The role model for Syria’s unity

In the days since their liberation from a dictatorship Dec. 8, Syrians have been in a cheering mood. At the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus Dec. 13, they cheered the armed Islamist group that felled the Assad regime. In many cities, groups of people cheered for themselves with the chant “Hold your head up high, you’re a free Syrian.”

Yet perhaps the most heartfelt cheer came during a Dec. 11 parade atop firetrucks and ambulances. People in the capital gave a hero’s welcome to a grassroots rescue organization widely seen as the country’s most selfless, trusted, and impartial group: the Syrian Civil Defense, otherwise known as The White Helmets.

This band of some 3,000 unarmed and local volunteers, who wear white headgear, has saved more than 129,000 people during 13 years of civil war. They have rushed to bombed-out buildings to search for survivors – whether they be children, terrorists, or soldiers of the regime. After they served as first responders, they would then clear rubble, rebuild homes, and restore communities.

Even though some 10% of them have been killed, the volunteers hold fast to their motto (a verse in the Quran): “Whoever saves one life, it is as if they have saved all of humanity.”

If Syria becomes a unified and democratic country someday, the example set by The White Helmets may be one reason. Its leader, Raed Al Saleh, says the group’s neutrality and independence have been an important shield.

“We existed before all these armed groups and we continue to exist based on the power of the people,” he told Berkeley News in October.

Now The White Helmets wants to help Syrians “shake off the dust of war,” he said in a video on the social platform X. That effort includes their help in freeing political prisoners, clearing land mines, and preserving documents of the regime’s abuses. “The Syria of peace and civilization will return to you,” said Mr. Saleh.

The country still has many civil society groups that have survived the regime. “Syrians are not to the right or to the left – they are in the middle, they are just normal people,” White Helmets co-founder Abdulrahman Almawwas told Voice of America. “So we hope that the next government ... will lead us to a new Syria that all Syrians dream of.”

That dream was heard in the public cheers for The White Helmets, whose willingness to save all people has laid a foundation for a country too long torn apart by war over religion, ethnicity, and geopolitics.