Bye, cell: inside a notorious Syrian prison

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The Economist. Hello and welcome to the intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

And I'm Rosie Blore. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your world.

On average, the world is getting less religious. But there's a countervailing trend. More and more people identify as spiritual. Less about faith, more about individual enlightenment. And the first of our two part series shows people are ready to splash out for it.

And after an extraordinary run of Premier League titles, Manchester City Football Club is now struggling. So what does this mean for the team's much heralded coach, Pep Guardiola?

First up though.

Downtown Damascus. Look at the celebrations. There's been 24 hours. Bashar Alad fled the country. These are all bullet casings. In the squares of central Damascus, people rushed to celebrate the fall of the regime of Bashar Al Assad.

Gareth Brown, our Middle east correspondent based in Beirut, has been reporting from Syria.

The celebratory gunfire is just unreal. But thousands of people also rushed to the overcrowded prisons of Assad's regime. They were desperately looking for relatives. I went with them. This is the road to Sayadnaya. Just so much traffic. Thousands of people trying to get to the prison. Some who have had relative friends missing for more than a decade. People just clinging to hope that, you know, Their loved ones might be inside Naya. Sayyidina is a small Christian village north of Damascus, but it is also the location of the most infamous prison of Mr. Assad's regime. The road towards the prison was backed up with traffic and we had to walk almost two miles to access the prison itself. On this walk, I met an 18 year old boy from nearby Yemen, Aliyan, And he told me that his uncle had been detained for 12 years. He said that he'd last seen him in 2017, and at that time his uncle was just bones and like a skeleton. Iman said that in the afternoon before the prison fell, helicopters arrived to its grounds to evacuate the guards, and he believes some of its more sensitive prisoners. Said Naya prison was to Assad what the Gulags were to Stalin. It's an old Soviet era building with three wings, isolated from the rest of the country. I was among the first foreign journalists to reach Said Naya. It's estimated that more than 30,000 people have been killed in the prison since the civil war erupted. Locals refer to the jail in Arabic as Al Muslaq al Bashariya, or the human slaughterhouse. When I got there, there were hundreds of rebel fighters swarming the prison and thousands of people searching for loved ones. Well, what Syrians found was worse than any of them might have imagined. By the time I got there, many hundreds of prisoners had already been freed from the jail. But within the prison there were hidden cells, essentially dug into the concrete and underground. And all the people there were desperately digging and trying to locate these hidden cells, searching for their loved ones. So there was a real sense of desperation. Some of these people, their friends and family, have been missing for over a decade, and this was their final glimmer of hope that those people might still be alive. I peered into some of these hidden cells, which are essentially dug into the concrete. They were pitch black, the floor was covered in these filthy, sodden blankets, and in the corner there were plastic bottles full of urine. The place really smelt awful. And then on the walls of these cells there were scribbled really desperate messages from the previous inmate. On one I remember in particular, it said, take me now in Arabic. Every so often, some of the people searching in the prison thought they heard voices behind the walls were under the concrete, and this would start a mad, desperate rush to breach the wall with shovels or the butts of their rifle, looking for potential inmates who were still trapped in the prison. I watched as fighters attempted to smash through the concrete. The power was off in this prison. It was pitch black. And there was this fear that if people were in these cells, they might suffocate because there was no ventilation. So it was really seen as a race against time. It was so crowded in there, and almost everyone had a weapon. There were fighters from all over Syria, from some of the Islamist groups, from the secular groups. I remember in one corridor, I saw a prosthetic leg, and the owner of this prosthetic leg was nowhere to be found. Another group discovered an iron press which fighters said had been used to compact the remains of those executed in the prison grounds. Sayyidinaya was known as being the holding place of political prisoners. Most of these people here had spoken out against the Assad regime, some at the start of the Revolution in 2010, 2011. Others were prisoners of war, but some of them were, you know, even prisoners of the regime of Hafiz al Assad, the father of Bashar al Assad. They'd been there for many, many decades. Even 24 hours after the prison's capture, groups of men, fighters, were using the light from their phones to trawl through old registry books they'd found inside the prison. Others were scouring scraps of paper they'd found on the floors in the staff quarters. Everyone was just desperate for information. And among those released when rebels first captured the prison, there were glaring signs of torture. They were gaunt and starving. Their heads were shaved. The rebels told me that the effects of torture were so bad that some of these inmates had forgotten their memory. They didn't know who they were or where they were from. And they'd taken them to a nearby mosque where they were trying to identify them. I think the reality is dawning on many of the people with missing relatives that almost all of those who are missing are dead. And now Syria is trying to come to terms with how it's going to rebuild its state. In the last 24 hours, Hayetahri Al Sham have announced the transitional prime minister. We're awaiting news on a transitional government, but it's still not clear what type of Syria they're going to build. So as the euphoria settles, Syrians have some very tough questions about what their country is going to look like in the future. I think one of the hardest things is as you walk back down from the prison, every car you walk past asks for news. Is there anyone there? Do you have any information?

