FOR many of us in Guyana, Syria has been on our minds all week. I, like many of you, feel a deep sense of relief that the dictator Bashar Al-Assad has been toppled and was forced to flee with his tail between his legs to just about the only country that would give him refuge — the same country that propped him up for 14 years while he butchered his own people.

Beginning on November 27, it took the forces of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) just 11 days to oust Assad and redraw the map of the entire Middle East. And now we all hold our breaths and pray that the reign of terror is at last over in Syria. I don’t know what lies in store for the people of Syria, but I am confident that a return to civilian and civil rule is within reach. Syrians deserve nothing less.

In May of 2016, I visited some of the Turkish cities on the border with Syria. It was extremely dangerous and risky to venture into Syria and my supervisors at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) would not allow it. The only people crossing into Syria at that time were human traffickers escorting thousands of fighters from around the world, who came seeking martyrdom while fighting with the army of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS).

In interviews I conducted with some of the estimated 130 ISIS fighters from Canada, they told me they believed they had a religious obligation to establish a Caliphate on earth and to liberate the people of Syria from Assad. While some 60,000 ISIS fighters from 81 countries were pouring into Syria and unleashing a killing machine like the world has never seen in the modern age, millions of Syrians began pouring into Turkey to escape the genocide.

When I visited the vast refugee camps and hospitals around Antakya, Gaziantep, Reyhanli and Killis, I spoke to many of the victims of both Bashar Al-Assad and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, ISIS’ self-declared Caliph. I saw with my own eyes what Russian and Syrian forces did in Kobane. After an intense bombing campaign, not a single building was left standing in that city; and what was once a bustling city of commerce with just under half a million people had become a desolate wasteland.

This internecine bloodletting began to unfold in the years immediately after the start of the Arab Spring. Fifteen young people had spray painted anti-government graffiti on the walls of the city of Daraa in March 2011. Eager for freedom, they wrote in Arabic, “The people want the fall of the regime.” It would become a slogan of Syria’s Arab Spring. Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Yemen’s Arab Spring had their own unique slogans.

Atef Najib, Assad’s first cousin, just so happened to be the security chief in Daraa at the time. He rounded up the students, all of them from prominent families, and brutally tortured them. The people of Syria rose up in protest. In the 14 years that followed, more than 14,000 residents of Daraa were killed by Assad’s forces, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR).

There is never a good time to count the dead, even though it is imperative that it must be done. It will take years to determine how many innocent people lost their lives from that one simple act of protest in Daraa, to the liberation of Syria a week ago. To date, SOHR estimates that close to 700,000 Syrians were killed. Assad used chemical weapons and dropped barrel bombs on entire city blocks. In 2014 alone, well over 100,000 civilians were killed in Syria. It was hard to watch and not be filled with rage.

Over 31,000 were killed in Aleppo, a city of immense Islamic scholarship. Homs and Idlib followed with just under 20,000 deaths. It was a cruel and senseless slaughter of lives. Over 14 million people were forcefully displaced inside Syria and around the world. Millions found refuge in neighbouring Turkey. It is perhaps one of the reasons why Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan backed the HTS drive to remove Assad. For perspective, consider the following: the total pre-uprising population of Syria was approximately 23 million.

Many of my religious teachers are either from Syria or they’ve studied the Islamic sciences in Damascus or Aleppo. I feel a deep sense of connection to the country. I facilitated the visit of the world-renowned, erudite scholar from Aleppo, Shaykh Muhammad Al-Ninowy, to Guyana twice in the last 10 years. He loved Guyana and the Muslims of our country who met him and interacted with him have a great deal of respect for his scholarship. In spite of his busy schedule, he recently asked the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana (CIOG) to arrange a return visit.

Two of Guyana’s own sons spent years studying the Islamic sacred sciences in Damascus and returned home before the start of the Arab Spring. Whoever has benefitted from their knowledge and activism owe a great deal to Syria and its people and ought to pray for peace in that land.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.