I'm John Yang. Today, a week after life inside Syria was upended, as rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad's regime, there were flickering signs of normalcy.

Syrian Christians attended regular Sunday services and schools reopened. Now, as the country's new leaders begin to chart a path forward, the UN envoy to Syria says the lightning offensive should be

followed by a quick end to the sanctions the West imposed after Assad crushed the Arab Spring

anti-government protests more than a decade ago. Lela Malana Allen is in Aleppo tonight.

Laila, you've spent this past week traveling all around Syria.

What have you been seeing? What have you been hearing?

I have, John. In the last few days, I've essentially followed the path backwards that HTS and the other rebel group swept down through across Syria.

So I started in Damascus, and then I moved up to the cities of Homs and Hamas into the second biggest city in the country, Aleppo, and then today up into what were the rebel-held areas of the country

in the northwest. But of course, much of the country is now rubble-held, so they can't be called that

anymore. One of the strangest things, of course, is that it doesn't feel strange. If you didn't

know that just over a week ago,

there would be checkpoints everywhere along these roads. Most people could not move freely. People

would be asked for ID cards, would be harassed, would often be detained for trying to cross

into different areas. People in regime held Syria and in the Northwest had different

ID cards. There were different celly in the networks. Everything was divided, and suddenly now these roads are free and open, so movement is the first thing that's functioning very well.

Beyond that, services are really struggling. Syria has already been struggling for years,

with issues like connectivity, like being able to get enough diesel and petrol in. There's very little petrol available on the streets.

People are watering down petrol and selling it in canisters on the side of the road

or smuggling it in from Lebanon.

There are huge electricity problems, particularly in the north where we are in Aleppo.

There are constant power cuts and it's even worse out in the more rural areas.

There are a lot of issues with the roads as well over the years, of course, because these

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