In the months since the militant opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham stunned the world by bringing down the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in early December 2024, Syria has faced many pressing concerns. The country is ravaged and war-torn. More than 90 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the economy is shattered, and basic infrastructure is in ruins. Syria’s new leaders—including former HTS head Ahmed al-Shara, who is now interim president, and Mohammed al-Bashir, the transitional prime minister—must contend with remnant cells of Islamic State (also known as ISIS) fighters in the east, negotiate with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the north, and contain ideological radicals in their ranks. Meanwhile, Shara and other senior figures of the transitional government must convince world leaders that they intend to shed their own extremist roots.
But there is another urgent issue facing the government that until now has drawn comparatively little attention: the widespread demand among Syrians for justice and accountability. The Assad regime, dominated by the Alawite minority group to which Assad’s family belongs, was responsible for untold abuses, the most flagrant of them committed during its violent repression of a popular uprising that began in 2011 and the civil war that followed. Syrian and international human rights organizations have estimated that the regime forcibly disappeared at least 150,000 Syrians and tortured and killed tens of thousands in notorious state prisons. Since the fall of Damascus, security forces, civilians, and civil society organizations have discovered at least 18 mass graves, according to the White Helmets, a volunteer Syrian civil defense group.
The transitional government has pledged to deliver justice for these atrocities, but doing so will be no easy task. Transitional justice—or the ways in which societies use political and judicial tools to address the legacies of past conflicts and prior regimes’ human rights abuses—must be initiated while public demand for accountability is high and evidence still accessible. But measures that are imposed too quickly or by shaky institutions could lead to outcomes that lack fairness, transparency, and legitimacy and may ultimately deepen, rather than alleviate, social divisions and mistrust in the state. This means that the Syrian government must balance the urgent demand for justice with the need to first establish solid foundations for inclusive and robust state institutions. For decades, the Syrian judicial system served to strengthen the Assad regime’s authority, not uphold the rule of law. In its current state, it lacks the capacity and public trust to credibly address transgressions of the former regime and other armed actors, including ISIS.
To successfully pursue transitional justice, Syria’s new leaders should revamp the country’s judiciary to prosecute the leading perpetrators of human rights violations during the Assad era and the civil war. Crucially, the government should also seek out and prioritize the wishes of victims and their families. This means establishing new institutions such as an office of missing persons and a truth commission to connect with victims and formally acknowledge past atrocities, courts staffed by both Syrian and international judges to arbitrate crimes and recover stolen assets, and a compensation fund to provide reparations. At its heart, transitional justice is about answering for past crimes and providing redress for victims. Nobody knows the price of those transgressions better than those who have suffered them.
GETTING UP TO SPEED
In our research in more than a dozen post-conflict countries over the past 20 years, we have found that effective forms of transitional justice can act as a stabilizing force by addressing grievances, facilitating justice for victims, and promoting social cohesion. Our research from last year, which incorporates data on transitional justice from 99 countries, shows that instituting some form of accountability can reduce the potential for future human rights violations and reinforce democracy. And moving quickly can demonstrate a new government’s commitment to the rule of law, help it establish legitimacy among its citizens, and prevent extrajudicial vigilantism or revenge attacks.
But moving too quickly can also create problems. If the new government in Syria sets up a transitional justice process without first addressing victims’ needs, ensuring local buy-in, and establishing legitimate judicial institutions, it may undermine public trust and ultimately weaken accountability efforts. In Iraq, for instance, the Coalition Provisional Authority, the transitional government set up by the United States after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, established accountability mechanisms for members of the regime almost immediately. These included a special tribunal to prosecute Saddam and other senior officials as well as a process known as de-Baathification to remove members of Saddam’s Baath Party from public office. The vetting of government workers is a common practice in transitional justice efforts. In Iraq, however, we found that de-Baathification’s rushed implementation and lack of consultation with victims led to a process that was opaque and unfair. It ultimately removed thousands of qualified and experienced workers from state positions, undermining government services and deepening sectarian divisions.
In other countries, the fragility of newly established or transitional governments and the ability of alleged perpetrators to cling to positions of power have often slowed or blocked accountability efforts. For instance, it took decades for transitional justice mechanisms to be implemented in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, in Chile after Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, and in El Salvador after its civil war. In each of these cases, entrenched power structures and political compromises prevented transitional justice processes from getting started, leading to prolonged impunity for perpetrators and delayed healing for victims and their communities. Such delays may reflect fears that pursuing justice, especially criminal accountability, too soon could lead to renewed violence. In South Africa, for example, there were worries that immediate prosecutions of human rights violations under apartheid would destabilize the transition; as a result, the country established its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to balance justice with maintaining peace.
Syria’s new leaders should revamp the country’s judiciary.
