After Assad’s fall, Syrians search for lost loved ones – and a path forward

Hamed is driving away from the gates of Syria’s notorious Sednaya Army Jail with a gentle grip on the wheel. The solar is shining exterior, however the darkness of the multistory complicated – a community of torture chambers and chilly cells reduce off from the surface world by concrete partitions and a latticework of braided barbed wire – is overwhelming.

“I, too, was held in Sednaya,” the Syrian taxi driver instantly blurts. He had been incarcerated there for seven years.

“Thank God you might be right here,” replies Walaa, a schoolteacher and the Monitor’s translator. The exceptionally excessive demise price amongst inmates at Syria’s archipelago of prisons and detention facilities is well-known.

Hamed pauses after which takes a pointy breath. “Thank God I’m right here,” he agrees, his voice instantly wavering from the hassle to maintain composed. “However I’m unhappy for all those that are gone. All these individuals. What did they do? What fault have they got? I cry remembering.”

His ache pours out, like an extended cry from Syria’s dungeons, a cry that was silenced throughout greater than half a century of rule by brutal despots, Bashar al-Assad, and his father, Hafez, earlier than him.

The previous Sednaya inmate describes how his household paid exorbitant sums for “mild” remedy in a spot of torture and demise. In actuality, that payoff put him within the kitchen and gave him different duties – equivalent to carrying the our bodies of lifeless inmates right into a room the place they had been sprayed with dissolving chemical compounds.

After shocked silence, Walaa ventures a follow-up query. “Do you keep in mind names and faces? Was there anybody from Douma in your cell?” she asks, referring to a city close to Damascus that was held by rebels from 2012 till 2018. (To guard Walaa, Hamed, and a few others on this story, their surnames have been withheld.) 

Walaa remains to be reeling from our go to to Sednaya, the place Syrians frantically picked by paperwork strewn in regards to the flooring. They had been trying to find details about lacking family members. Others had been digging a large number of holes, clawing for hidden underground cells.

She had seen a big mechanical gadget with two flat sides and a stress gauge, which former inmates stated was used to crush individuals. She additionally noticed two blue-painted vats of acid. Add to {that a} grotesque basement room overflowing with stinking sewage. There have been bone cutters there. 

Sure, Hamed remembers a person from Douma. He was tall, a broad-brush painter. The person had two kids and a 3rd on the way in which. Walaa pales. The outline matches her cousin Mohamed, who fought the regime. He was captured on the entrance line in 2015, and was rumored to have ended up in Sednaya.

She reveals Hamed a digital picture of her cousin on her cellphone. 

He confirms: Mohamed is lifeless.

The previous screams out for justice

That transient, random trade between two Syrians – strangers to one another, however fellow victims of essentially the most chronically repressive regime within the Center East – illustrates the widespread scale of struggling that shredded the material of Syrian society for many years, touching each family.

Then the regime was overthrown in a lightning offensive by an Islamist-led patchwork of rebels on Dec. 8.

The Assad dynasty dominated Syria with an iron fist, utilizing a persona cult and an indefatigable safety equipment – facets of day by day life for a half century that can require years to beat and to heal. 

Syrians now rising to breathe free air for the primary time are solely starting to reveal these mechanisms of regime management – which expanded exponentially after a 2011 Arab Spring rebellion in opposition to Assad rule. 

In 2021, the Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights reported that 580,000 Syrians killed within the earlier decade was a “minimal verifiable quantity.” The Syrian Community for Human Rights has counted greater than 100,000 further Syrian males, ladies, and youngsters who had been “forcibly disappeared” since 2011. It reported that greater than 15,000 had died below torture.

After rebels with jihadist roots pressured Mr. Assad to flee to Moscow in December, Syrians have joyfully celebrated their launch from these state-sanctioned horrors. On their aspect is the truth that the regime crumbled so shortly.

Regardless of years of lifesaving help throughout the civil warfare from Russia, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah, Syria’s corrupt armed forces turned brittle. Consequently, Damascus and different key cities didn’t endure one other wave of destruction.

