DEARBORN, MI — Nizam Abazid is excitedly planning his first trip in decades to Syria, where he grew up. Rama Alhoussaini was only 6 years old when her family immigrated to the United States. But she is excited about being able to introduce her three children to relatives they have never met in person.
They are among thousands of Detroit-area Syrian Americans celebrating the unexpected overthrow of the Syrian government that suppressed dissent and imprisoned political enemies with impunity during the more than 50 years of rule by ousted President Bashar Assad and his father.
“As of Saturday night, the Assad regime will no longer be in power.” Al-Husaini, 31, spoke through tears Tuesday at a Detroit-area school and family-run child care facility. “And it’s such a surreal moment to even say that out loud, because I never thought I’d see this day.”
Either way, it may be a while before you can visit Syria. Although they are happy to see Assad leave, many Western countries are waiting for the situation to calm down before launching a Syria strategy, including whether it is safe for the millions who have fled the country’s civil war to return.
Ahmad al-Shara, who led the rebellion that toppled Assad after a stunning advance in less than two weeks, has denied his group’s previous ties to al Qaeda and presented himself as an advocate of pluralism and tolerance. But the United States still labels him a terrorist and warns him against traveling to Syria, which has not had a U.S. embassy since 2012, the year after the war began.
But for Syrians in the U.S. who were unable to visit, the overthrow of Assad’s government gave them hope that they could return safely, either for good or to visit.
Days after Assad and his family fled to Russia, Abazid said this week that the end of the regime was the hope of all Syrians.
Abazid said he could go to Syria at any time because he has dual U.S. and Syrian citizenship, but would wait a few months until the situation stabilizes.
European leaders have said it is not yet safe enough to allow war-displaced people to return to Syria, but Abazid said he and his brother are not worried.
“If Assad’s forces took power, my fate would have been imprisonment or beheading,” Abazid said. “But now I won’t worry about that anymore.”
Many Syrians who immigrated to the United States settled in the Detroit area. Michigan has the largest Arab-American population of any state and is home to Dearborn, the largest Arab-majority city in the United States. There are also more than 310,000 residents from the Middle East or North Africa.
As rebels took control of Syria and halted a lightning-quick advance that would have seemed almost impossible just a month ago, Syrians in and around Detroit, like rebels around the world, followed in disbelief as reports poured in from city to city. It is slipping from Assad’s grasp. Celebrations erupted when news broke that the Assad government had fallen.
Abazid, who runs a cell phone business in Dearborn, was born in Daraa, about 95 kilometers south of the Syrian capital, Damascus. He moved to the United States in 1984 at the age of 18, and although he returned several times, he did not visit the United States after 1998 due to “harassment” by Syrian intelligence. The trip required close cooperation with U.S. authorities, as he said Syrian authorities detained him during a 1990 visit and held him there for more than six months.
“When I was kidnapped at the airport, my family didn’t even know what was going on,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I still don’t know why. I don’t know why I was kidnapped.”
Abazid, 59, said his parents died after the 1998 trip, but his five sisters still live in Syria. Each of his four brothers left Syria in the 1970s and 1980s, and one of them has never returned since emigrating 53 years ago, soon after Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, took power.
Alhoussaini, who lives in West Bloomfield Township, said he was born in Damascus and moved to the Detroit area as a child. “Mainly because there was nothing left for us in Syria.”
She said her grandfather’s land was taken away under the Assad family’s rule. Authorities detained him for nearly a month. Her father was also detained before the family left.
“There is absolutely no need for a reason,” Alhoussaini said. “My father came back once in 2010, and he hasn’t been able to return to his home country since then, mainly because we spoke out against the Assad regime when the revolution started in 2011. And we had a lot of protests here. We spoke out about this on social media and gave many interviews.”
But with Bashar Assad gone and Syria in rebel hands, “we no longer need to be afraid to visit our country,” she said.
Her father, 61, is considering a trip to Syria to see his siblings and visit his parents’ graves. Alhoussaini said she and her husband, who is from northern Aleppo, wanted to take their children to visit family and friends.
Al-Husayni’s three sisters (ages 40, 34 and 29) were also born in Syria. But none of them came back.
There is hope and wonder that Syrians can now celebrate in the streets, she said.
Alhoussaini said he doesn’t think people born and raised in the U.S. will be able to fully empathize because Americans enjoy freedom of expression that Syrians have never enjoyed.
“You can say whatever you want. “You can go out into the streets and protest against whoever you want,” he said. “You won’t be detained for that. You won’t die for that.”
