Syria: A rose for every Martyr

In 2011, innocent children living under the repressive Syrian regime in the southern city of Daraa, inspired by rising revolutionary movements across the Arab world, playfully sprayed a wall with graffiti that read: “It’s your turn, Doctor” — a message to the president, Bashar al-Assad — an ophthalmologist dictator.

The boys were detained and tortured for 26 days by the dreaded Syrian secret police, Mukhabarat. Families and neighbours took to the streets, and soon word spread beyond Daraa, as more people rose to protest peacefully — only to be met by a relentless brutal crackdown.

Just 10km east of Daraa, on 29 April 2011, a curious 13-year-old boy, Hamza al-Khateeb, joined a crowd of people in Saida. He was arrested by an anti-terror squad along with 50 other demonstrators, and held in detention for almost a month before his mutilated body was delivered to his family on 24 May 2011, to serve as warning to all Syrians. 

Hamza’s limp remains showed signs of extreme torture. He had been shot in both arms, had burns and lacerations, his kneecaps were shattered, he appeared to have been subjected to electric shock, his neck was broken, and he had been castrated. 

His father was detained and threatened when he expressed grief and attempted to call for justice. Hamza’s death, meant to break the spirits of Syrians seeking change, ignited not just despair but incredible defiance. Youth took to the streets armed with roses and water as a gesture of peaceful protest, demanding an end to the tyrannical rule of Assad. Their spirits of hope were crushed as Assad unleashed his wrath and terror against his own people. 

His rule followed that of his father, Hafez al-Assad, an equally authoritarian president. Initially, Bashar had no ambitions for leadership and was pursuing medical studies abroad. On the death of his brother, he was recalled and groomed for succession. While the world expected a young Assad to take his country on a different trajectory to that of his father, the Syrian people were gravely disappointed to be met with much the same tyranny as they had lived under for decades. 

As pockets of resistance began to coordinate and develop militias, including defectors from the regime, Assad unleashed an onslaught of indiscriminate barrel bombs, mass arrests and slaughter to quash the uprising. He made little attempt to offer a conciliatory hand to the opposition, threatening them with the lives of their families — wives, siblings, children — to smoke them out. By 2012, a full-scale civil war engulfed the region, as the opposition began to seize cities in the north. From 2013 to 2015, there were at least two occasions that the Assad regime faced collapse, revealing his vulnerability without external support. 

Vested interests

Gulf countries with vested interests in supporting the revolutionary movements entered the space with funding and political support, including demands for Assad to step down. 

While it initially appeared that there would be success in overthrowing the dictator and formulating a democratic, unified Syria, the lack of common vision, unity and vastly differing political ideologies weakened the resistance while Assad sought help from his Iranian and Russian allies in their provision of air power and foot soldiers. On at least one occasion, Assad responded to the opposition with the use of chemical weapons, massacring swathes of civilians in Ghouta. 

The emergence of groups expressing loyalty to and affinity with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda cast a shadow on the revolutionary movement, because Assad and his allies claimed to be fighting terrorists. 

The United States opportunistically expanded its reach by occupying vast territory in the eastern region, rich in oil and gas, claiming to be quelling the Islamic State, while concurrently supporting a Kurdish movement. 

Türkiye advanced from the north to protect its territorial integrity, while battling the Kurdish Syrian Defence Force (SDF) perceived to be aligned with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), deemed a terror organisation. 

Syria became a battleground for Syrians but a playground for international actors orchestrating proxy war games at the expense of the people. At least half a million Syrians were killed, and the largest refugee crisis emerged, with more than 14 million people displaced, seven million of whom sought asylum in neighbouring countries and beyond. 

Diplomatic efforts in Geneva and through the United Nations failed to deliver any meaningful progress, while the inept UN Security Council was once again immobilised by the misuse of the veto on several resolutions proposed, including that for no-fly zones and military intervention based on the responsibility to protect civilians. 