But as completely different factions start to form the nation’s post-Assad future, the previous screams out for justice. 

A lot of the regime’s legion of torturers, inside spies, and enablers stays within the nation. Peculiar Syrians like Hamed and Walaa are aghast as the dimensions of their felony cruelty continues to be revealed.

Even by the requirements of essentially the most brutal tyrannies within the Center East, Syria is in a particular league. When American forces invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, for instance, they anticipated to search out warehouses stuffed with videotapes of torture classes, and manifest proof of crimes in opposition to humanity.

There definitely had been massive burial grounds exterior Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib jail, with every grave recognized solely by a stone painted with a quantity. There was loads of testimony of previous episodes of widespread regime brutality, such because the crushing of a Shiite rebellion in 1991. However there was much less proof of systematic, ceaseless brutalization of the state in opposition to its individuals.

“These [Syrian] guys make Saddam appear to be a kitten,” says Iraqi journalist and writer Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, shaking his head in a room in Sednaya jail.

Syrians are nonetheless discovering burial websites within the capital and throughout the nation – mass graves they consider to comprise tens of 1000’s of victims. Dealing with the aftermath of such societal trauma can be a crucial problem for Syria’s new rulers. How can they, in addition to Syrian residents, construct a distinct future whereas demanding accountability?

As new president Ahmed al-Sharaa takes energy, previous traumas endure

The ache of Sednaya is kitchen speak on this nondescript second-story condominium in Homs, a metropolis in central Syria.

A bunch of girls is speaking about how the lads of the household got here residence from jail traumatized and damaged. The town was one of many epicenters of Syrian protests in 2011, protests that started peacefully however gave option to armed resistance after the federal government unleashed huge, deadly power on protest hubs throughout the nation.

“My massive brother Barakat was detained for 5 years in Sednaya,” says Zikra al-Saleh, a younger mom with almond eyes and unruly brown hair. “He got here out like a very loopy particular person. So skinny.”

It took three months of remedy in an intensive care unit, adopted by years of loving household help, to nurse him again to a semblance of normality. Years later, nevertheless, he nonetheless wakes up at night time screaming, “Don’t hit me!” The bruises of beatings nonetheless present on the soles of his toes and again.

4 of her brothers, says Ms. al-Saleh, spent years as insurgent fighters within the Outdated Metropolis of Homs. Below siege, they endured such starvation that they ate tree leaves. The youngest, Hussam, spent two years in numerous detention facilities earlier than lastly ending up in Palmyra jail.

“He was tortured a lot,” Ms. al-Saleh says. “All that as a result of we requested for freedom.”

The checklist of grievances seems countless in opposition to Syria’s Alawite neighborhood, a minority sect of roughly 13% of the inhabitants, and to which Mr. Assad and lots of high-ranking former regime figures belong. 

The town of Homs itself is a microcosm of Syria, the place Sunni Muslims are the bulk, but in addition the place spiritual and ethnic variety has lengthy been a degree of cultural and nationwide satisfaction. 

However as household trauma in Syria is expressed in lengthy lists of names and a number of dimensions of torture and struggling, with out justice, such variety may very well be a ticking time bomb in a society fractured alongside many traces. 

From the outset, Mr. Assad solid himself as a secularist preserving the nation from overseas conspiracies and jihadist forces. Now rebels with Al Qaeda roots however who’ve for years demonstrated extra reasonable habits are on the helm of the nation. They’ve known as for nationwide unity and tried to maintain acts of revenge in test.

After greater than 50 years of torture, killings, and civil warfare in Syria, the brand new de facto chief, Ahmed al-Sharaa, may seem an unlikely candidate to start constructing an enlightened authorities, one which serves and respects all its residents. He dropped his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani quickly after the autumn of Mr. Assad, and exchanged his navy uniform for a enterprise swimsuit.

