--- type: Video title: "Hitchhiking with Rebels through the New Syria" description: Damascus to Aleppo by thumb, on what Harry calls the most unpredictable road in the Middle East — a driver tortured under Assad, an abandoned officers' club, and a country running itself without a state. tags: [syria, damascus, homs, aleppo, hitchhiking, conflict, safety, burnout] timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF17Hx5ul7o video_id: wF17Hx5ul7o upload_date: 2025-05-07 duration: 2029 --- # Hitchhiking with Rebels through the New Syria Harry sets the video up as an experiment: he has a theory that the dangerous places aren't as dangerous as they're made out to be, and he is going to test it by hitchhiking from [Damascus](/places/damascus.md) to [Aleppo](/places/aleppo.md) — no guide, no plan, on what he calls the most unpredictable road in the Middle East. He starts in Jobar, a Damascus district that was the front line against the Assad government and is now a ghost town where 300,000 people used to live. He is picked up by two men transporting gas cylinders, one of whom was imprisoned and tortured by that government. He is fed, given cigarettes he tried to buy for them, and has his onward taxi paid for. The end of the video is unusual for the channel: Harry says on camera that he is burnt out, that this isn't his best work, and that he'll spend the rest of the trip off camera. ## Key moments - [00:00] Jobar: 300,000 people lived here, and it is now a ghost town. - [00:31] The experiment — Damascus to Aleppo, hitchhiking, alone, to test whether it's as dangerous as people say. - [01:02] What happened here: the front line, tunnels dug under the district, and a government response that destroyed all of it. Nobody who fled got help. - [01:02] The petrol crisis — fuel smuggled from Lebanon and sold at the roadside in plastic bottles. - [01:36] Twelve thirty-three, and the wait begins. - [03:00] The awkward part of hitchhiking: nobody understands that he doesn't want a taxi, and the taxi would be about $5. - [04:10] A ride, after about 25 minutes. - [05:27] Filling the tank costs a brick of cash. - [06:11] His drivers are transporting gas cylinders. - [06:43] One of them fought against the Assad government. - [07:31] And was imprisoned by it — his fingernails pulled out, no water, four or five months. - [08:03] Harry, plainly: this is why everyone hates him. - [08:03] What he's been told about the risk: if anything happens, it happens on these roads. - [08:35] Checkpoints, which he will not film. - [08:35] His own rule for the day: he'll take the lift for free, but he won't let them buy his drinks. - [09:13] He tries to buy them cigarettes and they buy them for him instead. - [09:44] They find his channel and watch the North Korea videos. - [10:19] They pay for his onward taxi — and the taxi driver, offered money, refuses to charge him twice. - [10:55] Homs, and destruction still standing in the city centre. - [12:07] The history: one family for 50 years, Hafez al-Assad from the 1970s, then Bashar. - [12:37] The new government is three to five months old. - [13:10] Syria was 22 million people before the war and is around 12 million now. - [13:48] The biggest shawarma he has ever seen, and the best he has eaten. - [14:18] The citadel of Homs, destroyed between 2011 and 2014 with the city as the epicentre of the uprising. - [14:55] Asked how life is after Assad: better. - [15:32] Hotels in Homs are expensive, so he pushes on. - [16:09] A driver drops him at an army checkpoint. - [16:45] The security man declines to be filmed — and then flags down a car going to Aleppo for him. - [17:20] Onto a local bus, which breaks down outside Idlib. - [17:50] Aleppo, and destroyed fortifications at the entrance to the old city. - [18:23] What actually shocked him: the destruction isn't in pockets, it's the whole country, including the centres of both major cities. - [18:59] The abandoned Assad officers' club, on a tip from friends [Kieran](/people/kieran.md) and Colin. - [20:11] The old flag still up, a destroyed portrait, and the new flag painted over things. - [20:46] Looted comprehensively — clothing on the floor, gas masks, and a dark basement he goes into anyway. - [21:46] Why it was abandoned in a hurry: Aleppo fell early and nobody expected it. - [22:50] Locals who wouldn't be filmed at first and then talk to him about what life here was like. - [23:29] Everyone he speaks to, on camera and off, says good things — and he flags that they might feel they have to. - [24:21] A Russian-Syrian who moved here in 2019: the difference is feeling free. - [25:27] Safe, but not 100% — he revises his own number down mid-sentence. People from the old government are still hiding and still killing. Stick to the main cities. - [25:59] On sanctions: he hopes they go and that other countries stay with Syria. - [26:30] The average wage is $80 a month. Food is cheap; nothing else is. - [27:05] The observation the video is really about: with the state effectively absent there is no looting, no disorder and almost no crime — and he says the UK in the same position would be far worse. - [27:39] A country getting on with itself, which he reads as people who never had a government that cared about them. - [27:52] A second-hand market built on cleared rubble, selling what a richer country would throw away. - [28:41] The citadel is closed — probably unsafe — and the ground outside is full of people drinking and smoking shisha. - [30:24] Money changers with stacks of cash in the open, and nobody touches it. - [32:03] The honest ending: he is burnt out, three weeks of non-stop travel straight from North Korea, not in the right frame of mind to film, and says the video isn't his best. - [33:06] He'll do the rest of Syria off camera — and asks viewers to come and see for themselves. ## Extracted pages - Places: [Homs](/places/homs.md), [Aleppo](/places/aleppo.md) - Country: [Syria](/countries/syria.md) - Tips: [Stick a thumb out](/tips/hitch-a-lift.md), [Judge a place for yourself](/tips/judge-a-place-for-yourself.md)