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ALEPPO, Syria — In this city’s historic center, 63-year-old soap manufacturer Safwan Zenabili is back in business.
The olive soap Aleppo is famous for was stacked high at his 400-year old factory during a recent visit, the roof roughly patched after years of bombings and clashes among rebel groups left gaping holes.
Zenabili said his factory was taken over by rebel groups for four years. They stole nearly everything, he told NBC News.
He’s starting over but said, “I’m happy because they’re gone … I forget what happened before. This is a new life, new beginning.”
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Nearly two years after Syrian government forces took back control of Aleppo, the eastern part of the city — once a center of the rebellion against President Bashar al Assad — is still in ruins. The battle for Aleppo cost thousands of lives and both rebel groups and the Syrian government forces and their Russian allies have been accused of war crimes.
Today, the reconstruction is in full swing. Eastern Aleppo is buzzing with shop owners sweeping away the debris, craftsmen rebuilding the old city’s intricate wooden window balconies, bulldozers moving massive stones into place to reconstruct the city’s famous mosque.
Aleppo was Syria’s largest city before the war, the country’s industrial powerhouse. Thousands fled Aleppo during the war, and more left when the fighting ended. The Syrian government now says it wants residents and business owners to come back.
Architecture student Anas Ahmed fled in July 2015, when hundreds of thousands crossed the Mediterranean looking for safety in Europe. He was 15 years old when he reached Germany. He says he went to school and had a girlfriend, but desperately missed his family. Now 18, he’s back in Aleppo. But he says his father’s business collapsed during the war and it’s now hard to find work.
“I was afraid to lose my future maybe [by leaving Germany],” he said. “And I cannot study here. But yeah, I wanted it. I love Syria.”