On January 17th, 2013, a Damascus University third-year engineering student, Rehab al-Allawi, was arrested by Assad regime forces at her family home in Damascus, Syria. Her degree had been interrupted by the Civil War in 2011, leading her to join a loose network of activists working to assist internally displaced persons fleeing Homs, a war-ravaged flashpoint in Syria’s civil conflict. After Rehab’s arrest, her family searched for her through contacts within the government but received no information on her whereabouts. Later, a Syrian general would tell the family Rehab had died of a stroke. Another general would claim she was alive in Lebanon and demanded payment to secure her release. Despite these attempts to recover information, Rehab’s family did not see her body or receive a death statement confirming the cause of death. Stories like Rehab’s are not isolated and are emblematic of the Assad regime’s systematic use of bureaucracy to dehumanize and control.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), at least 157,634 Syrians, including 5274 children and 10,221 women, have been arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared since March 2011, largely by regime forces, as well as militant groups like ISIS. The staggering number of forcibly disappeared individuals reflects not only the scale of state violence but also the regime’s strategic use of disappearances to fracture communities, instill fear, and suppress dissent.
Recently, on November 27, 2024, the rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leveraged the regime’s weakened state after years of conflict and launched a major offensive, seizing territory across the country. Their lightning advance highlighted the regime’s lack of both internal support and external reinforcements from previous benefactors like Russia and Iran. By December 8th, HTS had captured Syria’s Capital, Damascus; Assad had fled, and the regime officially collapsed. Since the collapse of the al-Assad regime, in power for 53 years, thousands of families have begun searching for answers as to what happened to their missing relatives. Hundreds flocked to the infamous Sednaya prison–notorious for human rights abuses– in the hopes of finding relatives or documentation confirming their relative’s fate.
The regime meticulously documented its conduct, housing hundreds of thousands of records of detentions, tortures, and executions in facilities across the country. Also in these records are death statements falsified to state natural causes to cover up deaths at the hands of the regime. Now, as the process of recording the Assad regime’s crimes begins, an important aspect to consider is how the mechanisms of control the regime used obscured – and will continue to obscure – the extent of the regime’s crimes. Namely, making security approval contingent for every aspect of the civil registry, including registering deaths, attaining power of attorney, establishing housing, enrolling in university, or licensing a profession.
In 2022, the government issued Circular No. 22 stipulating that before a death was registered, the regional or local ministry had to refer to security services to corroborate records in all accounts. If one wished to challenge the regime’s account of death or receive more information, as death statements did not feature the cause, one would have needed to request a court ruling to prove the fact of death. This process involved extensive interrogation and often took months if it was approved at all. Circular No. 22 institutionalized the regime’s control over death registration. Even in death, citizens were subject to state coercion. Families were forced to accept falsified death statements to reclaim basic economic and social rights. By entangling all facets of civil life with the bureaucracy of the civil registry, the Assad regime transformed routine administrative processes into tools of domination. Ultimately, this prevented the recording of its crimes by forcing citizen assent.
In partnership with SNHR, Every Casualty Counts, a UK-based non-profit centred on ensuring accurate and comprehensive casualty recording in conflict, has proposed four essential measures for documenting the dead and missing in Syria. Protection for the living, preservation of all evidence, including mass graves, civil registry reform, and issuance of valid death certificates, as well as cross-sector collaboration on the identification of casualties. Reforming Syria’s civil registry will require purging old systems of corruption while building new institutions of transparency. However, this task is complicated by the legacy of the regime’s bureaucracy, which remains entrenched in Syria’s legal framework.
Assad’s reliance on record-keeping reflects an overconfidence in both his power and the regime’s longevity. Ironically, the meticulous documentation left by the regime now serves as a vulnerability, exposing its systemic atrocities to local and global scrutiny. Additionally, the Syrian Civil War is one of the most recorded in history, and various groups dedicated to casualty recording, like SNHR or the Violations Documenting Center (VDC), have been active for years. Organizations like SNHR and VDC have recorded staggering civilian death tolls, with SNHR documenting 231,495 deaths and VDC estimating 147,009 civilians killed. To account for discrepancies, the Human Rights Data Analysis Group analyzed multiple datasets, estimating the civilian death toll to range between 281,443 and 337,971.
While international organizations have developed frameworks to address enforced disappearances, the scale of Syria’s crisis poses unprecedented challenges. Amending the civil registry and its falsified records is a task that will require cooperation at the local, regional, and international levels.
In March 2015, a cousin called Rehab al-Allawi’s family to ask if her photo might be among those in the Caesar files – over 50,000 photos smuggled out of the country documenting regime killings and torture. The family recognized a photo of Rehab’s body among the photos, “215 Branch,” indicating her detainment at the 215 Branch Military Intelligence facility, written on her forehead. Her family’s search for closure and truth underscores the enduring impact of enforced disappearances on civil society and highlights the challenges ahead in documenting these crimes. Many other families are finding or seeking closure – except now, they can do so openly.
The collapse of the Assad regime marks a pivotal moment for Syria, but the path to justice and reconciliation is fraught with challenges. Reform, documentation, and cooperation at all scales are essential to ensure accountability. Syria can begin to reckon with its past and build a future rooted in truth and dignity through these efforts.
Edited by Olivia Moore
This article is written by a Catalyst Staff Writer and does not necessarily reflect the political opinion of the platform. Catalyst is a student-led publication that encourages engagement with global issues from a learning perspective
I’m a writer for Catalyst and the McGill Journal of Political Science. I am passionate about topics such as politics, sustainability and geography!