However the Saudi-born Mr. al-Sharaa got here of age initially of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and traveled to Iraq then to hitch Al Qaeda’s insurgency in opposition to the U.S. occupation. He was captured and held for 5 years in a string of American detention facilities in Iraq. Upon launch in 2011, he traveled to Syria, and in 2012 he based the Al Qaeda-backed Al Nusra Entrance.

In 2013, the USA labeled Mr. al-Sharaa a “Specifically Designated World Terrorist.” However he later rejected the rule of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. Then in 2016 he broke from Al Qaeda and introduced Al Nusra below the opposition umbrella Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The Al Nusra Entrance then pivoted to a extra Syria-centric agenda targeted on toppling Mr. Assad as a substitute of waging world jihad.

The coalition of insurgent teams he led arrange statelike establishments in Idlib, a metropolis inside a conservative Sunni Muslim rural space of the northwest. The town, just like the eponymous area, served as a refuge for insurgent fighters, their households, and hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced from throughout the nation.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham umbrella group reportedly reached out to the U.S. throughout the first Trump administration, saying it needed higher relations, however received no reply. It stays designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., European Union, and U.N. Its yearslong rule in Idlib reportedly concerned extreme human rights abuses. The newly appointed justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi, presided over one verified abstract execution of a lady accused of prostitution in 2015, in accordance with video proof. Experiences point out he might have additionally presided over a second such execution on the time. 

However because the insurgent coalition mounted its lightning offensive late final 12 months, it issued declarations of reassurance to a number of minority teams. Because it consolidates its management, it vows to control on behalf of all Syrians, even because it repudiates acts of revenge.

Mr. al-Sharaa said in December that there can be an amnesty for all Syrians aside from these whose fingers are stained with blood, or those that participated in torture below the outdated regime. 

But within the absence of establishments of legislation and order, alternatives to settle outdated scores are many. With Mr. Assad now in Moscow, those that danger the brunt of public anger are lower-ranking cadres who didn’t have the chance or time to flee because the rebels marched south to Damascus.

There’s anger within the kitchen in Homs. There’s additionally a transparent urge for food for justice. However there’s not an impulse towards mindless revenge.

“Will we hate the Alawites?” asks Ms. al-Saleh, who wears sports activities pants and masterfully retains a handful of younger kids in test. “Will we hate the Alawites?” she says once more, with a tone of shock. “No. We’re not like that.”

Her sister-in legislation Bayan, her face wrapped by a tartan hijab, agrees. “God hurts nobody,” she says. They know the worth of sectarian bloodshed, and wish to keep away from it.

“If we fall into sectarianism, if we aren’t one hand once more, Syria can’t be rebuilt,” says Bayan firmly. “All of us must be one hand: Sunni, Shia Alawite, Christians. However the Shiite Alawites have run away from right here, and the Sunnis who collaborated now face the results. They both fled out of concern or confronted questioning [by the new authorities].”

Ms. al-Saleh’s brother, Barakat al-Saleh, sums up his time in Sednaya with two easy however terrifying numbers: Of the 51 individuals in his cell in 2014, solely 4 survived. He not too long ago bumped into what Syrians usually name a mukhbir, or informant – the very one who set in movement a lot of this household’s misfortune.

It was a blood-boiling second, one interesting to the basest instincts of human nature. However he took no motion.

“The Assad regime unfold sectarian concepts to protect energy – he solid demonstrations as a overseas conspiracy, powered by jihadists,” Mr. al-Saleh says exterior his condominium, moments earlier than revisiting the clock-tower sq. that when hosted peaceable mass protests. They had been crushed violently by the navy.

“The Syrian revolution [of 2011] was the alternative – and all people took half, even honorable Alawites,” says Mr. al-Saleh. “We had been a revolution calling for rights. ISIS got here later.”

Lately, the ruins of swaths of Homs converse to the Assad regime’s willpower to stamp out any dissent. Buildings are gutted by airstrikes and artillery fireplace. Significantly devastating on insurgent strongholds had been some 82,000 barrel bombs, 55-gallon drums stuffed with explosives and dropped from helicopters.