Effective transitional justice can also be hindered by poor implementation. After the 1995 Dayton accords ended the Bosnian war and established a new governance structure, international and national entities set out to bring war criminals to justice. But their slow and ultimately incomplete efforts, which failed to address many incidents, lacked transparency and due process. Inconsistencies in prosecutions and sentencings as well as limited public engagement caused victims to feel underserved and disenfranchised by the process, with certainethnic groups perceiving bias and exclusion. In Nepal, after the civil war with Maoist rebels, and in Uganda, after conflicts with the insurgent militant group the Lord’s Resistance Army, transitional justice efforts were highly politicized. Again, the result was a lack of comprehensive justice, which created discontent among victims and deepened, rather than mended, societal rifts.
Ultimately, the choice for Syria today is not between delaying or rushing transitional justice. It is about starting the process now with deliberate long-term strategies based on lessons learned from similar efforts in other countries undergoing difficult transitions. The new Syrian government must move quickly enough to meet the public’s demand for early accountability while also ensuring that the process is done with proper consultation, inclusivity, and legitimacy. Moreover, by making dedicated efforts to engage victims and their communities, the new governing authorities are more likely to achieve results that reflect local realities and expectations and rebuild public trust in state institutions.
Already, Syria’s many victims have begun to express their wishes. Within days of the Assad regime’s fall, freed detainees from Sednaya Prison—an infamous military prison north of the capital nicknamed the “human slaughterhouse”—and families of the tens of thousands who were disappeared by Assad’s security forces organized almost daily protests in Umayyad Square, in central Damascus. They demanded answers regarding the fates of their loved ones, called for prosecuting perpetrators of crimes, and expressed frustration that the government has until now focused only on high-ranking officials and in their view has been neither comprehensive nor transparent in its efforts. Representatives of the protesters and families of the missing even requested a meeting with Shara to communicate their concerns directly. It finally took place on February 1, nearly two months after the protests began. Afterward, Shara pledged to maintain communication with the families and prioritize their demands.
UNEVEN PROGRESS
In their first month after assuming power, Syria’s new leaders avoided any explicit mention of the term “transitional justice,” and in media interviews Shara consistently emphasized the need to balance accountability and reconciliation. Speaking in late December to Al Arabiya, a Saudi state-owned television news channel, he stressed that although the transitional government prioritizes amnesty, it is also committed to bringing to justice Assad regime figures involved in torture, killings, and other atrocities, specifically targeting “high-profile” perpetrators. But Shara also cautioned that an extensive focus on retribution could trigger cycles of revenge and undermine stability. He more recently stated that neglecting victims’ right to justice also threatens peace, and in late February announced plans to establish a transitional justice body but did not provide details for it.
Shara has taken significant steps to reassure Syria’s minority groups—particularly the Alawite and Christian communities—as well as former regime loyalists that they will not be subject to acts of revenge or retribution. Despite HTS’s background as a militant Islamist group, Shara has repeatedly emphasized coexistence and the reconstruction of state institutions. The day after HTS seized Damascus, the Syrian opposition’s joint military operations command, which is led by HTS, granted amnesty to all conscripted soldiers in Assad’s armed forces, prohibiting attacks against them. HTS also established so-called reconciliation centers, where former military, police, and intelligence officers, as well as pro-Assad militia members, could surrender their weapons and register for temporary civilian identity cards. Despite the interim government’s focus on reconciliation, there have been isolated incidents of retaliation and revenge. In the town of Masyaf, in northwestern Syria, unknown gunmen shot and killed three Alawite judges. Many other former government officials and loyalists, most of them Alawite, have been found dead. The interim government has condemned these killings and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice.
By the end of December, the transitional government had prioritized locating “remnants of the ousted regime” who had not reported to reconciliation centers. This effort soon escalated into a widespread campaign by the joint military operations command to arrest regime members in various cities across the country. Through these actions, dozens of major perpetrators have been detained, including Atef Najib, Assad’s political security chief, who is linked to the torture of children in Daraa Province, an act that helped spark the 2011 uprising. The authorities have also arrested people involved in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, a brutal mass execution by regime forces of nearly 300 civilians in a Damascus neighborhood that had fallen partly under opposition control. (The atrocity was filmed by the perpetrators and garnered widespread public attention.) But the campaign has also resulted in clashes with former regime groups and has sometimes led to casualties. Controversially, it has also targeted some rank-and-file soldiers of the former regime, many of whom have been detained based on suspicions, raising concerns about the fairness and scope of the operations. These uneven results underscore the need for a comprehensive framework with clear procedures and capable institutions to address such cases.
The transitional government is also downsizing state institutions and laying off up to 400,000 “shadow employees” it alleges contribute little to the functioning of the state bureaucracy. Since January, authorities have summarily dismissed tens of thousands of civil servants with no means of appeal, setting off dozens of protests across the country. Although public sector reform is important and urgently needed, these moves’ lack of transparency and due process has raised fears that they may simply be a cover for sectarian purges. If it continues like this, the government risks repeating some of the mistakes of de-Baathification in Iraq, thus setting off a broader erosion of public trust.
