At a Damascus intersection, younger volunteers act as unofficial site visitors cops after police assigned to the responsibility abandoned their posts when president Bashar al-Assad fell to a speedy insurgent advance.
Some site visitors officers deserted their uniforms and motorbikes on the street on December 8, the day the rebels took Damascus.
Site visitors jams resulted, particularly the place alerts weren’t working or crowds gathered to mark the tip to greater than half a century of paranoid and brutal rule by the Assad clan.
A neighborhood organisation took motion. It deployed greater than 50 volunteers carrying orange vests labelled “Police”.
“We like our nation and we wished to contribute voluntarily to handle the site visitors. The nation is ours, when earlier than it belonged to at least one particular person,” stated Baraa Kardazli, 24, one of many volunteers.
– Joyful responsibility –
They obtained some fast coaching below the supervision of the victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels, who’ve expertise working their bastion in Idlib, in Syria’s northwest.
HTS, which dominated the insurgent coalition, gave them whistles and batons.
The volunteers, working from 9:00 am till 6:00 pm, had been in a position to resolve a lot of the site visitors drawback in simply two days, stated Omar Merhi, one of many organisers.
Mohammed Mouaffaq al-Awa, signalling vehicles to cease or preserve shifting, is maintaining the hassle close to a park the place the site visitors lights have not labored for per week due to energy cuts.
Additional alongside, round a central sq., youngsters promote petrol on to motorists.
Others wander among the many site visitors, waving the independence-era flag adopted by Syria’s new rulers.
In Damascus it’s now routine to see recent-model vehicles, registered in Idlib or one other northwestern area, Aleppo, which had been partially managed by the rebels and remoted from the capital.
They distinction with the largely dilapidated automobiles that proliferated throughout Assad’s 24-year rule due to exorbitant import taxes.
Awa, who has a level in enterprise administration, stated he by no means anticipated to be managing site visitors stream.
However he cannot cover his pleasure.
“I’m proud to contribute, even modestly, to assist get the nation again on its ft,” he stated.
“It is important that we unite, regardless of the extent of our contribution.”
