Syria’s Hardest Transition: From Revenge to Justice
A war does not truly end simply because a government falls or political power changes hands.
Violence leaves memories, fears and deep wounds behind.
If these wounds are not addressed carefully, yesterday’s victims can become tomorrow’s avengers, and a country that hoped for peace can enter another cycle of suffering.
This danger is at the heart of Curbing Reprisals in Syria, an analysis by Nanar Hawach, Senior Analyst for Syria at the International Crisis Group.
His analysis raises an important question for Syria’s future: how can a society seek justice for terrible crimes without allowing justice to become revenge?
This is not an abstract question. It concerns the future of millions of Syrians.
For many years, Syrians experienced imprisonment, torture, disappearance, displacement, destruction and death. Families lost relatives. Communities were broken apart. Millions were forced from their homes. Such experiences do not disappear with a political transition.
People naturally want those responsible to be held accountable. They want to know what happened to missing relatives. They want crimes to be investigated and victims to be recognised.
These demands are legitimate.
But there is an essential difference between accountability and collective punishment.
Justice asks who committed a crime and seeks evidence. Revenge asks which community a person belongs to and treats identity as evidence of guilt.
That difference may determine Syria’s future.
No Community Is Guilty
One of the greatest dangers after a long civil conflict is the idea of collective responsibility.
Members of Syria’s Alawite community, in particular, may be viewed by some as connected to the former Assad government simply because of their identity or where they live. But belonging to a religious or ethnic community cannot make someone responsible for crimes committed by others.
The same principle must protect every Syrian.
Sunni, Alawite, Kurdish, Druze, Christian and other communities must be able to believe that the new Syria belongs to them equally. If people begin to fear that their identity makes them targets, they will look for protection elsewhere. Armed groups may again appear as defenders of particular communities.
This would create exactly the conditions that Syria desperately needs to leave behind.
A stable state cannot be built from competing fears.
The Test of the New Authorities
The new Syrian authorities therefore face a difficult test.
Their success should not be measured only by whether they can control territory or establish political institutions. It should also be measured by whether they can protect people who are unpopular, vulnerable or associated, rightly or wrongly, with the previous order.
This requires disciplined security forces and clear rules.
Those responsible for killings, torture or other serious crimes should be investigated. But arrests cannot become a substitute for evidence. Armed groups cannot be allowed to punish people according to their own judgement. Security forces themselves must also be accountable for abuses.
The principle is simple but demanding: the law must apply to everyone.
If people who supported the former government committed crimes, they should face justice for those crimes. If people associated with the new authorities commit crimes, they too should face justice.
Anything less risks replacing one form of arbitrary power with another.
Justice Must Be Individual
Syria will also need a serious process of transitional justice.
This means investigating crimes, preserving evidence, opening records where possible, identifying the missing and giving families answers. Victims need recognition. Those responsible for serious abuses need to be held accountable through credible legal processes.
But responsibility must remain individual.
A person should answer for what that person did, not for the community into which they were born.
This principle may sound obvious. After years of war, however, it can be extremely difficult to defend. Fear encourages people to divide society into “us” and “them”. Grief can make punishment feel like justice. Political leaders may also find it easier to use old divisions than to overcome them.
That is precisely why institutions matter.
Courts, laws and independent investigations are not technical details of reconstruction. They are part of the peace itself.
A Country That Includes Everyone
Syria’s future will depend not only on who governs but on what kind of state emerges.
A new political order will have little meaning if some communities continue to live in fear. Nor can lasting stability come from forcing people into silence. Syrians need reasons to believe that citizenship, rather than religious, ethnic or political identity, will determine their rights.
The international community also has a role.
Economic reconstruction, diplomatic engagement and the future of sanctions are important. But international engagement should also encourage accountable institutions, protection of civilians, minority rights and credible justice.
Syria needs roads, homes, schools and hospitals rebuilt. It also needs something less visible and perhaps even more difficult to rebuild: trust.
Trust cannot be imposed from outside. Nor can it be created overnight. It grows slowly through the experience of being treated fairly, knowing that the law offers protection and seeing that crimes are investigated regardless of who commits them.
The wider lesson from Nanar Hawach’s Curbing Reprisals in Syria, published by the International Crisis Group, reaches far beyond Syria.
After mass violence, justice is necessary. But justice loses its meaning if it becomes another name for revenge.
Syria does not need to forget its past. Forgetting would deny the suffering of millions. It needs to confront that past without allowing it to dictate the future.
The real measure of a political transition is therefore not simply whether power changes hands.
It is whether the rules of power change with it.
- Fiona Ko Ko is a policy analyst focusing mainly on global economic governance, international political economy, and equitable development frameworks.