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Today on State of the World, a new mission for Syria's famed White Helmets.
You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. During Syria's long civil war, emergency responders wearing white helmets became famous. They were known for running into harm's way to rescue civilians from collapsed buildings in the aftermath of regime airstrikes. The white helmets were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and featured in an Oscar-winning documentary.
Well, now with Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad gone, the White Helmets have a new mission and a new challenge. NPR's Lauren Frayer takes us to a Damascus firehouse to see them in action. Woo!
Oh, wow, this is all burnt. So we're rushing into this building. It's an emergency here. Firefighters rush into a burning building in the Syrian capital. Firefighter Tariq Talib says they managed to extinguish the flames in time and no one was injured. Residents are gobsmacked. They got here so quickly and they didn't ask for any bribes, says Mohamed Bassem Saeed, a retired
a retiree who lived through Syria's civil war and says he never got help like this. These new firefighters wear gold and navy uniforms and iconic white helmets. For most of the war, the white helmets operated only in rebel-held areas. Dictator Bashar al-Assad had decked the capital with billboards vilifying them as traitors and terrorists. No, we're not looting blacks.
I never believed any of that, though, Saeed says, thanking the firefighters profusely. Thank you. When Assad fell in December, a White Helmets convoy rolled south from rebel territory and into Damascus. I'm sad and happy.
I felt joy, grief and shock altogether, says Amr Zarifeh, a white helmet who's from Damascus but hadn't been here since 2018 when he responded to a chemical weapons attack by Assad's forces. Now he lives in a Damascus firehouse where the white helmets have set up new headquarters. Their founder, Raed Saleh, is now in Syria's cabinet.
And the volunteer force he founded 12 years ago is extending its reach for the first time to the entire country. It's the journey of the Syrian people and the Syrian revolution. Deputy leader Farouk Habib says their workload has actually quadrupled, even though the war is over.
Most of our country is destroyed. Half of our people lost their homes and they are displaced either internally or they became refugees. And now our main mission is to deal with the legacy of the war. How to find the missing persons. We're dealing with the mass graves.
They're also repairing roads and water pipes. These are people who started as shopkeepers, teachers, gas station attendants and engineers. Habib was a banker. In the opposition-held Northwest, the White Helmets served about 5 million people.
Habib says they're now stretching to eventually meet the needs of more than 20 million Syrians, even as their budget is cut. USAID, the foreign aid agency dismantled by the Trump administration, it used to be the White Helmet's biggest funder. Dispatchers are nevertheless still managing to coordinate an average of 15,000 operations per month.
Once volunteers, the White Helmets now get salaries. They're even recruiting former regime firefighters into their ranks, including at least one at this firehouse who's working for free he's so eager.
Many of the White Helmets actually started as recipients of the group's services. Mustafa Bakar ran a butcher shop and had never heard of the White Helmets before he found himself in the back of one of their vans, bleeding from shrapnel and being ferried to safety.
He told himself if he survived, he would join them. And that was 10 years ago. As Bakar describes the trauma of these past 10 years, of war and atrocities and of paying it forward and saving other people, he gets an emergency call.
And a glimpse at what peacetime Syria could be like. It's a cat stuck in a tree. The woman on the phone is frantic. And just like in any other crisis, the white helmets respond. Part of our work is psychological support for the public, Bakar says, as he suits up to run down to the trucks.
This whole country has PTSD, he says. That's NPR's Lauren Frayer in Damascus. And that's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Lagunitas Brewing Company, challenging the status quo and crafting stories along the way. Featuring a wide range of innovative craft brews and non-alcoholic options, it's good to have friends. Learn more at lagunitas.com.
This message comes from NPR sponsor CFP, Certified Financial Planner Professionals, committed to acting in their clients' best interests. Learn more at letsmakeaplan.org.
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