The government also suspended Syria’s civil courts before reopening them in mid-January. It has stated that it will restructure the judicial system and has formed committees to review current rules and practices; in the meantime, the laws of the previous regime remain. The new minister of justice has announced that all judges and employees will retain their positions and receive their monthly salaries, except for 87 judges from the so-called antiterrorism court, which Assad established in 2012 and which was criticized for targeting opposition figures and activists. The Ministry of Justice has also begun accepting applications from judges who were unfairly dismissed by the Assad regime or who had resigned in protest of its repression.
The judicial system has yet to play a clear role in investigating, charging, or prosecuting those who have been arrested in connection with the previous regime’s crimes, primarily owing to a lack of laws related to war crimes and crimes against humanity. But the new government has expressed interest in collaborating with the International Criminal Court to prosecute alleged crimes and with the International Commission on Missing Persons to help safeguard mass graves, collect DNA samples from families of the missing, and do forensic analysis to identify victims.
All these measures relate to transitional justice, but they are not yet part of a clear, inclusive, and formal framework for pursuing accountability for the Assad regime’s violence. Thus far, the new leadership has demonstrated a preference for top-down leadership. Shara has acknowledged that the members of the transitional government are of a “similar color,” meaning they’re predominantly Islamist members of the former HTS government in Idlib Province; he insists that such homogeneity is necessary at this early stage of the transition to maintain unity and quickly implement the policies that the country desperately needs. He has pledged to build a more inclusive government in the future, which could help ensure that accountability measures reflect the experiences of all affected communities. Local observers and activists, however, are skeptical that Shara will keep his promise.
WHERE THERE’S A WILL
The most comprehensive transitional justice proposal for Syria has come from Anwar al-Bunni, a prominent Syrian human rights lawyer who had been imprisoned and tortured by the Assad regime. In 2022 in Germany, he played a key role in the prosecution of Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian colonel, for crimes against humanity. Bunni’s plan calls for setting up a series of new entities, including hybrid, specialized human rights courts that follow International Criminal Court principles and are staffed by Syrian and international judges; a compensation fund for victims and their families, backed by the state and supported by international aid and seized criminal assets; reconciliation committees to address societal divisions, arbitrate local disputes, help uncover missing persons, and offer psychological support to victims; an outreach office to promote the government’s transitional justice efforts and foster public trust and engagement; and a memorialization office to document human rights abuses, honor victims through monuments and place names, and integrate the history of Assad-era crimes into school curricula.
Bunni’s plan is comprehensive and ambitious. Implementing it or something similar in scale will require political will, enormous resources, and careful sequencing. Although the transitional government has given no indication that it is prepared to adopt Bunni’s model, elements of the plan align with national and international efforts currently underway. Moreover, Bunni’s emphasis on victim-centered justice and long-term reconciliation can be broadly followed, particularly if the transitional government is prepared to work in phases and ensure truth and openness.
With their large protests in Umayyad Square, the Assad regime’s victims have shown their desire for more comprehensive answers. The new government should thus start by creating mechanisms to formally acknowledge the Assad regime’s atrocities and begin redressing them. Typically, these take the forms of offices of missing persons, which are dedicated to locating or learning the fates of people who were disappeared, and truth commissions that establish historical records of human rights violations, assign responsibility for them, and recommend reparations or policy reforms to prevent recurrences.
The transitional government must also balance the demand for swift criminal accountability with the need to restructure Syria’s judiciary. Establishing a fully independent judiciary will be essential for organizing free elections, managing political disputes, and rehabilitating the economy, since international investment is often tied to confidence in a country’s legal systems. It will also be the most meaningful way for victims to seek redress and for the state to hold perpetrators accountable. The government should therefore carry out judicial reform as soon as possible, in the meantime preparing prosecutions of those most responsible for human rights violations. Although prosecuting lower-ranking perpetrators may provide a sense of immediate justice for victims, our research shows that prosecuting higher-ranking officials ultimately has a larger impact: such trials communicate that no one is above the law, set critical legal precedents, and strengthen public trust in state institutions.
The transitional government has acknowledged the urgency for accountability and justice, but if it imposes measures that are not seen as fair and inclusive, the process could backfire. By adopting a phased approach starting with measures to preserve evidence and address victims’ needs, Syria’s new leaders can help strike the right balance. As momentum for transitional justice builds, they will then have more resources to establish strong institutional foundations for prosecutions, reparations, and broader reforms of the state. Fragile post-conflict governments often struggle to maintain popular support, and without a strong commitment to justice and accountability, there is a real risk that authoritarian tendencies will resurface. If transitional justice efforts fail or are manipulated for political purposes, Syria could see renewed repression, corruption, and violence. Ensuring transparency and public trust will be essential in preventing a relapse into dictatorship.
Loading…
