As soon as the Syrian revolution began in 2011, a group of Syrians rushed to focus on the path of transitional justice. Many believed that the fall of the Assad regime was imminent, similar to the collapse of the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan regimes. No one had anticipated that this regime would drown us in endless details, just as then-Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem had promised. Nor had it been expected that Arab and Western regimes would work tirelessly to ensure the regime’s survival, fearing that its fall might lead to the toppling of other regimes and entities like a line of dominoes.
Nevertheless, those invested in transitional justice continued building and accumulating expertise, training cadres to be ready when the long-awaited moment came and the regime that had suffocated Syrians for decades finally fell. And when the Assad regime did fall, and the euphoria of those first unimaginable days faded, voices once again rose calling for the achievement of transitional justice, or at least its initiation, to provide some solace to the hundreds of thousands of victims and their families who had endured long-term oppression and dreamed of this very moment. But none of what was hoped for came to pass.
Day after day, the new state’s institutions became bogged down with addressing thousands of crises and problems that suffocate Syrian society, problems like water, electricity, security, food, sanctions, paralyzed banks, the impossibility of signing major contracts or receiving aid due to previously imposed sanctions, and the exclusion of Syria’s banking system from SWIFT and global financial networks.
Transitional justice, a term we had memorized along with its many mechanisms and details, was not among the priorities the state seemed interested in. This neglect contributed to growing anger among a segment of the victims who believed their rights would be lost, prompting some to justify taking justice into their own hands, bypassing legal institutions, the only entities authorized to prosecute violators and criminals.
A large part of this dilemma facing those responsible for implementing justice and establishing necessary mechanisms stems from the prior regime’s deliberate expansion of the circle of violators to its maximum. The number of those who committed crimes against Syrians and humanity became uncountable. Prosecuting, trying, and enforcing fair penalties against them seemed nearly impossible.
Some theorists proposed reducing the massive number of potential defendants by limiting prosecution to the top tier of the security apparatus; those directly responsible for killings, enforced disappearances, bombings, destruction, rape, amputations, torture, trafficking in detainees’ children, and the looting of public and private property. But this theoretical framework collapses when faced with the horrifying reality of these crimes, their scale and their longevity, which renders any limited accountability trivial in the face of such horrors.
The difficulty of drawing a clear line between who will be prosecuted and who will be exempt becomes stark. It is hard, if not impossible, to imagine that a criminal who killed one’s child or destroyed one’s home might be exempt from punishment because he was “just following orders” or held a low-ranking job. And yet, that very individual might now be living among us as if nothing had happened.
As for victim compensation, that’s a door best left unopened, it would consume the entire budget of several countries. Who could possibly compensate an entire people who, for 50 years, were victims of corruption, abuse, and every form of violation?
Those working in the field of so-called transitional justice face a difficult choice between achieving justice and preserving security. The very group that should be held accountable; yesterday’s holders of power, money, and force, will not lose all that overnight. Their continued presence poses a serious challenge to the new authority. They might receive undeserved amnesty in exchange for maintaining a fragile stability, or if targeted for justice, they might trigger crises, disasters, strife, and violence, all blamed on the new order.
No one can predict what will happen. There is a looming possibility of civil war or mass atrocities against these individuals, both outcomes being catastrophic and bloody.
A broad review of transitional justice processes and the commonly cited examples reveals that what has actually occurred is often just partial appeasement of victims, or their representatives, while pushing for forgiveness and reconciliation, and convincing the powerless to settle for the perpetrator’s admission of guilt, or perhaps even a hollow apology.
In the end, the victims go home with ears full of empty talk and meaningless platitudes that restore no rights and punish no offender. Their lost years in detention, their spilled blood, are traded for a grand national silence that boasts of “saving lives,” as if preventing further bloodshed is equivalent to erasing thousands of atrocities.
Will we one day tell our children about the “virtue” of sparing lives, even at the cost of abandoning the rights of hundreds of thousands of victims?
We, like others, will eventually realize that we were merely more victims of the propaganda machine run by the backers of oppressive regimes, those who played a major role in drafting the supposed legal frameworks that “protect” post-conflict societies from vengeance and cycles of violence. But they deliberately and cunningly ignore that social peace cannot be built without true justice.
Reducing justice to forced reconciliation, imposed by the remnants of the old regime in deals with the new, is the greater crime.
Hollywood-style propaganda continues to claim that transitional justice preserves the state from collapse and ensures social cohesion. These poetic promises are thrown into the public discourse with no regard for reality, or how a victim sees her son’s killer now participating in a new life, the price of which was hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.
A simple review will show us, the victims, that the promises of transitional justice, which we’ve listened to and dreamed of for over a decade, are built on fictional narratives that cannot offer real solutions.
“What awaits instead is the prioritization of security over justice, silence and reconciliation over accountability and punishment of killers and criminals”
Mohamed Berro
Worse still, the popular discourse lacks concrete implementation strategies, so even if theoretical justice were achieved, it would remain ink on paper.
The crisis will continue to simmer beneath the ashes of silence, and in doing so, we will have planted the seeds of a future bloodbath under the slogan “seeking stolen justice.”
What is the solution? No one has a magical answer, not one that wears the garb of peaceful slogans, nor one that offers patriotic gains above the rights of victims.
In fact, this fake culture of tolerance only fosters fertile ground for more violations and crimes against new victims.
“To sum up: the clearest examples of transitional justice, Argentina, Rwanda, and South Africa, despite receiving widespread media promotion, achieved only limited reconciliation without offering victims even a fraction of the justice they deserved”
Mohamed Berro
They would be better named “transitional interests” rather than “justice.”
True justice remains postponed until newer models emerge that are more just to victims and more genuinely rooted in the meaning of justice, ensuring two things: that the perpetrator receives punishment proportionate to the crime, and that the punishment is a deterrent that prevents repetition.
Until even some of those dreams are realized, the space will remain open for further violations, driven by the natural human urge to punish child-killers, rapists, and destroyers of lives.
*** “This article was originally published in Arabic by Syria TV.“
