A nation still searchingA year after Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell on December 8, 2024, Syrians are still searching for the truth.The portraits that hung from lampposts have been replaced by the faces of the missing, photocopied pictures taped to shopfronts and walls. Families have searched graveyards and abandoned prisons, hoping a scrap of fabric or a piece of paper might give them answers. People hold pictures of Syrian missing persons at a protest outside the Hijaz train station in Damascus on December 15, 2024, demanding accountability [Bakr Alkasem/AFP]Over 13 years of war, which killed more than half a million people and displaced half the country, the regime and its allies disappeared between 120,000 and 300,000 people, according to the government’s National Commission for the Missing.The system that disappeared them was deliberate – a web of informants, secret police, files and fear. Arrests were made without warrants, over a neighbour’s grudge, a relative’s rumour, or a bribe.In the days after the regime’s collapse, some Syrians celebrated. Others ran to the prisons. At Sednaya Prison, people grabbed whatever documents they could, as papers were trampled into the ground and crucial evidence disappeared underfoot. Families searched for loved ones, even beneath the floors – what they found were ropes, chains, and electric cables.Only a few families were reunited after al-Assad’s fall.For the rest, grief and hope coexist as the whereabouts of the disappeared remain unknown.The new government, led b …
