Towards Syrian-led Transitional Justice

By Anne-Marie McManus

Images of joyful men and women waving Syria’s three-starred flag last weekend confirmed that many Syrians view the rapid overthrow of the Assad regime on December 8 as a revolution. In songs and chants of “the Syrian people are one,” the crowds signal their memory of the popular uprising that began in 2011. The world, including much of Syria, believed that uprising was crushed into oblivion under years of proxy war and mass displacement. Today, Syria’s political future is unclear, as the crowds celebrating on the streets of Damascus, Homs, and Hama know well. It is a mistake for European observers to attribute their optimism to naiveté. At this moment of opening and uncertainty – when Syrians, against all expectations and odds, have freed themselves from a decades-old dictatorship – their choice to publicly embrace national unity is a political stance. Western commentators will inevitably wring their hands over whether the Islamic group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which now leads the country under Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, is to be feared or trusted. But we should not be so distracted by old anxieties that we lose sight of the tremendous possibility that Syrians, inside and outside the country, are contemplating: the possibility of turning the page on the bitter social fragmentation of the Assad regime and building a new, law-based, and inclusive society.

Syrian civil society organizations and initiatives, many of which have worked for years in European exile, must be at the forefront of this task. More than ever, they require support as they prepare to lead a new chapter in their nation’s politics. Even before 2011, Syrian civil society groups were incubators for the democratic practices that Syria will now require. After 2011, when activists and lawyers scattered to Europe, they founded documentation initiatives; human rights and advocacy groups; and inclusive national charters for the families and relatives of the forcibly disappeared, whose numbers are estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000. Many of these civil society initiatives are based in Germany, which is home to the largest communities of displaced Syrians. They include prison survivors who testified at the historic Koblenz trial and women-led organizations like Families for Freedom and the Caesar Families Association, whose members advocated successfully for the establishment of the UN’s IIMP (Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic). Today, their voices are sounding out across social media, demanding urgent cooperation between international and Syrian actors to protect evidence in Syria and to locate the disappeared. Yet their calls are going unanswered.

The evidence in question includes mass graves, official documents, ID cards, and notebooks in which regime officials recorded the names, birthplaces and dates, family members, accusations, interrogations, and deaths of their victims. Collectively, this evidence is the key to the families of the disappeared learning the fates of their loved ones and putting an end to years, even decades, of suffering and uncertainty. It is also the key to a national process of reckoning and reconciliation through evidence-based transitional justice. Forced disappearance in Syria affects thousands of households and lies at the heart of contemporary politics. The new social order that so many dream of today will begin or be foreclosed in two related demands: information for the families of the disappeared, and a transitional justice process for perpetrators. Without these, national unity and social stability are at risk. 

Despite the critical importance of this issue for Syria’s political transition, since December 8 Western governments and organizations have failed to extend the support that is needed to secure and document evidence at prisons, detention centers, and mass graves. Al-Jolani has named transitional justice as a top priority for the new state, promising to find the guilty and hold them accountable. Yet the network of individuals who made up Assad’s prison system is vast, ranging from professional torturers to ordinary informers. The current transitional government lacks the resources to oversee the securing and documentation of evidence on prison sites, detention centers, and mass graves. Despite the ongoing efforts of volunteers, the Association for the Detained and Missing of Sednaya Prison (ADMSP), and the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets) on the ground, much evidence has already been lost, stolen, burned, or rendered inadmissible for court purposes.

At the same time, the opening of the regime’s prisons raised fervent hopes among Syrian families, yet only several thousand individuals were released. Since then, handwritten lists of detainees’ names are being shared on Telegram channels; reporters are rifling through ID cards that are piled in file cabinets and desks in seemingly abandoned detention centers; and images of newly-opened mass graves, unguarded and left to the elements, are circulating on social media. These acts are understandable responses to the lack of centralized coordination: acting individually, Syrians are sharing information with one another and the world. Yet no one should have to risk seeing their child’s mutilated corpse on a Facebook post or confirm their spouse’s death via Instagram. The leak of the Caesar photos in 2014 already exposed Syrian families to this horror. Now, it is taking place on a mass scale. As if this anguish weren’t enough, the information that is being shared is unverified. With sources uncertain and emotions running high, social media channels have become rife with rumors. The most agonizing of these was the hope that Sednaya Prison, the iconic death camp of the regime since 2011, contained secret underground floors. For days after December 8, families and activists flooded to the site, digging even with their bare hands, desperate to rescue the imprisoned they fervently hoped might be their loved ones. But no one was there. It was all just a rumor.

