[Sounds of gunfire and crowds cheering]

[BONESSI] The sounds of elation and celebratory gunfire on December 8^th 2024 rang out through Syria during the rapid transition of government bringing hope to millions of Syrians across the country and around the worltd. For families of the missing, the moment was one of hope, but also despair as the opening of prisons and uncovering of mass graves flooded the media.

[News Clips: “And then a ledger found on the ground, people running from everywhere looking for names”…”This group of family members and fighters have found a steel wall, and they think they can hear voices behind it”…“More and more bodies like this are discovered across the country. Locals are reporting on mass graves, thousands of families.”

[BONESSI] Over the past 14 years, the International Red Cross has registered more than 35,000 missing people. That number is likely much higher.  To start chipping away at this mammoth challenge and help families find answers, the Red Cross is providing technical, training, and financial support to the Forensics Identification Centre in Damascus

[Sound of Dr. Yasser speaking]

[BONESSI]  Dr. Yasser al-Qassem is head of the Directorate for Forensic Medicine. He says the center’s partnership with the Red Cross has increased trust with the public to take on the massive caseload of missing and unidentified persons, but challenges remain.

[Dr. Yasser with English Translation Over Arabic] “The biggest and most prominent challenge in the Syrian context is the tampering with mass graves and incorrect methods of exhumation.”

[BONESSI] Bridging the gap between hope and reconciliation for the Syrian people will take years and maybe even decades.  Today we sit down with the head of the Syria delegation, Stephan Sakalian, to talk about how the International Committee of the Red Cross is working to provide some consolation to those seeking missing loved ones and what it will take to rebuild the country under the new government.  Stephan has previously served in Sudan, Brazil and Ukraine.  I’m Dominique Maria Bonessi and this is Intercross, conversations about war and the people caught in the middle of it.

INTERCROSS INTERLUDE MUSIC

[BONESSI] I wanna first touch on the continuing violence that we’re seeing in certain parts of the country. Can you go into that a little bit? And is the fear that things could get worse before they get better?

[STEPHAN]  Well, indeed, we can say today that Syria is unfortunately not totally free of violence or episodes of conflict. There has been indeed a colossal change of power and the military takeover back in December that everybody has witnessed. The good news is that this change of political scenario has not necessarily generated as much violence and bloodshed than we could have expected. In the first place, but then in the months that have followed, indeed, we face different types of challenges when it comes to the remains of old conflicts or the emergence of new types of violence.

The first one, of course, has been related to these episodes of violence that we have seen on the coastal areas, mainly targeting certain communities associated or suspected to be associated with the former government. This one has been a stark reminder that under the ashes, the fire is still present, and that at any moment the wounds of 14 years of war can immediately reopen.

Several hundreds of people have been killed or injured during these episodes, including scores of civilians. And of course it has been of, for us, an enormous concern to see that. Violence and conflicts were not over. A few weeks after other communities mainly located in the south of the country or in some peripheral areas of Damascus itself, mainly communities of   people, which is another minority in the country, have also been the theater of some violence.

With a lesser impact on the civilian population and fewer numbers of civilians being killed or injured. But still, it was again, the proof that peace is not yet established in the country and that there is still, a long way towards stability. And, final peace. Finally, there is another type of situations which are maybe not as intense and not as dramatic as the two that I just mentioned.

People tend to forget that along the Euphrates River in the north and northeast part of the country, we still have somehow of an active , frontline separating, on the eastern part, those territories controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, known as the Kurdish. Armed forces and then, on the other part, the governmental troops often associated with a remnants of the Syrian National Army, and sometimes some, military operations carried out by the Turkish armed forces.

This line is maybe not as active as the other parts I have mentioned, but they pose a serious problem in terms of humanitarian action in the sense that they affect directly the functioning and sometimes even the integrity of some critical infrastructures like dams, like water treatment stations, like power generating factories, which are serving millions of people. And by being affected, of course, these critical infrastructures can sometimes have a ripple effect of affecting millions of people. So that’s the third situation, which we are facing and which is not free yet of difficulties.

The last one is related to the south. You probably heard that the Israeli Defense Force have taken larger parts of thousand Syria under their control. They are now indeed controlling several communities in the region of Quneitra mainly. And this is of course, a situation whereby you can have in certain moments either hardship faced by the local communities due to this new situation, and in some cases some episodes of fighting. A few weeks ago we had quite heavy fighting between the IDF and local armed groups, who, which resulted unfortunately in the death of certain civilians. So all this makes Syria a place where we still have some work, if I may say, and where we need to be very vigilant and continue to push.

All positive forces to find political settlement and the trends have been relatively good during the past weeks, as you could probably hear.

[BONESSI] When the rapid government transition happened, we saw. People flooding the prisons in the country and we saw people flocking into them. We saw people being released from prisons. We saw people desperately looking for loved ones. And that search continues. And there are, we think over 35,000 people missing in Syria. What kind of, because it’s very difficult, the situation to find people. So what sort of consolation do you offer to families who are turning to the ICRC and seeking information about their loved ones and their whereabouts?

[STEPHAN]  Well, the question of the missing be it missing, people related to the 14 years of hostilities, be it the people who disappeared after being arrested or even people who disappeared on their way, trying to flee from Syria to other countries in Europe, for instance is a very painful and a much open wound. That is affecting tens of thousands of people still in Syria. You were mentioning the opening of the prisons. In the days following the takeover of Damascus and other cities throughout the country, I was myself together with a team in, the prison of Sednaya. And, I must say that what we have seen were- Overwhelmingly emotional scenes of hundreds of civilians literally rushing to the prison in the hope of finding a missing relative. The first person that we met after getting out of our car because there were two kilometers.

