Social contract in Syria broken: Advisor

NEW YORK - Syrians do not trust authorities in Damascus, an advisor of Syria’s new government said, offering a stark assessment as the country begins to investigate crimes committed by the collapsed regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“The social contract in the country is completely broken and there is no trust in the authorities. There is no trust in the processes. There is no trust in the procedures. There is no trust in government entities. There is no trust in the international community,” said Zahra al-Barazi, a special advisor to the Syrian government.

She was speaking at a conference put on by the non-profit organization Syria Forum in New York earlier this week. Barazi provides legal advice on holding the Assad regime accountable for its crimes and providing victim reparations. This process began in May, following a controversial decree by interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Shaara to establish a committee to investigate Assad-era crimes.

There is a debate over what should fall within the committee’s mandate.

"I think transitional justice should start from March 2011 until December 2024 because if we expand the mandate, that means lots of cases, a lot of engaging to do. Expanding the mandate, that means it might fail,” Fadel Abdulghany, from the Syria Network For Human Rights, told Rudaw on the sidelines of the conference. 

Human rights organizations and legal scholars have criticized the investigation, saying it is too narrow in scope and fails to encompass all the crimes committed against the country's diverse minorities.

David Tafuri, an international lawyer, told Rudaw that a country cannot become a mature democracy and have the confidence of its population if it fails to address past crimes. 

“That's not just crimes that occurred after 2011. Although there were so many atrocities after 2011, there were crimes before 2011 as well. He was [an] authoritarian dictator. Then he mistreated minority populations, like the Kurds,” he said. 

Even the name of the state, "The Syrian Arab Republic," is a point of contention for some.

“When you said Syria, it recognized all of its population. But when you add the term, but when you add a specific ethnic group in there, then you're taking away the rights of the other groups that are within the country,” said George Stifo from the Assyrian Democratic Organization. 

Syria has an ethnically diverse population, including Assyrians and Kurds who are estimated to be the second-largest ethnic group after Arabs. The new Syrian government has changed the old Syrian flag, which was from the Ba'athist era, but they have retained the country's official name, leaving many to wonder about the inclusivity of this new chapter for Syria.