In 2015 and 2016, Russian military intervention intensified airpower. This, coupled with the ground support of Iran and Hizbollah, delivered the opportunity for Assad to consolidate his power and advance to reclaim the lost cities, while forcing the opposition into enclaves in the north, declared as Free Syria by revolutionary forces. 

In 2017, a trilateral forum initiated by Russia, Türkiye and Iran, and hosted by Kazakhstan was launched, presumably aimed at ending the armed conflict and restarting formal political negotiations. The talks were conducted under UN auspices, with Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, and his successor, Geir Otto Pedersen, both affirming their commitments to the Astana process as an avenue for achieving peace. Syrians were sceptical, finding too strong a hand of the Russian and Iranian allies to Assad and fearing that it was a guise to disarm and isolate the opposition into “de-escalation zones”.

Rise of the revolutionaries

During the same year, several disparate opposition groups, including the previously Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al Nusra, reconstituted to form Hayat Tahrir Al Shaam (HTS), relinquishing ties to Al Qaeda, developing stronger political frameworks and formulating governance structures in the Free Syria regions. 

The HTS, led by Ahmad Al Sharaa (aka Abu Muhammed al Jolani), is the group largely responsible for the dramatic and swift deposing of Assad in under a fortnight, despite indications that Assad was reaffirmed as the Syrian leader by the Arab League after a decade of isolation. Assad’s comfort in believing he was untouchable was shattered as the HTS coordinated with other opposition groups, supported by Türkiye and with Russia and Iran standing down from their support of Assad due to their own frustrations with his obstinance. 

The surprise advance into Aleppo, followed by Hama and Homs, forced a rushed meeting of the Astana group in Doha, Qatar, a night before the opposition set their sights on Damascus. This sealed the fate of Assad, whose own troops mass defected, rendering him exposed — much like pictures of him found in his abandoned palace, wearing only underwear, earning him the name Abu Kalsoon (the father of knickers). His humiliating defeat not only laid bare his vulnerabilities, they uncovered his penchant for the macabre, as prisons with thousands of political prisoners were opened, revealing the horrors behind the concrete walls. 

The bloodletting

An almost bloodless coup has now affirmed the deluge of bloodletting by the Assad regime. For more than a decade, Syrian human rights organisations in exile highlighted the atrocities perpetrated by Assad against his people but the world turned a blind eye. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) meticulously recorded the human rights violations by all parties to the conflict on a daily, monthly and annual basis. Regular reports focused on the disappearances, torture, deaths of civilians and attacks on vital infrastructure. These records displayed Assad as responsible for the greater number of human rights violations in comparison to groups such as the Islamic State. 

The Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) supported the detailed testimony of a former Syrian government official photographer, codenamed Caesar. He had been tasked with photographing and documenting the deaths from torture on behalf of the Syrian regime until he defected and escaped with the evidence of more than 50,000 photographs, presenting it before international human rights hearings. Following intensive lobbying by the SETF, the US enacted the Caesar Act, unilaterally imposing additional sanctions against Syria. 

But other countries failed to take any meaningful action. South Africa seemed to resign itself to blissful ignorance of the human rights abuses, while strongly aligning itself to the Assad regime.

With the HTS takeover of Damascus, unfathomable levels of depravity of the Assad regime have come to light. We now know that the young Hamza al-Khateeb was not an isolated case at the beginning of the revolution, but was habitual practice of slaughter, rape and torture. Assad’s labyrinth of gulags inspired by Nazi advisers to Adolf Eichmann, were long rumoured to have existed. Used as known black sights for renditions by the Americans in the “war on terror”, these torture chambers were thought to have been dark fantastical tales told to maintain a stronghold by the repressive regime. Somehow, Assad’s apparently geeky grin never gave any impression of the malevolence that lurked behind his rule nor that he was the mastermind executioner of his people. 

Human slaughterhouse

It was perhaps easy to dismiss the Caesar photographs as exaggeration — most would question why any regime would document its own crimes — but as the doors of Sednaya prison, branch 215 and the notorious Palestine Branch were opened to the world this week, a bizarre unveiling of meticulous records kept by the wardens present a perverse bureaucracy that seemingly took pride in their malice. 

