Hello and welcome to NewsHour.
It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service with Rebecca Kesby in London and me,
Tim Franks, in Damascus.
We're in the Syrian capital for our second day of live broadcasting from Syria,
from a country trying to emerge from the ruin of civil war and the chokehold of dictatorship under the Assad's.
The question we've been trying to get answers to
while we're here is whether the rebels turned rulers can take this country towards stability,
recovery, openness and democracy.
As you'll hear, there's some deep scepticism, including from those who call themselves well-wishers,
about whether the one-time Sunni fundamentalist militants now in charge are really one time,
or whether they're just a different shade of authoritarian.
One of the most constant refrains we've heard from Syrians
while we've been here is that just scraping by remains tough.
The economy is enfeebled.
14 years of war have seen to that,
along with the legacy of the previous corrupt and ravenous regime.
Add to that the continuing burden of sanctions.
The UK has gone furthest in lifting those.
The European Union has also suspended some.
But the US wants to keep leverage on the new Islamist rulers,