Middle East: The iron grip of Bashar al-Assad’s rule finally cracked in December 2024. After more than two decades of authoritarian control, Syria stands on the brink of renewal. An interim president has stepped forward, proposing democratic reforms and the first fragile sketches of national reconciliation.

The Civil War

For years, Syria existed as a police state camouflaged as a republic. Dissent was not merely discouraged — it was hunted. Peaceful protestors, once armed only with slogans and conviction, were met with bullets. What began as a cry for dignity devolved into a brutal civil war. With help from Russia and Iran, Assad waged a campaign not just against insurgents, but against his own people. Tens of thousands vanished into the machinery of repression — prisons, black sites, or silence.

Across this scorched landscape, a group of Syrians quietly fought back — not with weapons, but with documentation. The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) became Syria’s invisible conscience. Even at the height of Assad’s control, CIJA agents smuggled out evidence — Official papers hidden in furniture, ledgers spirited away under the guise of moving services. Their goal was to preserve the truth before it could be buried.

A New System — and Its Shadows

Now, in the dawn after dictatorship, Syria’s new government has established two national commissions. The first seeks to uncover the fates of the disappeared — to build a database, to return names to families. The second has a broader mission: to expose the crimes of the Assad years and hold perpetrators accountable.

But the ghosts of the past linger. Critics warn that these commissions risk becoming tools of a new kind of control. Some officials leading the transition — like Interim President Al-Shara known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, once claimed to have severed ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 — are now linked to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group accused of human rights abuses in northwestern Syria, including torture and arbitrary detention. Justice, to many in syria remains a fragile experiment.

The Stirrings Of Newfound Privilege

From afar, in sunny Singapore, the Syrian struggle feels almost unimaginable. Here, dissent is not punished with force but debated in forums, in essays, in Parliament. Many Critics have historically called Singapore a surveillance state, but here surveillance rarely becomes suppression — it coexists uneasily with conversation.

In that difference lies a quiet privilege: the freedom to speak without fear of disappearance.

For Syrians, that freedom is just beginning — fragile, uncertain, and fought for with evidence smuggled through furniture.