Damascus volunteers care for a country that feels like theirs

DAMASCUS — The day after the regime fell, Farouq al-Hussami got to work. Joining a group of other young men and women, he cleared garbage and torn pictures of ousted President Bashar al-Assad from the streets of his neighborhood in Dahiyat Qudsaya, on the northwestern edge of Damascus. 

“I never thought of participating in initiatives like this. Before, the country did not belong to Syrians,” al-Hussami told Syria Direct. Now, “we’ve realized we have a homeland, and have to clean its streets and help reduce chaos.”

Five volunteers started the initiative in Dahiyat Qudsaya by creating a WhatsApp group and inviting anyone interested to participate. Their first time out, 40 people volunteered to clean the streets. The second time, around 25 volunteers helped, al-Hussami said. 

They were not alone. Dozens of volunteers—working alone or collectively—helped clean public streets after a huge influx of visitors from the suburbs and other provinces flooded the capital to celebrate the announcement of a Syria outside the Assad family’s control for the first time in 50 years. 

Young Syrians pose for a picture while participating in a volunteer street-cleaning campaign in Dahiyat Qudsaya, just northwest of Damascus, 10/12/2024 (Shared with Syria Direct by one of the participants)

On December 9, the Ammrna Volunteer Team in Damascus launched an initiative to clean streets and distribute bread and meals. The first day, they went to clean Umayyad Square, the al-Baramka neighborhood and the University Maternity Hospital. At first, there were only 30 volunteers, Omran al-Jassim, who was among them, told Syria Direct. 

“The place was a wreck, full of torn pictures and bullet casings,” al-Jassim said. “We pulled off a great achievement, despite the small number of participants.” Their efforts “touched other people, and many joined us, which encouraged us to keep going,” he added. Now, the team has more than 175 volunteers, with more asking to join. 

Young Syrians pose for a picture while cleaning streets in Damascus as part of a volunteer initiative, 9/12/2024 (Ammrna Volunteer Team)

Alongside the cleaning campaign, the Ammrna team suggested “each person bring, according to their ability, bread and cheese and things, then we made sandwiches and distributed them to doctors at the Maternity Hospital and al-Mujtahid Hospital,” al-Jassim said. 

Another group, the Majal Volunteer Team, also worked to distribute food at hospitals. Pharmacist Ranim al-Zain proposed the idea to help doctors under enormous pressure and address the absence of hospital staff involved in preparing food. 

A doctor at al-Mujtahid Hospital had reached out to al-Zain on December 8, asking for support “because of the lack of food,” she told Syria Direct. “They were going through a catastrophic situation, with many injuries from stray bullets and many released prisoners coming in.”

“Staff fled the hospitals and there was nobody left to prepare food or clean,” Abdulqader al-Boushi, a university student who has been a member of the Majal Association since 2021, said. “We tried to bridge the gap. We started by making sandwiches, then started serving fast food or [food] prepared in home kitchens,” he added.

Members of the Majal Volunteer Team prepare meals at their headquarters in Damascus to distribute to hospitals, 11/12/2024 (Syria Direct)

Every day, the team provides meals at the al-Mujtahid Hospital, Ibn al-Nafees Hospital, al-Assad University Hospital and al-Tal Military Hospital. They have also gone to the “al-Salam Mosque in Barzeh, where detainees released from prison and their relatives are, and provided food,” al-Boushi added. 

The initiative, called “We Are Her [Syria’s] Children,” aims to use the energies of young people to serve the community, whether by helping doctors, providing food or cleaning hospitals, Hussam Ajami, the team’s human resources officer, said.  

Majal volunteers also helped clean the eight-story Damascus Governorate Building, which was vandalized after the regime fell. “It’s our duty to lend a hand and help the country rise,” Sara Ali Deeb, an architecture student at the University of Damascus who participated, told Syria Direct. 

Protecting heritage

As Syrians of all ages rushed to help out in recent days, each found a space where they were best suited to help. For Iyad Ghanem, the founder and head of the Friends of the Syrian Museums and Archaeological Sites Association, the final battle to oust Assad was the first real test of his group’s work to protect Syria’s heritage. 

As most of Syria steadily fell out of regime control, the association suspended all its cultural activities and events, putting its members at the service of Syria’s Directorate-General for Antiquities and Museums. To protect antiquities and archaeological sites, they called on new authorities to take measures to safeguard museums and train the association’s members to rapidly intervene and protect significant artifacts. 

When opposition forces took control of Aleppo city, Ghanem reached out to the curator of the Aleppo National Museum, offering the association members’ help if needed. “Thank God, we did not have to intervene because these sites remained intact and were not damaged,” he told Syria Direct. 

The Military Operations Department (MOD), which took over at the end of November, “preserved cultural property and prevented any breach of the museum, not allowing anyone to enter except for employees entitled to inspect them,” he added. 

In Damascus, the association focused on several museums, particularly the Damascus National Museum. When Ghanem learned there were rioters and looters nearby, he contacted an MOD commander and asked him to protect the museum. “The response was swift, so no vandalism occurred,” he said. 

Given the difficulty of getting around Damascus’ crowded streets in recent days, the association’s members mainly worked to monitor anything posted on social media about Syrian heritage sites and museums, “intervening when needed,” Ghanem said. 

In one incident, they noticed a “fake post about the al-Azm Palace [an 18th-century Ottoman palace in the Old City of Damascus] being robbed, which turned out to be an attempt to sow chaos and distract the authorities with false reports, diverting attention from some government buildings,” Ghanem explained. 

Ghanem and his team went to the Damascus National Museum in person on Thursday, bringing brooms to clean the grounds “so it will be beautiful when its doors reopen to visitors,” he said. 

On a personal level, Sara Bahbouh, a tour guide and association volunteer, joined because she wanted to “check on the museum and clean it,” she said. “I found it was intact and undamaged.” 

Shahinda al-Baroudi, another member, also helped sweep the museum. She hopes similar care can be shown for other archaeological sites in Syria, emphasizing the importance of working “hand in hand.” 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.