As nightfall falls, the deserted skeletons of these buildings stay darkish with no electrical energy and no life. But amid the rubble is a big metallic swing the place kids nonetheless play, their laughing voices reaching into the night time. Close by, a pair stroll between the shadowy wrecked buildings, arm-in-arm.

Mr. al-Saleh says all he needs now’s justice for the crimes that introduced Syrians to this stage of destruction.

“We wish particular people to be held accountable, not the entire Alawite sect to pay the worth,” he insists. “Financial despair and starvation allowed the regime to reap the benefits of individuals – to show individuals in opposition to their neighbors, in opposition to their siblings even. … Justice is crucial so we don’t fall into the chaos of private revenge.”

The Palestine Department jail in Damascus

Within the heart of Damascus, the Army Intelligence Directorate’s Department 235 is a concrete high-rise constructing tucked behind {the electrical} engineering college of Damascus College. It may very well be mistaken for any austere, Nineteen Seventies-style workplace constructing.

College students immediately recall listening to screams and unusual noises from the constructing. However they knew by no means to ask in regards to the place that locals merely known as the Palestine Department. 

Inmates packed throughout the dank cells would dangle their few belongings in plastic baggage and beg their guards for meals. They may hear the sound of autos shifting alongside a close-by avenue – a relentless reminder of freedom, just some yards away.

Right this moment the acrid scent of burning paper permeates each room. Guards had crammed each shelf with handbook paper information of their work. In a single guardroom, among the many mess on the ground, is an orange locker door ripped from its hinges and taped with a poster of Mr. Assad.

In a single bunk room for jail employees, this one utterly burnt out, the small home windows have inexplicably turned pink. Slim beams of daylight illuminate the torched body of a single chair – like an apparition of the torturer who as soon as stood there. 

“Enforced disappearance” in Syria was methodical. Detainees had been usually moved between formal and casual prisons run by an array of safety companies. Kinfolk hardly ever knew the place they had been. They had been overwhelmed and tortured so arduous that they begged those that did handle to search out them to not come.

The proof that has not been destroyed, eliminated, or burned on the Palestine Department paints a grim image.

For Umayyad al-Khanshor, a local of Jap Ghouta who survived siege, bombs, and hunger, the Department 235 web site is private. Her daughter Waad was held right here for 4 months beginning in late 2014. Waad was {an electrical} engineering scholar and Purple Crescent volunteer. Her cost? Undermining nationwide unity.

Logs present a whole bunch of others charged with participating in protests, defecting from the military, or undermining nationwide unity.

“I can’t consider my daughter was on this place – so darkish, with such an awesome stench,” says Ms. al-Khanshor, a gaunt determine whose glasses are framed between a white headband and a surgical masks.

The Syrian state spied continuously on its residents. Workplace information comprise transcripts of conversations organized by cellphone numbers. Some are benign exchanges about shopping for bread and fixing fridges. 

Others maintain testimonies of sisters accusing brothers of being rebels – doubtlessly pressured confessions. Scattered passport-sized pictures put youthful faces to the names.

“How may somebody come work right here as an worker after which return to common life?” says Ms. al-Khanshor angrily. “How? God don’t have any mercy on them.”

“I can nonetheless acknowledge the scent of every one in every of them”

All that Tawfiq Ali Diab has left is a tire store in Douma, close to Damascus. 

His life was irrevocably shattered April 7, 2018, a day he now refers to because the “Day of Farewell.” In a chemical assault, he misplaced his spouse, Hannadi Shakir, and their 4 kids: Qamar, age 12; Ali, age 11; Muhammad, age 10; and little Judy, simply 8 years outdated.

He additionally mourns the lack of his brother Rateb, his sister-in-law Insaf, and 5 nieces and nephews – Haitham, Hadeel, Rahaf, Muhammad, and the youngest, Jouri, a mere1-month-old child. “I misplaced 42 individuals I knew that day,” recollects Mr. Diab, blinking quickly with the problem of the reminiscence.

