Between reconciliation and revenge: Syria prepares to judge the crimes of the dictatorship
The new government has launched two commissions to try those responsible for human rights violations under the Assad regime.
DamascusWith the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime and the entry of rebel militias into Damascus On December 8th, nearly 14 years of civil war in Syria came to an end. At least officially. However, since then, violence has not disappeared from the Syrian streets. According to a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), during the first six months after the war, a total of 7,670 violent deaths were recorded in the country, 70% of them civilians, including more than 300 children. The figures do not include the approximately 1,100 deaths from theThe latest wave of sectarian violence in the Druze-majority province of Suwayda.
In a situation of "security chaos," the OSDH says in its report, the motivations for the killings are not always clear. And while some may have criminal motivations, a good number are acts of revenge related to the civil war, in which more than half a million people died. Specifically, the OSDH has documented more than 2,200 executions since December. The government, controlled by the leaders of the HTS militia, the main coalition of radical Islamist militias that overthrew Assad, downplays this violence and claims that these are "isolated cases."
With the aim of ending this hellish cycle of revenge, and under pressure from international actors and Syrian civil society, the country's president, Ahmed al Sharaa, created two commissions in April to transparently address the issue of transitional justice—the process of holding those responsible for serious human rights violations accountable and ensuring national reconciliation. In a country with devastated infrastructure, more than 100,000 people missing, and militias still ruling the roost in some areas, the challenge is enormous.
The greatest challenge
"The challenge is enormous. Of all the countries where our organization has intervened in its history, Syria is the one that records the highest number of victims and abuses," says Nousha Kabawat, a Syrian researcher working for the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), an NGO that has accompanied more than 5000 refugees. "We must manage the expectations of the victims' families, because this will be a very long process, lasting years, and it will certainly not be able to meet all its objectives," admits Kabawat.
In the coming weeks, both the National Commission for the Disappeared (CND) and, above all, the National Commission for Transitional Justice (CNJT) are expected to publish the roadmap and parameters of the transitional justice process in Syria. "For now, those responsible for these commissions are making a commendable effort to meet with the various victims' associations and make them feel part of the process," says activist Wafa Mustafa, founder of the Free Syria's Disappeared coalition. In a press conference, CNJT president Abdelbaset Abdelatif asserted that the process would not be guided by "retributive justice" and, along with truth, stressed the importance of compensating the victims.
Reconciliation or revenge?
Fatima, a 32-year-old woman who suffered all kinds of abuse in prison and whose father was murdered under torture, supports this view, but points out a red line: forgetting. "Some want the victims to forget. But it's not possible to forget; the body can't forget... Yes, I want justice, but it's also very important to receive compensation and aid, because we have to go on living," she says, sitting in a cafe in Damascus.
Her brother Mustafa sees it differently. He wants revenge, and if possible, to get it with his own hands. That's why he moves around Syria from village to village, with a pistol on his belt, in search of the torturers who did so much harm to his family. More than in the cities, this mentality is present especially in rural areas where tribal structures are maintained.
A source of controversy in Syrian society is the fact that hundreds of officers from Assad's security forces have been arrested and remain imprisoned, while other senior officials from the former regime have been released without explanation. Mustafa complains of a "lack of transparency" in these decisions, also pointing to another shortcoming in the process. "According to the commissions' statutes, they can only investigate Assad's crimes, not those of the militias [linked to the current government]. This is very worrying and could derail the entire process," he says.
