There seems to be no limit to the dark revelations revealed by the fall of Syria’s 54-year-old Assad regime.
The prisons were destroyed, exposing the tools of torture that were used on peaceful protesters and others considered dissidents of the government. Stacks of official documents record thousands of prisoners. Corpses and mass graves hold weak, broken victims, or at least some of them.
Many others have yet to be found.
For these and many other atrocities, Syrians are demanding justice. The rebel coalition that toppled President Bashar al-Assad last month has vowed to hunt down and prosecute top regime officials for crimes including murder, wrongful imprisonment, torture and gassing of their own people.
“The majority of Syrians would say they can’t be closed to end this dark period of 54 years when they bring these people to court,” said Ayman Asfari, chairman of Madaniya, a network of Syrian human rights groups and other civil society organizations.
But even assuming the new authorities can track down the suspects, accountability will be difficult to achieve in a country as vulnerable, divided and tortured as Syria. The events of other Arab countries whose regimes collapsed prove the challenges: None of those countries – not Egypt, not Iraq, not Tunisia – succeeded in obtaining full, lasting justice for the crimes of previous times.
Syria faces some unique obstacles. The country’s new leaders came from the majority of Sunni Muslims, while the top officials of the deposed regime were dominated by Alawites, a small religious group. That means prosecutions for Assad-era abuses could fuel sectarian tensions in Syria.
The justice system was more than a tool for Mr. al-Assad, which has made it ill-equipped to deal with widespread, complex human rights abuses. Many thousands of Syrians could be affected, in addition to being prosecuted, raising questions about how to handle low-level officials.
And after years of war, sanctions, corruption and mismanagement, it is an enormous task to repair the damage while transitioning to a new government.
Nine out of 10 Syrians live off the streets. Cities are in ruins. Homes were destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were arbitrarily imprisoned for years or decades. Hundreds of thousands died in the fighting. Many are still missing.
The Syrian people will need time and more dialogue to create a meaningful accountability process, said Nerma Jelacic of the International Justice and Accountability Commission, which has been collecting evidence against the Syrian regime’s figures for years.
“These are things that take time, and they don’t happen overnight,” she said.
But there is a lot of pressure on Syria’s new leaders to start punishing the old ones, and the transitional authorities in the capital, Damascus, have promised to do just that.
“We will not back down from responding to criminals, murderers and security and military officials involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Ahmed al-Shara, the Syrian leader, said in a Telegram statement in December. He added that they will soon publish “List No. 1” of senior officials “involved in the abuse of the Syrian people.”
Hunting for such figures will be difficult, if not impossible. Mr al-Assad has found refuge in Russia, which is unlikely to abandon him. Most of his top associates have since disappeared, with some reportedly hiding in Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates.
Still, exiled Syrian human rights groups began laying the groundwork more than a decade ago, gathering evidence of persecution imposed in other countries — and one day, they hoped, themselves.
But Fernando Travesí, executive director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, who has worked with such groups in Syria, warned that, before starting the persecution in Syria, the authorities must first gain the trust of the citizens by building a regime that meets their needs.
Doing so would avoid the missteps of a country like Tunisia, where the lack of economic progress in the years following the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 left many people angry and depressed. By 2021, Tunisians had turned their backs on their fledgling democracy, supporting a president who had grown in power. Efforts to bring members of the feared security forces and supporters of the regime before the court have been suspended.
“Any process of truth, justice and accountability needs to come from institutions with authority and credibility in society, otherwise it is a waste of time,” said Mr. Travesí. Providing essential services, he added, would encourage Syrians to view the government as “not an instrument of oppression; it takes care of my needs.”
A transitional government can take basic but important steps such as helping refugees who left years ago to find new identities, deciding what should happen to property that was stolen or used during the war, and providing stable electricity and running water. It will need to deliver humanitarian aid and economic development, although that can only be done with foreign aid.
And it must do all this in a balanced manner, or Syrians may see accountability efforts as selective or politically motivated. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, the recruitment led by the United States and successive governments purged and listed the unemployed of the former ruling party without due process, which analysts say undermines faith in the new system.
“The only way to heal the wounds of other communities is to make sure that they are properly represented,” said Mr. Asfari.
The Syrian authorities are showing that they understand. They have repeatedly vowed to respect the rights of minorities and promised amnesty to soldiers recruited to serve in Mr al-Assad’s war. Most government employees are allowed to continue working so that institutions can continue to function.
Any prosecution “must be a good process, otherwise it will look like settling scores,” said Stephen J. Rapp, a former international prosecutor and former U.S. ambassador for international justice who has worked on torture in Syria for more than a decade. “And that can play a big role in reconciliation in society and in easing efforts to solve problems, for example, for the children of parents who have committed this crime.”
One more issue, some of the documents that will be very important in prosecuting the cases were damaged in the chaos following the fall of Mr. al-Assad, state prisons and intelligence documents were looted, looted or burned, said Ms. Jelacic of the intelligence agency. Commission on International Justice and Accountability.
Because Syria remains under wartime sanctions, his group and others trying to secure the documents for future use are unable to work across the country, again jeopardizing their efforts.
Mass graves during the war and torture facilities are the most visible evidence of the torture directed by Mr al-Assad and his father, Hafez.
Almost all Syrians, in one way or another, were wronged by the previous regime. Therefore, it is not enough to prosecute people for crimes committed during the civil war, say veterans of justice efforts in countries that have undergone political changes.
Mr. Rapp called for a “massive truth-telling process” that would help “to begin to understand the system of regime oppression that was Syria 54 years ago, and this killing machine that was Syria” since 2011.
One model would be the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which heard testimony from victims and perpetrators of rights violations, awarded reparations to victims, and in some cases issued amnesties.
Ms. Jelacic said Syria would need a broader reckoning with the legacy of the Assad regime that “does not involve division, but contributes to healing.”
Before the trials begin, experts say, Syria should overhaul its police and court systems and create a legal framework to handle rights violations, perhaps creating a special court to prosecute the most serious cases. An equally urgent priority is to find out what happened to the estimated 136,000 people who are still missing after being arrested by the Assad regime and to identify the bodies discovered in mass graves.
But Syria cannot wait long to prosecute former regime officials. Slow legal justice leaves room for angry people to take matters into their own hands, which can set off cycles of violence and deepen sectarian divisions. There have been reports of widespread reprisal killings and threats against minorities favored by the Assad regime.
After the Tunisian revolution, long delays in the trial of former security officials added to the citizens’ sense that their democracy was dead.
Lamia Farhani, a Tunisian lawyer who has long sought justice for the shooting of her brother while protesting against the former regime in 2011, said her country’s disillusionment had allowed the current president, Kais Saied, to destroy democracy.
“We had a fledgling democracy that failed at the start of the storm,” he said. “And all this happened because there was no real reconciliation.”
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