Of course.

We don't. You know, we just say we. We have no information. And people stay in a traffic jam and all they've got is hope.

I don't have to tell you that this year has been a doozy for news right up to the end. And if you know what's good for you, you'll join us for our subscriber only End of Year review tomorrow. Our Editor in Chief Zanny Minton Beddows and Deputy Editor Edward Carr will chat through the events that shaped your world, moderated by Rachana Shanbog. Our Business Affairs Editor and our Obituaries Editor, Anne Rowe, will reflect on lives well lived. You can submit questions ahead of time or during the event. Get involved, get informed, and if you're not yet a subscriber, get on with it. There's so much behind the velvet rope. The event is tomorrow at 4pm GMT. Just go to economist.com review2024 Foreign.

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In 1968, the Beatles decided to leave Britain and set out for northern India. They'd been invited to stay at an ashram in Rishikesh, and they spent their days learning Transcendental Meditation from the guru Maharishi mahesh yogi.

Henrietta McFarlane is our assistant producer. She and our colleague Anne Hannah have been reporting for a two part series of segments on spirituality.

For the band, the experience fueled their creativity and inspired many of the songs on their White album. And for their fans, something else was going on. Many of them in the west had no exposure to the yogic ways. The Beatles had shown them how to go on a spiritual trip, not the rites and rituals and shared beliefs of a religious trip, one focused on on individual inner growth. Half a century later, spirituality is booming again in the rich world. The influence of organized religion is steadily declining, but more and more people, particularly young ones, identify as spiritual. People are searching for new ways to practice their spirituality. And as with the Beatles, increasingly that means traveling. Today, Rishikesh is widely known as the yoga capital of the world. The banks of the river are lined with temples, ashrams and hotels ranging from the dirt cheap to five star. And people travel from all over, often alone, in search of spiritual experiences.

When you are googling and looking at visiting India, there are so many ashrams to stay at, it's just nearly impossible to pick which one you would want to choose.

Heather Jones visited Rishikesh on a trip run by a company called My Spiritual India Tours.

So your entire morning is practices. You do meditation, yoga, fire, puja, breakfast, and then you have some free time to go and do what you would like to do. In Rishikesh, I did meet with a Vedic astrologer, a local Indian shaman and had an amazing, very insightful reading.

The tour also includes optional cold plunging in the Ganges river.

It's quite chilly, but refreshing. And you just get this sense of doing something that people have done for so long, just kind of bathing in the holy river and just taking in the blessing of that experience. It's quite amazing.

Guests spend around $2,500 on the two week trip, which includes staying and eating at an ashram. Spiritual tourism then is a money spinning industry. India's government reckons the sector will be worth $59 billion by 2028. That's more than three and a half times its value in 2022. Aging temples are being revived, money is being pumped into travel routes and entrepreneurs want a slice of that spiritual pie. Opening yoga and healing centers to the southeast of Rishikesh. In Ayodhya, the controversial Ram temple was opened this year.

Close to 900 crore rupees of the estimated 1600-1800 crore rupees has so far been spent on the construction of the.

New Ram temple in Ayodhya.

And in July next year, a huge complex near the temple will open with 500 new hotels and meditation centers reportedly in the works. It's not just big business in India. People are traveling to Morocco, China, Indonesia and all over Europe in search of what they call spiritual enlightenment. The roots of spiritual tourism are in the ancient practice of making pilgrimages, which appears in many religions. But today's pilgrims specifically identify themselves as spiritual, not religious.

I would not say that I grew up very spiritual. I went to school for business, but I think as I got older, doing a lot more yoga, meditation, breath work, things like that, I've slowly started to become a bit more spiritual.