The households had gathered within the basement to flee relentless shelling that had intensified over the earlier 48 hours. Simply earlier than the chemical assault, their neighborhood was focused by a barrel bomb.

The chemical assault that killed his family, he says, launched a suffocating fuel. Mr. Diab and 5 others had been the only real survivors. On an outdated cell phone, he reveals pictures of his deceased family. He lingers on Jouri, the newborn robbed of the prospect to expertise life.

“I don’t like to have a look at pictures of them lifeless,” says Mr. Diab. “I like to recollect them in life.”

An investigation by the Berlin-based World Public Coverage Institute suppose tank confirmed 336 chemical weapons assaults in Syria between late 2012 and early 2019, and concluded that 98% of these had been carried out by the Assad regime, utilizing chlorine fuel, sarin, and sulfur mustard fuel.

“It’s clear that the Syrian navy has constantly prioritized putting inhabitants facilities over insurgent positions on the frontlines, even within the face of defeat on the bottom,” said the February 2019 report.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons additionally discovered the Assad regime answerable for these assaults. It confirmed that no less than one Syrian air power helicopter dropped two yellow cylinders that struck two residential buildings in Douma’s central space, killing 43 named people.

Dr. Basel Oyun, a dentist and member of the native opposition committee on the time, says two areas of Douma had been focused. The primary was subsequent to town’s emergency hospital, which was hit by two chemical rockets. The second, close to the Grand Mosque, was hit by one other.

Dr. Oyun was within the basement of the mosque, about 75 meters (82 yards) from the strike. The scent of chlorine crammed his nostrils.

The native council tallied the variety of deaths to be 200 in 48 hours. These included 70 to 80 deaths as a result of chemical assault.

Dr. Oyun says the regime imposed a safety cordon, extracted the our bodies, and took them to Damascus. The dentist says he witnessed signs of chemical publicity various from shortness of breath to foaming on the mouth. 

Regime representatives met the medical employees members and threatened them, warning them to disclaim there was proof of chemical weapons. Below stress, eight of about 25 employees members, says Dr. Oyun, submitted false testimonies to the Worldwide Court docket of Justice.

Now Dr. Oyun needs to set the report straight and see these answerable for such crimes prosecuted, in order that the households of victims can discover closure.

“If the reality doesn’t come out utterly to everybody, my conscience won’t be at peace, as a result of we had been unable to inform the reality earlier than the autumn of the regime,” he says, sitting in his workplace. “Our revolution is incomplete till the criminals are prosecuted and punished.”

Mr. Diab remained in Douma after the regime retook management from rebels in 2018. The years that adopted had been tough, he says. A part of the regime’s stress ways was to place him behind bars for spells, a warning to cease telling the reality in regards to the assault, which the Assad regime and its ally Russia claimed was staged.

He says one in every of his personal family was amongst these despatched to The Hague to testify after which rewarded with a home and safety ensures. He was additionally pressured to lie in regards to the assault. He informed Russian tv crews, who interviewed him below the watchful gaze of Syrian safety brokers, that it didn’t occur.

The relentless stress continued. As numerous worldwide investigations gathered proof, Mr. Diab says he was accused of participating in “terrorist acts” – a cost he calls stress to take care of his false testimony. He says he paid $20,000 to the terrorism court docket for his launch.

“They threatened me that if I informed the reality in regards to the chemical assault, I’d be imprisoned in Sednaya jail,” he says. Now he’s decided to talk up, regardless of the ache it stirs.

The month of Ramadan remains to be the toughest. “I used to wake my kids for the predawn meal [suhoor]; now, after dropping them, I’ve suhoor alone in my home,” says Mr. Diab, as tears properly in his eyes. 

When the Eid vacation comes, he sees different dad and mom shopping for garments for his or her kids. He returns residence to hunt consolation within the smells of the previous, which he clings to.

“I can nonetheless acknowledge the scent of every one in every of them,” he says. “I maintain their garments and take within the scent – ‘This belongs to Ali,’ and ‘This belongs to Qamar.’”