The railway from Beirut to Damascus was conceived in the 19th century when the two capitals were not yet divided by national borders. The route was abandoned in the 1970s owing to Lebanon’s civil war.
Today, in the Syrian town of Madaya, near the border with Lebanon, abandoned tracks where the train once stopped look almost new when they are not buried by dust. There is talk now among officials and businesses in Damascus of reviving the railway within Syria.
But the people of Madaya and its neighbouring towns in the district have more immediate priorities. In 2015, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah surrounded Madaya, allegedly killing dozens in a siege. About 5,000 people fled Madaya, with 30,000 displaced from the district.
The neighbouring town of Al Zabadani, the largest in the area, faced relentless barrel bombing in 2012 and 2015 from forces loyal to the regime of former Syrian president Bashar Al Assad.
The fall of the regime in December 2024 compelled most of Madaya and Al Zabadani’s displaced residents to return. But they now face the challenge of rebuilding their devastated homes and economy, for the most part on their own.
Scorched earth
Hezbollah’s scorched earth campaign in Madaya plagues its recovery. Its famed fruit orchards were destroyed, preventing growers from reviving their crops to this day. Locals say the militant group cut down the trees and sold the wood across the mountains in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Mahmoud Hammadi, a local activist who documented the siege of Madaya, described the destruction as vengeful. “It was revenge that followed the bombings and the siege,” he said. “They burnt our lands. They burnt around 10km of the Madaya plains.”
Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble, particularly in Al Zabadani, with pro-Assad slogans painted on the shells of damaged homes.
Reminders of the war are everywhere. Afaf Al Burhan, a teacher, lived through the siege after fleeing to Madaya following the regime shelling of Al Zabadani. “We’d spend 24 hours without water. A kilo of rice, if you could find it, cost $150. People died of hunger,” she recalled. “We couldn’t leave our homes, we stayed away from the windows. We came out only at night. Even lighting a match put you at risk.”
She came back to Al Zabadani a year ago, after she and her family were displaced to Idlib in 2017. She has fixed parts of her home and is growing vegetables in the garden. From her terrace, she can see former military outposts at the top of the hills that surrounded Al Zabadani, occupied first by regime forces, then by Hezbollah. The inside of her home bears the scars of gunfire, while she has recently sealed damaged walls.
Hezbollah’s sieges of Syrian cities were part of a “surrender or starve” strategy, which aimed to exhaust opposition fighters and force the population to leave. The UN was criticised for providing food aid only once a ceasefire was agreed to – a move that worsened the displacement.
Attempts at revival
Madaya’s new Mayor, Tariq Al Abdeh, wants to revive the town’s reputation as the “bride of the Damascus countryside”, an area once known for its apple, pear and cherry trees, fresh water springs and breezy plains.
Though the vast majority of Madaya’s displaced residents have returned, they are struggling to rebuild their homes and find work. “All of the people coming now are facing housing challenges. Their homes are destroyed,” he told The National.
Among their biggest challenges will be the restoration of the fruit orchards – a “green belt” key to the town’s economy. “Growers today need support and need us to stand with them. It is absolutely necessary so as not to lose this green belt that we have,” Mr Al Abdeh added.
Like others, he believes Hezbollah’s campaign aimed to make Madaya uninhabitable for years to come. “They punished the people who fled and were against the Assad regime. They cut the trees in the whole plain, trees that were 50 years old,” he said.
While the town has water from the Barada River and other springs, the infrastructure that would allow residents to use it effectively has been destroyed. “We thankfully have water [from the springs], but we are deprived of water," Mr Al Abdeh said.
Young people also face unemployment, in particular those who were recruited as fighters during the war and did not complete their schooling. “We have a lot of projects but no capabilities. The young are deprived of a lot of opportunities. They need qualifications and we need projects from them to work in,” he said.
Mr Al Abdeh said they had not yet received support from the government in Damascus. “It is the role of the government organisations to come, to see the people who have disabilities, who don’t have opportunities to work."
Yet the community is working on the town’s recovery with support from locals and those still living abroad. “We’re co-operating and stimulating development from all of the people,” Mr Al Abdeh said.
One welcome effort by the government has been securing the border with Lebanon, following years of arms and drugs smuggling by Hezbollah to support the former regime.