Earlier this year, Christina Cheewen was lucky enough to be able to quit her corporate job in California to travel full time. First stop was the Camino de Santiago. It's a historical Christian pilgrimage that mostly runs through Spain.

It was like 800km, walking for a really long time and incorporating our meditation practices and yoga and things that you read.

Despite the Camino's religious origins, Christina is part of a growing number of secular walkers. The proportion of travelers visiting without religious intentions rose from around just 5% in 2013 to around a quarter last year. The total annual number of pilgrims on the route has also more than doubled in that time to nearly half a million. And all along the Camino, local businesses are seeing the benefits.

So you can do this experience pretty cheaply as well. And of course, you can spend a lot of money on like, private rooms, hotels, expensive dinner and stuff.

Hostels now account for twice the share of local jobs that they did in 2008. And social media is helping to spread the word. The hashtag Camino has almost 2 billion views on TikTok. Christina is just one of many posting about her experience on the platform.

It's the final day of the Camino and we're heading out with the crew to walk to Santiago. We still need to collect all of our stamps, eat a bocadillo and walk about.

Plenty of people like Christina are spending their money, their time, and traveling huge distances for spiritual enlightenment. Not everyone goes so far. Next week, my colleague Anne Hannah will look at the kinds of spirituality people are tapping into in their ph.

Manchester City fans are coming to terms with an unpleasant feeling. That gut wrenching sensation of losing. The club usually dominates England's Premier League, the most popular football competition in the world. Man City has won six out of the last seven league titles. When a club just can't seem to win, it often blames the coach. But at Man City, there's still a lot of faith in Pep Guardiola.

Well, Man City is one of the most dominant football clubs in England, maybe even in Europe over the last few years. And that's in large part thanks to their manager, Pep Guardiola. He's one of the most famous minds in the game, but in recent times they've been struggling.

Oliver Jones writes about sport for the Economist.

They went on a really quite long losing streak. Five games on the trots, which is a unheard of under Pep's tenure. And since then they've come back a little bit, but still they're a long way behind the league leaders. And it looks like this serial Winner is learning how to lose.

So aside from losing some games, which I'm sure is bad for their egos, just how bad are things really for Man City?

Well, there's different ways of looking at it, I think. On the one hand, the losing streak itself is not that big a deal. These things happen. But on the other hand, the nature of the performances is really quite something. So you have some of the world's best players just looking tired and uninspired. And now we're coming into this part of the football calendar in England over the Christmas break, where things get very intense for football teams. There's a game every few days. So if Pep and his boys can't turn things around soon, they will find themselves probably struggling to make anything at all this season.

So what's going wrong?

Well, there's a couple of things. One is Pep's management style is famously intense. So one minute he'll have his arm around a player, he'll be lavishing them with praise, telling them how amazing they are. The next, he'll be distant and cold, working something tactical out all by himself. And I think that begins to tire on people. It is a very exhausting thing, not least for him himself. The other factor is just plain bad luck. They've had some bad injuries, which, of course will disrupt any team, and then the largest and most serious problem is actually off the field. So Manchester City is probably the world's richest football club, and they were bought by the Emirati royal family in 2008. And now an independent commission is investigating whether the club broke the Premier League's financial rules whilst that transformation was taking place. Now, we should say that the club denies any wrongdoing on all the charges, but at the same time, if they are found guilty, they could face a points deduction or even automatic relegation from the league, which means that they would drop out of the Premier League into the second division, the lower leagues of English football. Now, that for a club like Man City, you know, really the richest club in the world for the last few years, so successful is unthinkable, really. And that's the same for Pep. He's always worked at the top of the game, so how would he work in a lower level?

And can Man City turn it around?

I think it would be silly to write Pep off. He is a great manager and they do have tremendous players. Once some of these players that are injured come back, they will probably start winning games again, but at the same time, they're a long way behind. And this is the longest time that Pep has stayed in any job. He signed an extra extension to stay there for another couple of years. So it may be that the sort of the peak of Pep, if you like, is over, but they'll still come back stronger at some point, I'm sure.

So, Oli, if you were a betting man, and perhaps you are a betting man, who would your money be on for winning the Premier League this year?

Well, the only thing I can say for certain is that my team, Tottenham Hotspur from London, will definitely not be winning the Premier League this year. But otherwise, Liverpool are top of the table at the moment. They have a big lead. There's a long way to go, but they look like they could take it.

Oli, thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.