Category World News

Damascus, Syria – Around Damascus’s Umayyad Square, children leaned out the windows, waving Syria’s green, white and black flag as fireworks burst in the sky.

December 8, the anniversary of liberation for the capital and the country as a whole, was two days away, but crowds had already begun to gather in the square.

Nearby, standing alone and watching the festivities, stood Abu Taj, 24. Ten years earlier, he had left his home in the Aleppo countryside when his house was destroyed in fighting between the regime and anti-Assad forces.

From there, he fled to Damascus and then Beirut before flying to join his father in Saudi Arabia.

After a decade in exile – eight years in Saudi Arabia and two years studying in Egypt – Abu Taj moved back to Syria. He arrived just more than a week before people from all over the country gathered to celebrate the operation that stormed Damascus and forced Bashar al-Assad to flee, in the early hours of the morning, to Moscow.

On the last Friday before the anniversary, Abu Taj prayed at the Umayyad Mosque before coming down to Damascus’s main meeting point to see the festivities.

“The culture of the country is now for the people,” he told Al Jazeera, overjoyed by the direction the country is going.

Exhalation

A year ago, the reign of the al-Assad regime ended.

With it fell a brutal police state, notorious for its use of torture and disappearance.

For many in Syria, the regime’s collapse brought with it an exhalation – the first in decades since Bashar’s father Hafez came to power in 1970.

The early days following the liberation were marked by elation in many parts of Syria, but also by concern over what was to come.

Early predictions looked to the examples of Iraq after the US invasion or Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Few expected that the severe US sanctions on Syria would be removed, especially with Ahmed al-Sharaa, a man once with a US ransom on his head, leading the new government.

Tragedy did, however, follow when widespread sectarian violence took place along the Syrian coast in March and again in Suwayda in July.

In both instances, forces said to be aligned with the Syrian government inflamed tensions, with revenge killings and sectarian targeting of minorities.

Another incident threatened to destabilise Homs, Syria’s third largest city, last month, before the government intervened to calm the situation.

Green, white and black

But a few days before masses descend on Umayyad Square for a large celebration, it is clear how meaningful removing the regime was to so many Syrians.

Across the city, the green, white and black flag is on ubiquitous display. Outside the Umayyad Mosque, children’s faces are painted with the vertical green, white and black blocks, while in Marjeh Square, locals unpacked a bag of flags to sell or distribute.

Omran, a 22-year-old from Deir Az Zor in Syria’s northeast, sat smoking hookah in Marjeh Square with his younger brother, Bahaeddine, and his mother. He recently returned to Syria from Lebanon and said he hadn’t seen his mother in nine years.

He said he plans to go to Umayyad Square on December 8 to participate in the celebrations with his mother and his younger brother. “We will all be so happy, thank God,” he said.

While most of the city is decked out in flags and decorations, Umayyad Square is where the heart of the celebration will take place.

Celebrations started Friday afternoon as thousands of young men and women in minivans or on scooters headed to the city’s historic roundabout, where the wreckage from an Israeli strike on the Ministry of Defence in July is still visible.

Hope

Abdelaziz al-Omari, 21, from the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk, stood next to two friends in the roundabout. He waved a long pole holding the Syrian and Palestinian flags.

“We came here today to celebrate the anniversary of the liberation,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We were oppressed, but now our sadness has been released.”

The celebrations carried on – with cars honking and fireworks exploding – until the early hours of Saturday morning.

On Saturday afternoon, thunderstorms and showers poured down on Damascus. Rain is predicted for Sunday as well, but it is expected to clear by Monday for the day of the anniversary itself.

Many in Syria will be in attendance, carrying the memories of the years of hardship under al-Assad still fresh in their minds, and hopes that the future might be a little bit better in their hearts.

Standing in Umayyad Square on Friday, Rahma al-Taha, a lawyer, said the early days following liberation lacked security, but that slowly, over the last year, the situation had been improving.

“Everything is better, and every month we’re seeing new things,” she said, expressing a feeling that many Syrians told Al Jazeera hadn’t existed during the days of the al-Assad regime.

Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have rallied in countries around the world to celebrate her Nobel Peace Prize win ahead of Wednesday’s award ceremony

Thousands of people marched through Madrid, Utrecht, Buenos Aires, Lima, Brisbane and other cities on Saturday in support of 58-year-old Machado, who won the Nobel award for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in Venezuela.

The crowd in Peru’s capital, Lima, carried portraits of Machado and demanded a “Free Venezuela”. With the country’s yellow, blue and red flag draped over their backs or emblazoned on their caps, demonstrators clutched posters that read, “The Nobel Prize is from Venezuela.”

Veronica Duran, a 41-year-old Venezuelan who has lived in Lima for eight years, said Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize is celebrated because “it represents all Venezuelans, the fallen and the political prisoners in their fight to recover democracy”.

Machado, who has been in hiding since August 2024, wants to use the attention gained by the award to highlight Venezuela ‘s democratic aspirations.

Her organisation said it expected demonstrations in more than 80 cities around the world.

In Colombia, a group of Venezuelans gathered in the capital, Bogota, wearing white T-shirts and carrying balloons as part of a religious ceremony in which supporters asked that the Nobel Peace Prize “be a symbol of hope” for the Venezuelan people.

Meanwhile, in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires, some 500 people gathered on the steps of the law school at the country’s largest university, improvising a torchlit march with their mobile phones.

“We Venezuelans in the world have a smile today, because we celebrate the Nobel Prize of María Corina and of the entire Venezuelan diaspora, and of all the brave people within Venezuela who have sacrificed themselves… we have so many martyrs, heroes of the resistance,” said Nancy Hoyer, a 60-year-old supporter.

The gatherings come at a critical point in the country’s protracted crisis as the administration of United States President Donald Trump builds up a massive military deployment in the Caribbean, threatening repeatedly to strike Venezuelan soil.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s has branded the US operation an effort to end his hold on power.

The Trump administration has said it does not recognise Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, as Venezuela’s legitimate president.

Maduro claimed a re-election victory last year in a national ballot that the US and other Western governments dismissed as a sham, and which independent observers said the opposition won overwhelmingly.

Machado had won the opposition’s primary election and intended to run against Maduro, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez, who had never run for office before, took her place.

The lead-up to the July 28, 2024, election saw widespread repression, including disqualifications, arrests and human rights violations. It all increased after the country’s National Electoral Council, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists, declared him the winner despite credible evidence to the contrary.

Gonzalez sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest.

Meanwhile, Machado went into hiding and has not been seen in public since January 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in what ended up being an underwhelming protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.

The following day, Maduro was sworn in for a third six-year term.

“We are living through times where our composure, our conviction and our organisation are being tested,” Machado said in a video message shared on Tuesday on social media.

“Times when our country needs even more dedication, because now, all these years of struggle, the dignity of the Venezuelan people, have been recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Machado won the award on October 10 for keeping “the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness”.

According to the head of the Nobel Institute, Machado has promised to go to Norway to pick up her prize on Wednesday.

“I was in contact with Machado last night [Friday], and she confirms that she will be in Oslo for the ceremony,” Kristian Berg Harpviken told the AFP news agency.