a free people,” he said before signing off.
For the past eight years, Alhamdo has been living in the town of Darat Izza in the rebel-held countryside around 20 miles outside Aleppo. He is raising his three young children — 8 and 6 years old, and 19 months — and is teaching English literature at Free Aleppo University. He often spoke of his home in Aleppo to his children and students, and about his desire for freedom from President Bashar al-Assad’s government. And he promised to himself that if the city were ever liberated, he would be among the first to return.
Last Friday, as rebel forces advanced on Aleppo, the country’s second largest city, in a surprise offensive, Alhamdo hopped into his car and drove with a friend toward the city. Rebel fighters warned him that fighting was still going on, but he insisted and made it through a checkpoint. His first stop: his old apartment. While there, he recorded a new video, showing the exact spot where he sat in 2016, this time, to celebrate his return.
“You cannot imagine what my feelings were,” Alhamdo told The Intercept. “I was running like a child. I was crying and crying.”
Photo: Ugur Yildirim/DIA Images/Abaca/Sipa USA via AP
Alhamdo is among the many in Syria who celebrated the opportunity to return to Aleppo for the first time in nearly a decade, where they were able to reenter their homes and reunite with relatives and friends. The civil war had been in something of a lull since 2020 after the Syrian government, alongside the Russian military and Hezbollah fighters, had beaten back rebel militants to regain much of the country.
But with Russia’s attention drawn toward its war in Ukraine and Hezbollah weakened in its clash with Israel, rebel forces have made a fierce push over the last week. Rebel militants, led by the most significant faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, are moving south toward Damascus, the capital, and have claimed another major city, Hama. On Friday, they threatened to retake the city of Homs, a vital link connecting Syria to Lebanon, Russian naval bases, and Damascus.
The United Nations has since called for a ceasefire, citing mounting humanitarian concerns. More than more than 280,000 Syrians have been internally displaced by the recent fighting in Syria, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program. An additional 500,000 Syrian refugees have recently returned to the country from Lebanon, after fleeing from Israel’s bombing campaign there. And in the first week of renewed fighting in northwestern Syria, at least 98 civilians have been killed, including 85 civilians in Russian airstrikes on rebel-controlled Idlib and the Aleppo countryside, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. (The ongoing rebel offensive was preceded by an escalation of Russian-Syrian strikes on Idlib and other parts of northwest Syria.)
The Assad government is responsible for war crimes and oppressive tactics such as torture and the mass incarceration of civilians who have disappeared within the country’s prisons. The leadership of HTS previously had connections with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, though its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, says his group has since severed those ties, has evolved from its jihadist roots, and is accepting of the country’s religious and ethnic minority groups.
Alhamdo said he has spoken out against HTS for some of its past actions but has welcomed its evolution. While walking around Aleppo this week, he said he does not align with any specific rebel group and is only concerned with fighting “against oppression, whatever its form is.”
It’s a balancing act for Syrians, such as Alhamdo, said Mai El-Sadany, the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “It can be true that you are a die-hard opponent of the Assad regime, which has committed war crimes of horrific nature, or celebrate the fact that these are serious challenges to that brutal regime that has silenced so many, that has displaced so many, that has separated families, that has turned what began as a peaceful uprising into a proxy war,” El-Sadany said.
You can acknowledge all of that while simultaneously adopting a wait-and-see attitude, or while simultaneously organizing and asserting that people will not tolerate a society where all citizens are not treated equally. When they were finally reunited, his father, who was 85 years old, embraced him tightly and showered him with kisses, expressing disbelief that he would live to see his son again.
The reunion also allowed Alhamdo to introduce his children to their roots and family heritage. For the first time, they met their grandfather and visited significant landmarks like the ancient Aleppo Citadel. Alhamdo had spent years showing them photos of the city, sharing memories, and promising that one day they would explore it together.
“After the liberation of Aleppo, they discovered their roots, their history, and their relatives,” Alhamdo remarked.
Despite the newfound sense of freedom, Alhamdo’s family still lives in fear of the Assad government. Before the recent offensive, government intelligence agents would interrogate Alhamdo’s father, seeking information about his son. Due to Alhamdo’s vocal opposition to the Assad regime online and in Western media, he suspects that he has been labeled as an enemy. His father had to bribe the officers to leave him alone.
Upon visiting relatives after his return, his uncle refused to open the door, and friends warned him not to acknowledge them in public for fear of reprisal from the Assad government.
Alhamdo draws parallels between the Assad regime and Big Brother from George Orwell’s “1984,” a totalitarian leader omnipresent in the city. He teaches this concept to his students at Free Aleppo University, using it to explain why Syrians revolted against the government.
Before returning to Aleppo, Alhamdo often had a recurring nightmare shared by many displaced Syrians. In the dream, he was trapped in a government-controlled city with no means of escape. As he walked through the city upon his return, surrounded by pro-government propaganda and images of Assad, he had to reassure himself that he was indeed awake.
“When I first returned, I prayed, ‘Please let this not be a dream,'” he recounted.
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