Sally Hayden: Remembering the 100,000 who have disappeared in Syria’s 11 years of war

While much of the world’s media is preoccupied by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Fadwa Mahmoud is preparing to be reminded of her own private tragedy.

September 20th will mark a full decade since the disappearance of the 67-year-old’s husband and son, who were taken from a car outside Damascus airport shortly after they arrived in Syria in 2012.

They are among more than 100,000 people believed to have gone missing into Syria’s prison and detention system since the war there began 11 years ago.

Now family members of the disappeared have a small reason to hope that they may one day find out the fates of their loved ones.

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A new report from UN secretary general António Guterres has backed years of calls by victim and survivor groups to set up a dedicated mechanism focused on clarifying what has happened to Syria’s missing people. There is an “urgent need” for answers, the report says.

It came after consultations with associations of victims, survivors and their families, and representatives of organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Commission on Missing Persons.

The report’s introduction notes: “the leadership, strength and courage of the families whose right to know and struggle to learn the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones remain the driving force behind this initiative”

Among them is Mahmoud’s organisation, Families for Freedom – listed as one of the women-led victim and survivor associations dealing with the “deeply gendered” impact of these disappearances.

‘There is hope’

On a Zoom call from Berlin, where she now lives, Mahmoud told me that they are hoping one day there will be “at least some information for some families. Even if it’s not enough and even if it’s not everything.”

“Of course there is hope,” she continued. “If there was no hope that something will come out of this we wouldn’t even bother working on it and advocating for it.”

She said that while it’s possible that the Syrian regime would refuse to co-operate with the new mechanism, it would still act as a “pressure tool” and is “the best chance of achieving any kind of advancement or any kind of new lead.”

“Ireland is one of the countries that we’re counting on in our advocacy effort. Because we know and we expect that Ireland will be strongly on our side.” She said they want Ireland to help convince countries that may not naturally support the mechanism to get behind it, ahead of an anticipated vote in the UN General Assembly.

‘I’ve actually devoted my whole life to the cause of my husband and my son,’ Mahmoud explains. ‘I’m doing work all the time’

Ideally, they would get backing from a “hero group of states” that would also assist the families of the disappeared with establishing it, finding funding and operating it.

“I’ve actually devoted my whole life to the cause of my husband and my son,” Mahmoud explains. “I’m doing work all the time, that’s what I do 24/7.”

When I apologise for making her relive her past, she brushes it away. “You didn’t cause me any extra pain because that story never leaves my mind. I’m thinking about them and waiting for the day for them to come back.”

She describes her husband, Abdulaziz Al Khair, who was a prominent opposition figure. He would now be in his 70s. Her son, Maher, would now be 41.

‘Future generation’

Maher represented “the future generation of Syria,” Mahmoud says. “He was very ambitious. He was very interested in his community around him. He used to read a lot. He used to care for every detail of the lives of Syrians.”

Her husband was “stubborn”, a “strong fighter who would never move from his principles.”

Abdulaziz had been detained before: for 14 years, before the Syrian revolution. “For all the torture he endured and for all the bad times he went through, he was never broken. He was always insisting on his principles and his causes, and he never doubted himself even for one second,” she says.

While I spoke to Mahmoud, I thought back to 2014, when I was an intern on Christiane Amanpour’s CNN International show and we broke the story of the Caesar photos. They were photographic evidence smuggled out of the country by a Syrian military photographer, which documented systemic torture in Syria’s prisons. I remember the aftermath of that exclusive: its revelations trending globally on Twitter. At that time, Syria’s war was only three years old. Now, it’s more than 11.

‘We are in solidarity 100 percent with the Ukrainian people. We know what they’re going through. We have been through exactly the same thing’

A series of recent global events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, and the war in Ukraine, have pushed Syria far out of the headlines. “Of course it’s a concern. It’s a very pressing concern. We can see that we are no longer prioritised by the international community,” Mahmoud said.

At the same time, “we are in solidarity 100 per cent with the Ukrainian people. We know what they’re going through. We have been through exactly the same thing. They end up with the same pattern of abuses and human rights violations. While we are in solidarity with them, we realise that our cause has dropped in the priorities of the international community and that’s what we are working on.”