Malik Al Abdeh, editor-in-chief of Syria in Transition whose family are from Madaya, said the Syrian diaspora had an important role to play in raising funds for local councils. "Recovery has to be in large part locally driven, because this is the only way that you could attract the sorts of people with the necessary capital to invest in these areas," he said.
"Towns like Madaya or Al Zabadani have to attract expatriates who are well established and well off in Europe and America, but who are interested in investing for the greater good."
He said recovery efforts could be decentralised to give local councils greater control over fund-raising. "Local councils need to have the ability to create tax incentives for people to come back and invest. That would mean some kind of decentralisation," he said.
Fragmented communities
Villages are close-knit communities, but residents of Madaya have been dispersed by displacement and exile. Some families who fled Syria in the 1980s have also begun to return.
Ahmad Abdel Wahab, a journalist, said cultural tensions were emerging between those who returned from different regions or countries, as well as between generations. “You have those who stayed here, those who went to Idlib, others to Lebanon and Turkey, and those who’ve been living in Europe,” he said.
Chief among them is the tension between those returning from Idlib in north-western Syria and those who remained in Madaya under regime control after the siege. Idlib was at the time controlled by the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham rebel group, led by Ahmad Al Shara, who is now Syria's President.
Ali Yusef Ali, a civil engineer studying in Damascus at the time of the siege, came back after Hezbollah’s withdrawal. “The people who were here during the siege or who became fighters fled to Idlib or Lebanon. Now those who fled after the liberation are coming back – they suspect that the people who stayed here supported the regime,” he said.
That is a misconception he is trying to address. “Under the regime, if a person was detained, it meant they were killed. If you made any movement and went to prison, your family lost you. We were living here neither taking from the regime nor giving to it,” he explained.
“We owed nothing to anyone. We were the people. We didn’t side with Bashar Al Assad, we sided with the truth."
Control of Madaya was initially given to those who returned from Idlib, who were known to the transitional government. But they were sacked by the Rural Damascus governor after complaints over their inefficiency, with litter piling up on the roads. A new street-cleaning effort is under way as a result of the change in administration and is considered to have been largely successful.
Painful reminders
People are keen to talk about their experience. Ms Al Burhan recalls how she organised women’s marches in Al Zabadani during anti-regime protests in 2011. “People often asked me why are you walking and tiring yourself? You have five boys to do it for you. But I couldn’t not do it,” she said.
“We lived under the shadow of the government. My husband is an engineer. But they persecuted him because he was a religious man.”
When Russia joined the civil war in 2015, some of their first outposts were in the neighbouring town of Bloudan, she said. Al Zabadani came under regular attack by the Syrian regime’s improvised barrel bombs. “We moved from house to house. All six of those houses were bombed and destroyed,” she added.
When the campaign intensified, women and children escaped to Madaya, walking at night as quietly as they could to avoid being seen. Ms Al Burhan cried when she recalled her evacuation by bus to Idlib following the siege. “In Idlib, we could relax. They welcomed us,” she said.
It is said that whenever the regime hit Al Zabadani or Madaya, opposition forces in Idlib shot at regime checkpoints in retaliation, leading to strikes on north-western Syria.
Her biggest concern now is the gaps in young people’s education – and particularly the young men who became fighters during the war. While her youngest son was able to obtain a university degree in Idlib, her fourth son, now 31, did not finish secondary school.
Road to justice
Syrian courts are pursuing justice for crimes committed by the Assad regime and its officials. This week, Mr Al Assad and his brother, Maher, were sentenced to death in their absence. It followed years of Syrians in exile successfully bringing cases to European courts, which convicted high-ranking members of the Syrian intelligence sector of various crimes.
Ms Al Burhan viewed this week’s sentencing of Atif Najib, the former head of political security in Deraa as a “victory”. He is now in Syrian custody.
Madaya’s residents also want to see Hezbollah held accountable for its crimes there, but cannot name a living person that could be prosecuted. They suspect most of the fighters were killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon in 2024, along with Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s former leader.
“The international community has to bring Hezbollah to trial. They need to help us because the government alone can’t do it,” Mr Hammadi said.
Ms Al Burhan said people were still being maimed or killed from mines laid in the fields above the valley. Two men were killed last year. “Before they went up, one of them showed me a cherry stone that he kept in his pocket," she added. "His youngest daughter had given it to him, as a reminder of her when he was out in the fields."
