Malaysia’s Syrian refugees find Assad’s fall bittersweet: ‘now we know’

Malaysia offered sanctuary to thousands of Syrians who fled the Assad regime. Now Bashar is gone some want to return. Others aren’t so sure

Reading Time:6 minutes

Syrian refugees arrive in Malaysia in 2016. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:00am, 14 Dec 2024Updated: 7:09pm, 14 Dec 2024

A world away from their war-shattered homeland, the al-Seirawan brothers have spent the past week glued to their phones, struggling to process the unthinkable. From their adopted home in Malaysia, they watched as the Assad dynasty, which had ruled Syria with an iron fist for more than five decades, suddenly collapsed.

Bashar al-Assad fled Syria last weekend, ousted by a rebel offensive that unfurled with lightning speed. After years of mass murder, torture, disappearances and a devastating civil war, the regime that had terrorised the lives of Abu Adnan, 41, and his younger brother Ahmed, 26, was finally dethroned.

But for the al-Seirawan brothers, like millions of other displaced Syrians scattered across the globe, the fall of Assad was bittersweet. Their family, ravaged by violence and separated by borders, is a living testament to the cost of Syria’s long nightmare.

One uncle vanished, never to be heard from again, in what the brothers suspect was a forced disappearance. Another fled to Saudi Arabia decades ago, hunted by the regime.

In 2016, after a bomb had destroyed Abu Adnan’s home, he escaped to Malaysia, leaving behind his six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter in Syria. It was a devastating choice, but one he felt forced to make.

A man waves the independence-era Syrian flag at Damascus’ central Umayyad Square on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

In the wake of Damascus’ fall – its streets now controlled by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied rebel factions – Abu Adnan couldn’t sleep.