After Assad, these 3 women are working to build a just and peaceful Syria [Video]

As Alma Salem crossed the border from Lebanon into Syria she asked the driver to pull over.

She fled the country 13 years ago when Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian government opposed pro-democracy protests with military force, plunging the country into civil war. The collapse of Assad’s regime in December made it possible for her to return home from Montreal where she had been living, for the first time since the war began. 

Getting out of the car, she knelt and kissed the earth, breathing in its familiar smell.

“I thought I [would] only come back to Syria buried, you know, right to that earth. But I came alive and I could hold it in my hand,” Salem, executive director of the Syrian Women’s Political Movement, told The Current‘s host Matt Galloway.

“I felt that I owned the country. I felt … that all Syria is mine.”

For Syrians like Salem, the end of war brought joy and renewed dreams of …