Syrian town branded 'conscience of the revolution' hopeful and wary after Assad's fall

For most of Syria's 14-year civil war, Kafranbel was one of the most internationally recognised hubs of resistance to the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Residents of the small town in Idlib governorate - dubbed the "conscience of the revolution" - would gather each week to unfurl colourful banners, often in English, voicing support for the Syrian revolutionaries, but also commenting on a range of issues including press freedom, global politics, human rights and abuses by rebel forces.

The overthrow of Assad on 8 December has, therefore, been a dramatic moment for the town, the final culmination of years of campaigning and resilience even under the toughest circumstances for the forces opposing the now-deposed president.

But it is also a victory tempered with deep concern over the country's new rulers, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group that has been accused of repressing Kafranbel's once-vibrant media outlets and assassinating a number of its leading activists and journalists.

Arguably most prominent among them was Raed Fares, a civil society activist and broadcaster, who was shot dead by unknown assailants in Kafranbel in November 2018, along with friend and fellow opposition activist Hamoud Jneed.

Though it has never taken responsibility, local activists blamed HTS, who they said resented Fares' criticism of the group's rule in Idlib and his support for progressive causes.

Ahmad Jalal, a caricature painter and former member of Fares' media team, said that with events changing rapidly on the ground in Syria, he was looking to the future and trying to put the painful events of the war behind him.

"I was one of the few who directly accused HTS of assassinating Raed and Hamoud. I made a drawing and banners on the subject and raised them with a small group of young people during a demonstration in the middle of Kafranbel," he told Middle East Eye.

Following this public accusation, Jalal said HTS members came to his residence to arrest him, forcing him to sleep away from home to avoid capture.

"Afterward, I remained wanted by HTS until the fall of the regime," he added.

Despite the fraught relationship with HTS during the war, Jalal said he was optimistic and hoped that the group's leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has become Syria's interim president, would stay true to his promise that he had broken with his former ideology.

Sharaa, previously known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and HTS's predecessor, the Nusra Front, were affiliated with al-Qaeda until breaking from the group in 2016.

"I currently don’t prefer digging into the past," Jalal said when asked about HTS's targeting of him and his colleagues.

He described Sharaa as "highly pragmatic" and pointed to him progressively removing "extremists" from HTS over time.

Nourredine Ismail, one of the first activists to take up the opposition cause in 2011, also said he was hopeful that HTS had changed its ways.

"Through our experience with them in Idlib over the past years, we have observed a clear change in their approach and way of dealing with the community," he told MEE.

He said HTS's rhetoric, at least, had become more "moderate" since assuming power.

"We are waiting for their words to be implemented on the ground in the coming period," he said.

'Uninhabitable'

Kafranbel was seized by pro-Assad forces in 2020, bringing its protests to a close and sending its residents fleeing.

But when HTS and other allied rebel groups began an operation in late November, which would sweep through the country and eventually lead to the collapse of Assad's government on 8 December, Kafranbel was one of the first towns to fall back into opposition hands.

Jalal sent MEE an image of himself and other Kafranbel activists holding an illustration in the newly liberated town in November.

The picture depicts a Syrian soldier saluting in Kafranbel with the image of Fares, Jneed and Khaled al-Issa - another Kafranbel journalist killed in an explosive blast - under a rainbow coloured like the revolutionary Syrian flag.

Jalal returned to Kafranbel on 30 November 2024 alongside the rebel forces to find the town in ruins following years of Russian and government bombardment.

He said the area had been left "uninhabitable", with even the olive and fig trees that once provided it with its main source of income utterly destroyed.

"The city was completely looted, not even the iron in the ceilings of the houses was spared," he admitted.

Kafranbel joined the demonstrations against Assad's rule in 2011 and in 2012 came under the control of rebel forces.

Soon opposition activists and journalists there began to establish a media network in support of the revolution, producing radio shows, videos, memes and other content opposing Assad and extolling a new vision for Syria.

One video saw activists dressed as cavemen in a surreal depiction of the "revolution in three minutes" that showed the international community's failure to respond to Assad's attacks until he used chemical weapons in 2013:

Their banners, which became their most famous export, touched upon a range of subjects.

They voiced support for the Black Lives Matter protests and commiserations for terror attacks such as the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.

Kafranbel's activists and journalists also condemned the 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo after its staff were killed by al-Qaeda at the magazine's Paris office.

The Kafranbel campaigners kept working even as rebel-held areas increasingly came under the influence of groups like al-Qaeda, Ahrar al-Sham and the Islamic State group (IS), whose ultra-conservative and autocratic ideologies clashed with their vision of a free Syria.

Initially, Fares and others tried to work around the new hard-line restrictions imposed upon them.

When HTS demanded Fares' Radio Fresh stop broadcasting female newsreaders' voices, he responded by using software to modulate their voices to sound like men. When they demanded he stop broadcasting music, he replaced it with bird whistles and tuneless football chants.

But as HTS consolidated power across the rebel-held territories, pushing out other armed groups, it tightened its grip, forcing the Kafranbel activists to tone it down.

"During that period, HTS had full control over Kafranbel in every aspect. There was fear of confronting them because the price was either arrest or assassination," said Jalal.

"As a result, the overall reaction was cold and did not rise to the level of the events."

Ismail said they would come to terms with what their town had endured - their "revolutionary and intellectual activism" would adapt to the changing circumstances.

"The people of Kafranbel look to the future with optimism, hoping to overcome the material and moral destruction they have suffered to continue their participation in the future of Syria," he said.

It's a revolution what's going on

In 2018, Fares wrote an editorial for the Washington Post in which he criticised then-US President Donald Trump's decision to freeze $200m in funding to humanitarian groups in Syria.

He warned that without outlets like his Radio Fresh to provide an independent voice for Syria's pro-democracy campaigners, the likes of IS and al-Qaeda would move in to fill the void.

"In the northwest region of Syria, in my hometown of Kafranbel, I’ve seen with my own eyes how al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups that were once scattered by US-backed forces are regrouping and recruiting fearful and disenfranchised youth," he wrote.

Five months later, he would be shot dead.

Since Assad's fall, many activists and rights groups have spoken of the need for transitional justice, for those who carried out war crimes and other atrocities to be held accountable.

In addition to the Assad government's apparatchiks - many of whom have fled abroad - those in the rebel camp who carried out abuses have also faced calls for investigation.

Relatives of the Douma Four have demanded the new HTS-led administration look into the disappearance of Razan Zaitouneh, Wael Hamadeh, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi, rights activists allegedly abducted by rebel group Jaish al-Islam in Eastern Ghouta in 2013.

But considering HTS's own alleged involvement in extra-judicial killings and disappearances, any such process could be fraught with controversy.

Amnesty International's Bissan Fakih said the rights group would be "watching" the new authorities in Syria to see what concrete steps they take to address violations committed during the war, "regardless of who committed the violation".

"In addition to the atrocities committed by the Assad government, Amnesty International has also documented patterns of abuse, including arbitrary detention, torture, and crackdowns on dissent, by other groups, including HTS," she told MEE.

"If there is to be a genuine path toward justice, transitional authorities must refrain from further abuses and allow investigations to proceed unhindered."

Ismail said he remained cautiously optimistic.

"After a month of their assuming power, their internal performance is considered good," he said.

"We hope it will improve in the next phase after transitional justice is applied and those involved in war crimes in Syria are held accountable to build a future state for all Syrians."