The Syria I came back to is not the one I left - BBC News

BBC correspondent Lina Sinjab witnesses dramatic changes to her home country after eight years away.

15 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, "Yes from the heart" - posters of President Bashar al-Assad are everywhere in government-controlled parts of SyriaBBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab left her home in the Syrian capital Damascus in 2013, soon after the start of the civil war. Recently she was able to travel back for the first time in years, finding a country both very familiar and utterly changed.

Entering Syria, the scene was as I remembered it - the same mountain, the same oak trees and the same big posters of the president, providing a vivid reminder of who is in charge here.

But few of the people coming in were Syrians. Most were religious tourists from Lebanon and Iraq, though some others may have come to shop in Damascus's souks.

Travelling towards the city, the checkpoints begin. Over the past decade, many people have disappeared here. It is enough to have voiced views critical of the regime, or even to have liked a social media post sympathetic to the opposition.

Almost nothing seems to have changed in President Bashar al-Assad's Syria, yet it is a country transformed by war.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68684068

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