DEARBORN: Nizam Abazid is gleefully planning his first trip in decades to Syria, where he grew up. Rama Alhoussaini was only 6 years old when her family moved to the US, but she\u2019s excited about the prospect of introducing her three kids to relatives they\u2019ve never met in person.
\nThey are among thousands of Detroit-area Syrian Americans who are celebrating the unexpected overthrow of the Syrian government, which crushed dissent and imprisoned political enemies with impunity during the more than 50-year reign of ousted President Bashar Assad and his father before him.
\n\u201cAs of Saturday night, the Assad regime is no longer in power,\u201d Alhoussaini, 31, said through tears Tuesday at one of the Detroit-area school and day care facilities her family operates. \u201cAnd it\u2019s such a surreal moment to even say that out loud, because I never thought that I would see this day.\u201d
\nIt may be some time before either visits Syria. Though happy to see Assad go, many Western countries are waiting for the dust to settle before committing to a Syria strategy, including whether it\u2019s safe for the millions who fled the country\u2019s civil war to return.
\nAhmad Al-Sharaa, who led the insurgency that toppled Assad after an astonishing advance that took less than two weeks, has disavowed his group\u2019s former ties to Al-Qaeda and cast himself as a champion of pluralism and tolerance. But the US still labels him a terrorist and warns against any travel to Syria, where the US hasn\u2019t had an embassy since 2012, the year after the war started.
\nBut for Syrians in the US who have been unable to visit, the overthrow of the Assad government has given them hope that they can safely return, either for good or to visit.
\n\u201cThe end of the regime is the hope for all the Syrian people,\u201d Abazid said this week, days after Assad and his family fled to Russia.
\nAbazid said he could go to Syria whenever, since he holds dual US and Syrian citizenship, but that he\u2019ll wait a few months for things there to settle down.
\nAlthough European leaders have said it\u2019s not safe enough yet to allow war-displaced refugees to return to Syria, Abazid said he and his brother aren\u2019t concerned.
\n\u201cWhen Assad\u2019s forces were in power, my fate would\u2019ve been in jail or beheaded,\u201d Abazid said. \u201cBut now, I will not be worried about that anymore.\u201d
\nMany Syrians who immigrated to the US settled in the Detroit area. Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans of any state and is home to the country\u2019s largest Arab-majority city, Dearborn. It also has more than 310,000 residents who are of Middle Eastern or North African descent.
\nAs rebel forces seized control of Syria, capping a lightning-quick advance that few thought possible even a month ago, Syrians in and around Detroit \u2014 like their counterparts all over the world \u2014 followed along in disbelief as reports poured in about one city after another slipping from Assad\u2019s grip. When news broke that Assad\u2019s government had fallen, celebrations erupted.
\nAbazid, who owns a cellphone business in Dearborn, was born in Daraa, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of the Syrian capital, Damascus. He moved to the US in 1984 at age 18, and although he\u2019s gone back a few times, he hasn\u2019t visited since 1998 because of what he described as \u201charassment\u201d by Syrian intelligence. That trip had to be heavily coordinated with US authorities, as he said Syrian authorities took him into custody and detained him for more than six months during a 1990 visit.
\n\u201cWhen I was kidnapped from the airport, my family didn\u2019t even know … what it was about,\u201d he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. \u201cI still don\u2019t know the reason. I have no idea why I was kidnapped.\u201d
\nAbazid, 59, said his parents have died since that 1998 trip, but his five sisters still live in Syria. Each of his four brothers left Syria during the 1970s and 1980s, including one who hasn\u2019t been back since emigrating 53 years ago, shortly after Bashar Assad\u2019s father, Hafez Assad, rose to power.
\nAlhoussaini, who lives in West Bloomfield Township, said she was born in Damascus and moved to the Detroit area as a young girl, \u201cmainly because there was nothing left for us in Syria.\u201d
\nShe said under the Assad family\u2019s rule, her grandfather\u2019s land was taken. Authorities detained him for almost a month. Her father was also detained before the family left.
\n\u201cThere never needed to be a reason,\u201d Alhoussaini said. \u201cMy dad was able to return one time, in 2010. And he has not been able to go back to his home country since, mainly because we spoke up against the Assad regime when the revolution started in 2011. And we attended many protests here. We were vocal on social media about it, did many interviews.\u201d
\nBut with Bashar Assad gone and Syria in the hands of the rebels, \u201cWe don\u2019t have to be afraid anymore to visit our country,\u201d she said.
\nHer father, 61, is considering making a trip to Syria to see his siblings and visit his parents\u2019 graves. Alhoussaini said she and her husband, who is from the northern city of Aleppo, want to take their kids over to visit with family and friends.
\nAlhoussaini\u2019s three sisters, ages 40, 34 and 29, were also born in Syria. But none of them have been back.
\nNow, there is hope and amazement that people in Syria can celebrate in the streets, she said.
\nAlhoussaini said she thinks people who were born and raised in the US won\u2019t be able to fully relate, because Americans enjoy a freedom of expression that people in Syria have never had.
\n\u201cYou can say what you want. You can go out into the street and protest whoever you want,\u201d she said. \u201cYou will not be detained for it. You will not be killed for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DEARBORN: Nizam Abazid is gleefully planning his first trip in decades to Syria, where he grew up. Rama Alhoussaini was only 6 years old when her family moved to the US, but she\u2019s excited about the prospect of introducing her three kids to relatives they\u2019ve never met in person. They are among thousands of Detroit-area […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-449333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n