After more than a decade of war, Syrians experienced a rare moment of joy with the fall of the regime in late 2024. People took to the streets, laughing and crying at once, as if reclaiming a sense of life long stolen. There was a collective feeling that anything was possible and that the future could finally begin.

But this euphoria was short lived. Gradually, harsh realities emerged. Families searched for the missing, confronting loss and absence. Amid the instability, deeper fractures appeared, accompanied by the rise of extremist rhetoric and the spread of hardline Salafi ideology in some areas.

This report, produced in collaboration with LA Times and The National News, traces how the absence of state authority and widespread weapons fueled societal divisions. waves of violence, culminating in massacres in Suwayda, where the fall of the regime became not a symbol of liberation, but the start of a harsher, more complex phase