The first time the journalist visited Kafar Nabel in July 2012, Ahmad Yalal had to hide the banners he drew with Raed Fares under rocks. They only displayed them during Friday demonstrations.
The regime still controlled the small village of Idlib in northern Syria, albeit nominally. Military personnel rarely left the bases they maintained in a town where around 30,000 people lived at the time.
Raed was the mastermind, and Ahmad was the artist who brought his ideas to life.
For months, the town had earned a unique place in the iconography of the uprising that the Arab country witnessed, thanks to the caustic irony of the messages they displayed, written in Arabic and English. A scathing critique that usually focused on the regime but spared neither the international community, nor Arab countries, nor the armed rebels themselves, especially the most extremist factions.
Some were as devastating as a drawing depicting a UN member, identified by a blue helmet, taking photos of a girl crushed under the rubble of a home bombed by the regime of Bashar Assad, almost asking her to smile for a better snapshot.
Ahmad Yalal lived to see the triumph of the popular uprising. Raed was not so fortunate. He survived an assassination attempt in 2014 when he was hit by a barrage of bullets in the chest. He did not survive the second attempt. He was killed on November 23, 2018, by hooded individuals who sprayed his car with bullets. Around that time, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the faction led by the current Syrian president, Ahmed Al Sharaa, controlled Kafar Nabel.
"The killers acted a few meters from an HTS checkpoint. Raed had already been threatened with death by HTS. Previously, he had been kidnapped by Jabhat al-Nusra [the group Al Sharaa initially fought with in Syria]," recalls Yalal, seated in one of the few rehabilitated buildings in the town. At that time, the current head of state went by the name of Abu Muhammad al-Julani, and Jabhat al-Nusra was loyal to the extremist ideology of Al Qaeda.
Yalal has returned to Kafar Nabel to rebuild his home. The town was completely devastated after being occupied by Damascus troops in 2019. The road from the nearby city of Maarat al-Numan is a succession of empty, looted, or demolished cement structures.
"Kafar Nabel was liberated from the regime in 2012. The entire population fled when Bashar's soldiers returned in 2019. It became a ghost town. Only 10% of the population has been able to return since the regime fell," explains Alaa al-Khatib, who is settled a few meters away from Yalal.
Alaa and Yalal studied together in school. They marched hand in hand in the early protests against the dictatorship. Both belonged to the same group of activists advocating for a secular democracy as an alternative to the autocracy led for decades by the Assad clan.
Now, Alaa, the former opponent who coordinated popular protests in Idlib, including those in his hometown, Kafar Nabel, has been appointed the new mayor of the place. A significant turn in the history of this town, especially because both Alaa and Yalal, along with most of those who stood by Raed Fares during the years of conflict, suffered persecution, first from the regime's followers and later from the extremists fighting under the orders of Ahmed al-Sharaa, who took control of the southern Idlib province in December 2014.
Alaa was among the leaders who encouraged the protests that multiplied in the Idlib region last year against the Administration dominated by HTS since 2017. Yalal, now a refugee in a northern Syrian area under Turkish control, helped them design their banners following the spirit they established at the beginning of the 2011 uprising. They were part of the so-called Hirak (Movement), which took to the streets chanting "Isqat al Jolani" ("Down with Jolani"), paraphrasing the slogan they used against Bashar Assad.
"We wanted more freedom of expression and for civil society not to be repressed," says Alaa al-Khatib.
Former director of Radio Fresh, the legendary station founded by Raed Fares and repeatedly attacked by fundamentalists from the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, Alaa al-Khatib prefers to focus on the future rather than dwell on the past. Although he admits that he "does not agree" with Al Sharaa's ideology, he states that he prefers to give him "a truce."
"I believe we should give them a chance to see how they govern. That does not mean we agree with them. So far, they have shown that loyalty takes precedence over efficiency, and that is a problem. It will be difficult for them to transition from fighters to ministers," he asserts in his office.
Yalal nods, even after recalling how he had to flee his home to avoid first the raids by Assad's soldiers and later by Al Sharaa's militants. The activist fled Kafar Nabel after the attack on Raed.
"I made many drawings directly criticizing him and accused him of Raed's murder. I still demand an investigation into that homicide. But the ideology of HTS in those years was very different from what it is today. Al Sharaa has rid himself of the most radical elements," he points out.
The conciliatory tone of the former activists of Kafar Nabel is not a unanimous position among those who initiated opposition to Assad's dictatorship, demanding - as Raed Fares did - a democratic and secular state.
Despite data from a survey by the Arab Center for Research and Political Studies, revealed this past weekend, showing that 56% of respondents believe the country is "heading in the right direction," 25% think otherwise.
The collapse of the totalitarian system has not meant the end of the violence that has plagued this country since 2011. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in early August, almost 10,000 people have died since last December, many in massacres as bloody as those recorded in March and July in areas with a majority Alawite and Druze population, where Al Sharaa's government forces were accused of carrying out summary executions and countless human rights violations.
These two massacres have raised suspicions among minorities toward the new government, despite Al Sharaa's promises to respect the uniqueness of each community in the country and his support for a transitional constitution that advocates for "equal citizenship before the law" and prohibits "discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or lineage."
The aforementioned survey by the Arab Center for Research and Political Studies made it clear that 85% of Syrians believe that "sectarian discourse is widespread" in the country.
For another pair of historical opponents of Assad, the twin brothers Malas - Ahmed and Mohamed - their well-known opposition to Assad's authoritarian practices will now have to continue against Al Sharaa's government, which they do not forgive for the recent massacres. "We criticized the massacres in Homs and Aleppo. We cannot ignore those in Sweida or on the coast [affecting the Alawite minority]," says Ahmed.