Fadel Abdulghany
Based on my experience documenting violations and my work in the field of transitional justice in Syria, I affirm that the absence of a serious transitional justice process can create a harsh daily pattern of forced coexistence between victims and perpetrators in the same neighborhood, and sometimes in the same institution.
In the absence of effective mechanisms for truth-seeking and accountability, some perpetrators continue to live freely in the public sphere with impunity, deepening victims’ feelings of injustice and helplessness and entrenching a culture of impunity as a social and political norm. This reality undermines trust in the legal and judicial system, pushing some groups toward “mob justice” or individual revenge, thus transforming political violence into widespread social violence and threatening the possibility of building a cohesive national identity and collective memory.
Over time, the presence of criminals in the public sphere becomes “normal,” that is, a normalization of crime itself, with profound risks to reconciliation and the stability of the new state.
In this context, a structural gap emerges between the number of victims documented in the Syrian Network for Human Rights database and the number of perpetrators known by name, who number approximately 16,200. Most of the violations in Syria were collective and systematic, carried out by security and military agencies operating with a strict chain of command and a closed institutional structure, which makes documenting victims through testimonies, photos and medical records relatively easier than documenting the individual responsibility of those who issued or carried out the orders.
This task requires a complex interplay of evidence and rigorous legal standards. Consequently, the number of perpetrators documented by name, even if it reaches tens of thousands, remains far below the actual number, due to a lack of transparency, limited access to official archives, and the previous regime’s practice of concealing evidence, intimidating witnesses, and manipulating records.
Accountability Pathways and Rebuilding the Relationship Between the State and Society
This complexity extends to the situation of hundreds of thousands of military and security personnel who served throughout the years of conflict. From the perspective of transitional justice, as I understand and work towards it, these individuals cannot be treated as a homogenous group of criminals. Rather, a precise categorization must be adopted to distinguish between multiple groups. Those who made the decisions and those who ordered or planned the violations must be subject to clear legal processes and excluded from the institutions of the new state.
As for the perpetrators who acted under duress or in circumstances where there is insufficient evidence of personal involvement, a more complex approach is needed that takes into account individual responsibility, the pressures of the authoritarian structure, and the possibilities of conditional reintegration within institutions subject to structural reform and societal and judicial oversight.
In any case, the community’s trust remains contingent on isolating all those proven to have participated in major violations, without collectively demonizing everyone who wore military or security uniforms.
On the political timeline, delaying the launch of the transitional justice process carries significant risks. The longer the delay, the more entrenched impunity becomes, the more the victims’ sense of exclusion is reinforced, and the wider the gap between them and the emerging state institutions grows, thus fueling tendencies toward revenge and reproducing violence.
Over time, the process has shifted from a transformative project to symbolic measures used to grant a veneer of legitimacy without addressing the underlying structures that produced the crimes. Therefore, I believe that a carefully considered acceleration of the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms, both in legislation and institutions, is a national imperative, and that the legitimacy of the new institutions and public trust in them depend on the seriousness with which the files of violations are opened and those responsible are held accountable.
A Composite Approach to Uncovering Undocumented Perpetrators
From a methodological perspective, I propose a composite approach to uncovering undocumented perpetrators according to transitional justice standards, based on the interdependence of three circles: community testimonies, independent national mechanisms, and specialized international tools.
At the first level, activating community accountability mechanisms by receiving complaints, organizing safe hearings, and enabling the local community to name perpetrators and document facts within an effective protection system for witnesses and whistleblowers, encouraging them to provide information without fear of retaliation or re-stigmatization.
At the second level, independent national bodies are established or strengthened that are capable of conducting systematic investigations and analyzing data received from human rights organizations and open sources and linking it to available official archives.
The third level benefits from international tools such as UN mechanisms, satellite imagery, medical records, and available security agency archives, in addition to the vital role of investigative journalism and the Syrian Network for Human Rights database in uncovering facts and opening new avenues for accountability.
With this vision, I link justice and truth-seeking on the one hand, with the inclusion of society and its non-exclusion from the processes of investigation and accountability on the other. Transitional justice, in my view, is not merely criminal trials or administrative measures to isolate certain individuals, but rather a profound societal process that redefines the relationship between the state and society, between victim and perpetrator, and between national memory and the political future.
Without seriously addressing the dilemma of coexistence between perpetrator and victim under conditions of impunity, the documentation gap between victims and perpetrators, the complexities of the military and security establishment, and the risks of delaying justice, the Syrian transition remains threatened with reproducing the patterns of tyranny and violence against which Syrians originally revolted.