Escapees from these dungeons, such as Omar Al Shogre, who was due for execution on the day of his release, have told their stories and described the inhumane conditions of these prisons. But it was not until the Syrian Civil Defence (White Helmets) drilled into the concrete floors, unearthing incarcerated souls held for up to 40 years without seeing the light of day, that the world began to take notice. 

Severely malnourished and confused skeletal humans emerged from the slaughterhouse. Women were held with children, apparently born of the rape their mothers endured at the hands of their captors. Hidden chambers, visible on camera but inaccessible were eventually excavated, along with cavities bearing nooses, iron presses that were thought to have been used for the disposing of bodies, vats of acid in which the bodies of people who succumbed to torture were probably disintegrated, and instruments used to gouge out eyes or dismember captives were found. 

More macabre was the fact that the torture of these inmates was allegedly broadcast on the Dark Web for financial gain. 

Upon release, most of the detainees scattered from fear, many of whom have lost their minds as a result of extreme torture. Comparisons have been made with Auschwitz and Stalin’s gulags. 

Thousands remain unaccounted for, as family members continue the search for them, scouring through documents, displaying their photographs in public squares, visiting morgues and hospitals, hoping their loved ones will return.

Graphic images of the recently dead piled up in the morgues convey similarities with the pictures Caesar smuggled out years ago, bearing visible signs of torture, many unrecognisable. More than 100,000 people are unaccounted for and may never be found, Fadel Abdel Ghany, of the SNHR, said in an emotional interview. 

This week, evidence of several mass graves has emerged across Syria, at least one believed to have tens of thousands of bodies, some state up to a hundred thousand, many marked with their prison numbers or names. The SNHR has issued a directive on how the evidence must be carefully preserved to not only ensure justice and accountability, but also give finality and closure to the families of the victims. 

What Next?

Such accountability will only be possible and measurable if Syria under the new interim administration, led by the HTS, is capable of maintaining stability, transforming the archaic bureaucracy, and forming an inclusive government. During this past week, indications are that the interim government is conciliatory, eager to work with former technocrats in a handover, while reaching out to Syrians in the diaspora, urging them to return and rebuild their country. With the mass infrastructure destruction over 13 years, an economy under sanctions in tatters, and a grieving nation, the task ahead is incredibly difficult. The HTS has begun reaching out and is already in diplomatic engagements with several countries in the region and beyond, including Russia and Iran (the former Assad allies). 

A regional meeting of Arab countries was held in Aqaba, without Syrian representation present, in an almost desperate attempt to prevent uprisings of a similar nature in neighbouring countries. The regional meeting affirmed their view that the UN Security Council Resolution 2254 must be the basis upon which Syria is rebuilt but many Syrians reject this notion, believing that the resolution was specifically meant for an era that included Assad and that this period has passed. They motivate for a Syrian-led process without external interference. 

While the HTS has made the commitment to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of militia groups, there remain risks of pockets of resistance and counter-revolutionary forces that may jeopardise stability. Israel has already violated international law by attacking defence and intelligence apparatuses in Syria and annexing further Syrian territory beyond the already occupied Golan Heights. Türkiye is also embroiled in a limited war along the border in the northeastern region and Damascus has yet to concretise a deal with the Kurdish SDF who are insistent on autonomy. Continued sanctions and the lack of access to their national resources still under American occupation may impede economic progress, which would be vital to post-war reconstruction and development. 

In commemoration of the beginnings of the revolution when protesters handed roses to their oppressors, Omar al-Shogre movingly called for a rose for every martyr. As the euphoric mood of freedom depresses into sombre reflection and immense loss, it is difficult to forget a note written in the diary of a Syrian child at the height of the war: 

“When the war is over in my country, we will close Syria’s doors and we will put a banner that says: No Entry. We will shed tears of joy alone, just like how we suffered our grief alone.”

Zeenat Adam is a former diplomat and international relations strategist.