عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Features

Syrians Forced to Walk Congested Streets amid Transportation Crisis

Syrians walk past the traffic in the streets of Hijaz in Damascus. (AFP file photo)
Syrians walk past the traffic in the streets of Hijaz in Damascus. (AFP file photo)
TT
TT

Syrians Forced to Walk Congested Streets amid Transportation Crisis

Syrians walk past the traffic in the streets of Hijaz in Damascus. (AFP file photo)
Syrians walk past the traffic in the streets of Hijaz in Damascus. (AFP file photo)

A transportation crisis in Damascus and its countryside has severely exacerbated due to a lack of public and private transport means, as a result of a fuel shortage especially in government-controlled areas.

Main roads in Damascus and those leading to the city center witness - in the early morning and afternoon hours - hundreds of citizens walking along the roads, waiting for public transport or special microbuses to take them to and from their workplaces.

The past few days also witnessed a big rush to obtain a place or a seat in a public bus, with people sometimes quarreling and coming to blows.

Social media posts showed shocking pictures and videos of large crowds gathering at transportation stations and on the roads, and other stampedes and quarrels over the priority to board the buses.

Younes, a university student living in a western suburb of the capital, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the situation was “tragic.” He said that he preferred to walk from his neighborhood to the university, despite the distance, because he might wait an hour or more for the arrival of a bus that would already be packed.

Abou Maher, another older citizen, said he was unable to walk and did not have the ability to use public and private transportation because of the severe congestion. Instead, every morning, he waits on the side of the road away from gatherings and waves for private cars to assist him.

“There are still good people who stop by and I go with them,” he remarked.

A member of the Transport sector executive office in the Damascus governorate, Mazen Al-Dabbas, recently admitted in press statements that the reason for the current transportation crisis was the limited number of buses and the fuel shortage. He added that some microbuses were working for schools and private companies, which leads to more traffic congestion.

Dabbas noted that the government Internal Transport Corporation runs 120 public buses in the Damascus governorate, while private companies operate 100 internal transport buses at maximum capacity and have more than one daily shift.

Most Viewed

 
 
Features

Watching the Sun Rise over a New Damascus

Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)
Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)
TT
TT

Watching the Sun Rise over a New Damascus

Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)
Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Afaf Mohammed did what she could not for more than a decade: she climbed Mount Qasyun to admire a sleeping Damascus "from the sky" and watch the sun rise.

Through the long years of Syria's civil war, which began in 2011 with a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, people were not allowed access to the mountain.

But now they can return to look down again on their capital, with its high-rise hotels and poor suburbs exhausted by war.

When night falls, long queues of vehicles slowly make their way up a twisting road to a brightly lit corniche at the summit.

Once there, they can relax, listen to music, eat and, inevitably, take selfies.

On some evenings there have even been firework displays.

Afaf Mohammed told AFP that "during the war we weren't allowed up to Mount Qasyun. There were few public places that were truly accessible."

At her feet, the panorama of Syria's capital stretched far and wide. It was the second time in weeks that the dentist in her thirties had come to the mountaintop.

A man sells tea on Mount Qasyun, from which government artillery used to pound opposition-held areas under Assad's rule. (AFP)

- Ideal for snipers -

Her first was just after a coalition of opposition fighters entered the city, ousting Assad on December 8.

On that occasion she came at dawn.

"I can't describe how I felt after we had gone through 13 years of hardship," she said, wrapped close in an abaya to ward off the chilly breeze.

Qasyun was off limits to the people of Damascus because it was an ideal location for snipers -- the great view includes elegant presidential palaces and other government buildings.

It was also from this mountain that artillery units for years pounded opposition-held areas at the gates of the capital.

Mohammed believes the revolution brought "a phenomenal freedom" that includes the right to visit previously forbidden places.

"No one can stop us now or block our way. No one will harm us," she said.

Patrols from the security forces of Syria's new rulers are in evidence, however.

They look on as a boy plays a tabla drum and young people on folding chairs puff from water pipes as others dance and sing, clapping their hands.

Everything is good-natured, reflecting the atmosphere of freedom that now bathes Syria since the end of Assad rule.

Gone are the stifling restrictions that once ruled the people's lives, and soldiers no longer throng the city streets.

Visitors to Mount Qasyun can now relax, listen to music, eat and snap selfies. (AFP)

- Hot drinks and snacks -

Mohammad Yehia, in his forties, said he once brought his son Rabih up to Mount Qasyun when he was small.

"But he doesn't remember having been here," he said.

After Assad fell, his son "asked if we would be allowed to go up there, and I said, 'Of course'," Yehia added.

So they came the next day.

Yehia knows the place well -- he used to work here, serving hot drinks and snacks from the back of a van to onlookers who came to admire the view.

He prides himself on being one of the first to come back again, more than a decade later.

The closure of Mount Qasyun to the people of Damascus robbed him of his livelihood at a time when the country was in economic freefall under Western sanctions. The war placed a yoke of poverty on 90 percent of the population.

"We were at the suffocation point," Yehia told AFP.

"Even if you worked all day, you still couldn't make ends meet.

"This is the only place where the people of Damascus can come and breathe a little. It's a spectacular view... it can make us forget the worries of the past."

Malak Mohammed, who came up the mountain with her sister Afaf, said that on returning "for the first time since childhood" she felt "immense joy".

"It's as if we were getting our whole country back," Malak said. Before, "we were deprived of everything".