Last week the regime returned to the town, ending eight years of resistance at the nation’s crossroads

Saraqib, a small town of breezeblock concrete and olive groves in Syria’s northwest, was a quiet sort of place until an appetite for freedom began to stir across the country during the 2011 Arab spring.

It became an early and important centre of the revolution against Bashar al-Assad where art and freedom of expression flowered, the walls all over town painted with poetry, revolutionary slogans and messages to lost loved ones. The town’s 30,000 residents even held local elections in 2017.

Saraqib held out for years against the rise of Islamic factions as the uprising morphed into an intractable civil war, but eventually came under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a militant group linked to al-Qaida. Last week, eight years after the regime withdrew from the town, Assad’s forces once again stepped foot on Saraqib’s empty, bombed out streets.

The victory was not completely hollow. Saraqib, at the intersection of the M4 and M5 highways connecting Damascus to Aleppo and the country’s west to the east, sits at both a literal and metaphorical crossroads – between the past and future, between Assad and his people, and between the hope for change and the darkness that instead engulfed the country.

“Saraqib means a lot to us. It represents freedom, it represents resistance, revolution and fairness. I don’t know if I will be able to go back,” said local activist Ahmad al-Khaled, 33, who recently fled the airstrikes on Saraqib for Idlib city.

Saraqib’s residents paid a heavy price for a brief taste of freedom. Protests in 2011 were met with a bruising crackdown by the government. Hundreds of people were arrested and tortured in regime prisons and the fates of some are still unknown.

Aided by foreign money and guns, the protesters began to arm themselves and the Free Syrian Army clashed with government troops for control of the strategically located town.

“In the beginning we had so much hope. We watched the downfall of the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia and later [Colonel Muammar] Gaddafi and it gave us motivation. When the city was liberated in November 2012 we were free for the first time in our lives,” Khaled said.

By 2013, Saraqib noticed there was a new enemy. “We were demonstrating one day, demanding the downfall of the regime, when we met another group of men. They had a white flag with religious slogans on it,” said Odai al-Hussein, 28.

“We began chanting, ‘Saraqib is a civil state! We want a civil state!’ and one of them assaulted one of us, threatening, ‘We will attain our caliphate by force!’ and then they stamped on the Free Syrian Army flag and went away.”

The Ahrar al-Sham jihadist group slowly began to intervene in Saraqib, opening bakeries and a health clinic and distributing money to widows in an effort to supplant the local council.

“They set up a sharia court. They were always trying to gain people’s trust by providing money and services but I guess our people were smart enough to not believe them, since they didn’t abide by the revolution’s principles and goals,” Hussein said.

“We wanted a free Syria for all Syrians but they wanted an Islamic state. We continued against all the odds: we challenged the regime, Ahrar al-Sham, Islamic State and al-Nusra. In the end the jihadists took over but we left our city with dignity knowing how much we endured to keep Saraqib free.”

After Russia came to Assad’s aid in 2015 the tide of the war began to turn in the regime’s favour. Helped by Russian airpower, the government began to claw back rebel territory in a series of brutal sieges and bombing campaigns. Civilians who were afraid to stay in areas newly retaken by the government were bussed to Idlib, the strongest rebel bastion, where the population has swelled from one to three million.

Now, Idlib is the only part of the country that remains outside Assad’s de facto control. Although it is supposed to be protected by a de-escalation deal brokered in 2018 by Russia and Turkey, which backs some of Idlib’s factions, in the last three months the area has been battered by an intense regime assault that has killed more than 300 civilians and sent 580,000 fleeing north towards the Turkish border.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Russia-backed regime forces have pounded Syria’s last major rebel bastion over the past two months, forcing more than 580,000 people from their homes and onto the roads. Photograph: Aaref Watad/AFP via Getty Images

Assad’s target is to regain control of the M4 and M5 highways. The fall of Saraqib last week brought the regime much closer to its goal.

Ahmad al-Haj Ali, 37, was forced to leave his motorcycle repair shop in the town and flee north last week. He is now camped out in an olive grove, along with hundreds of thousands of others, in the cold and wet winter conditions.

“The bombing was unbearable. In eight years I have never witnessed bombing like that before,” he said.

“Russia paved the way for the Assad ground troops with airstrikes. They destroyed everything. They are barbarians.”

In response to the regime assault on Idlib, Turkey has sent reinforcements to man its observation posts in the area, and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has issued Assad an ultimatum to withdraw to the 2018 de-escalation line or face military consequences.

But after nine years of war, few in Idlib are holding onto any hope that outside powers will come to their aid now, at the 11th hour.

“I hoped the Turkish and rebel reinforcement would defend the city. But unfortunately that hope has faded away,” Ali said.

Saraqib now resembles a ghost town: its streets are strewn with debris and caked in white rubble dust. Some residents burned their furniture before they left to stop the regime from looting their homes.

Despite intense bombing and vandalism from jihadist groups, however, some of the famous lovers’ notes and poetry of Saraqib’s revolution are still visible on the town’s walls.

“The revolution will go on,” one reads. “Tomorrow the sun rises,” says another.