Hello and welcome to NewsHour.

It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service with Rebecca Keseby 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 turn 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.

Fourteen 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,

despite what's supposed to be an exemption for basic humanitarian needs.

As I discovered, though, on a visit to a kidney hospital here in Damascus,

the staff say that sanctions continue to crush healthcare.

We've just walked into a large, bright room on the second floor.

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