Syria’s path to innocence
One measure of the rapid changes taking place in Syria since the collapse of the Assad regime in December is a robust public conversation over how to promote both justice and reconciliation. The country’s new leaders appear to be listening.
On Tuesday, for example, the former rebel leader, now the transitional-president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, announced the formation of a transitional justice committee. “I urge all Syrians to stand united and hand in hand to heal the wounds and wash away the pains after decades of dictatorship,” he said in opening remarks at a national dialogue to chart Syria’s political future.
That move followed earlier gestures that just months ago Syrians would have found unimaginable. On Feb. 1, Mr. Sharaa met with family members of people who were killed by the Assad regime or taken into custody and never returned. A week before that, the interim government’s deputy justice minister held a dialogue with civil society groups and families on building rule of law through archiving, memorializing, truth-telling, and showing models of accountability that include mercy.
“For the first time, these families – who have long been silenced and ignored – were given a direct platform to speak to the government, demand answers, and seek justice,” said Nousha Kabawat, head of the Syria program at the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice.
Postconflict renewal based on reconciliation, or transitional justice, involves enabling victims and perpetrators to rediscover a shared humanity through contrition and forgiveness. Such work is often done through truth commissions that trade full disclosure of past wrongs for amnesty from punishment.
Yet even with such formal processes, Syrians are already engaging public officials – and each other – in novel ways. In the city of Homs, for example, an activist named Alaa Ibrahim is helping local faith communities liaise with officials from the rebel militia that toppled Bashar al-Assad. “I believe the fear will disappear immediately if security forces open the door for participation by local communities,” he told the Monitor. Such cooperation between civil society and security forces would have been unthinkable under the former regime.
Religious leaders may be key. Mr. Sharaa has met with Christian clergy, who represent small communities. Prominent Sunni clerics have returned from years in exile to promote reconciliation. Their work may rest on what Mohamed ’Arafa, a law professor at Egypt’s Alexandria University, sees as an Islamic basis for transitional justice. The Quran, he has noted, states that “If a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah [God].”
For the first time in more than half a century, a people governed by fear and violence are learning, as Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said during a trip to Damascus in January, “the pursuit of healing, trust building and social cohesion.”