In the absence of clear information channels, this cycle of hope and devastation is being repeated within thousands of affected families and, thanks to social media, within collective Syrian experience. At the same time, Syrian communities are watching their evidence disappear in real time, confronting the terrifying prospect that after this week, they and the world may never learn what happened to so many lost souls. The scale of the disaster is such that without swift, coordinated action to secure prison evidence – and without widespread trust that it has not been forged or tampered with – transitional justice for Syria risks disintegrating into chaos, anger, and conspiracy theories.

At present, an unknown number of individuals, journalists, and groups are gathering up documents in what my colleague, the Syrian activist and researcher Fadi Adleh, has dubbed a veritable “gold rush” for evidence. The Commission for International Justice and Accountability’s (CIJA) decision to remove millions of documents for transitional justice from Syria to an undisclosed location in Europe, recently reported by The Times, is generating anger and anxiety. While it is clear that evidence must be secured, unilateral action by CIJA and other Western groups will undermine public trust in the transitional justice process. Most worryingly, it will give ammunition to regime loyalists and chaos mongers, allowing them to discredit the evidence by reviving the old regime boogeyman of Western plots and meddling in Syria.

A more sustainable, long-term strategy is for international organizations like CIJA and the ICRC to lend their support to the Syrian organizations that already hold the moral and political authority to oversee the prisons issue, allowing them to steer this highly sensitive transition for their own society. Today, there is still a window to coordinate with HTS, ADMSP, the Civil Defense, and representatives of the victims’ families to secure mass graves, and remaining evidence at prison sites. A precedent for such efforts is the ICRC’s crossline operations, which broke the sieges during Syria’s war and required coordination across stakeholders. With Syrian experts overseeing the process and international bodies ensuring transparency and forensic documentation, this model of cooperation promises to distribute sensitive information to affected Syrian communities with dignity and care; to protect evidence for future judicial processes; and to promote trust where anger and despair are rapidly spreading. 

Moreover, the removal of evidence from the country can and should be addressed by the development of clear strategies and timelines – formulated in dialogue with Syrian civil society actors who are already based in Europe – for the creation of national archives and research centers. These initiatives should be led and stewarded by Syrians. In my own research project at the Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien on “The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria”, funded by the European Research Council, my Syrian colleagues have long informed me that the stories of surviving incarceration and forced disappearance, which date back to the late 1970s under the Assad regime, belong to a national heritage. While this heritage is bitter and marked by horrific violence, it is also a record of the immense dignity and humanity that Syrians have shown and continue to show their fellow citizens in contexts of duress and despair. In recent days, a new ritual spontaneously came to life on the streets of Damascus: young men carried images of the disappeared to the streets outside homes where families had lost someone to forced disappearance. They chant to the mothers, we are all your children, the lost one is our sibling. In such acts of solidarity and public mourning, Syrians are extending care and recognition to one another. They are also signaling a critical point for society’s future: Syrians do not want to give up on their disappeared. Years of imprisonment, secrecy, violence, and impunity under the Assads have left a deep wound in Syrian society, which extends from the country itself to its European diasporas. For the allies of Syria’s democratic transition, the clear choice is to support civil society actors as they build on their years of advocacy and tireless labor to finally heal that wound in a transparent, evidence-based process that can clarify the fates of the victims and bring perpetrators to justice. Through its landmark Koblenz trial, Germany established itself as an ally of justice for Syrians in their struggle to learn the truth of the Assad’s carceral system. It now has the opportunity to continue that work, and in the process build new bridges of cooperation between its diasporic communities and the Middle East. Undeniably, much remains to be known about the transitional government and its choices for Syria’s future. Yet they have recognized that justice and accountability will be critical to the building of sustainable peace for all Syrians. The major prerequisites for that political transformation are information for the families of the disappeared and a comprehensive, trustworthy body of evidence. The hour is already late, but there is still time for national and international actors to come together in a transparent, Syrian-led process that can secure the prerequisites for this historic transition. 

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About the Author

Anne-Marie McManus directs the ERC funded Project “The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria (SYRASP)” at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin.

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Citation: Anne-Marie McManus, Towards Syrian-led Transitional Justice, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 19.12.2024, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/54028

 

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