Of queuing cars, going to the prison of Sednayah was an old lady of 70-years-old who had been there since six in the morning and was coming back, literally crying from the prison because she could not find her son who had disappeared back in 2012. And she’s the very first person we met along the way and to whom we asked if she was okay because she was indeed a very aged person and she seemed, at a loss. And this person is just one representation and one example of the tens of thousands of people who are still desperate for news and for knowing about the fate and the whereabout of their beloved ones. After these very immediate days of change of situation of Syria, we have taken some emergency measures.

We have opened a hotline for the people to simply call, either if they were a family, in search of a family member, or if they were a released detainee at a loss, not able to find the relative that they have not seen for years. Thanks to this hotline hundreds of people have called us and in many cases we have been able to provide at least some temporary relief.

Many of them were released detainees, in need of help. Some of them were provided by the ICRC with financial temporary assistance so they could maybe travel and find their family. Some others were redirected to hospital because they were in need of emergency help, medical help. Some others were even at the later stage advised and somehow taken care of for longer term type of problems such as being a patient of tuberculosis or being in need of reinsertion in the society and in need of a job, for example. So this is what we did for a number of people who contacted us in the very days following the change of situation in Syria. Now, on the much longer term, we have been also very active to try to set the basis or, or get the minimal condition for what should become.

At a later stage , a national response to the question of the tens of thousands of people we mentioned before. As you mentioned, 35,000 families approached the ICRC during the past 14 years in search of their beloved ones, and for that ICRC alone is not a solution. We have expertise. We have a database of missing persons.

We have a lot of things to offer to both the families of missing and the missings themselves once they are found. But for this, we need a national response. And this is why we have appreciated and welcomed the decision of the government of Syria, through a presidential decree a few weeks ago to create a missing commission, which is now in the making and which will be.

A Syria led and a Syria owned solution to the question of the missing, hopefully trying to help the whole scope of people missing. And for that we have provided to the government an offer of service where the ICRC is supporting. Not only what we recommend based on our experience, the state to do, to get the things right upfront, which is to.

Get the right archive and the right documents, spared for future investigations for , but also for the humanitarian purpose of finding missing people to set up a mechanism of referral and assistance to the victims because many families will need some help during years. Until their beloved ones are found.

And of course, to reinforce their capacity on the legal front, on the forensic front, to be able to carry out all these painstaking tasks of identifying dead bodies, of finding people who have gone missing during these years of war. And that’s something for which, once again, the ICRC can offer a lot. As a conclusion, I would say that we’ve met recently the newly appointed chair of this missing commission.

He was extremely open to cooperating with international organizations, first and foremost, the ICRC, but also other mechanism like the IIMP, which is this independent institution for the missing person, which was created a few years ago , following a resolution of the general assembly. So I think in brief that it’ll take international organizations for sure, like the ICRC to share their wealth of knowledge and expertise for the long time, for the long period, we are entering into a long file and a painful one, and the government will need to reinforce its capacities together with the Civil Society of Syria. Of course.

[BONESSI] Yeah. And I’m thinking, I mean, there’s been a lot of, people who have been disappeared for over a decade now. May not be found that they have, were missing and now are deceased. And I wonder, there’s many countries that I know I’m thinking of Rwanda, I’m thinking of, Peru, where we’ve seen sort of these reconciliations in, honoring those who are missing and deceased.

And, potentially getting any sort of remains that were available and having that reconciliation time, having that time for the families to grieve and to have that, understanding of what happened to this country, not just the individual people, but what happened to the society as a whole because of this event.

So I wonder if you think that this commission will be able to provide that sort of  Reconciliation to the society, to the people of Syria?

[STEPHAN] I would say that, together with the good news of the creation of this commission, that was long expected and that was literally asked by the families of missing and by the Civil Society of Syria, alongside with the ICRC and other organizations,the government has created on the same day a transitional justice commission.

And I think here we are touching two very important things, which are somehow separated but also closely interlinked, separated because our experience throughout the world shows that there is a time for closure. There is a time for families to get answers. There is a humanitarian time. When the people are just craving for news and craving for the truth, the right to know is something that the ICRC is trying to bring and to help the family with.

And that’s for us, if I may say, a strictly humanitarian purpose in the sense that we are just bringing some information to families who are craving for this information in parallel, as we all know. When there is a conflict, when there is a violent situation in a [00:12:00] country, people are also seeking justice.

And this is another task, which is usually longer, which is usually more complex to establish, which has a lot of ramifications with national reconciliation, with intercommunal peace, with the ability of a society and of an entire nation to turn the page of war. And for that, I think the transitional justice commission, which has been created in parallel is related to the missing commission in the sense that it’ll probably use the same documents, the same records, to try to establish the truth, but in the same time, it’s separated because they will have to bring justice probably at a later stage. Usually the humanitarian time is not exactly the same time as the one for justice.

What is for sure is that the both commission will be probably busy for. Years, if not decades sometimes. Because what we saw in other countries in other major conflicts is that it takes literally years and sometime decades to bring response when and if we can bring response, because unfortunately, many people may end up not having the information they seek. And as you said the work of seeking people is not a standalone thing. We need also to help those people who may never get an answer about the disappearance of their beloved ones.

[BONESSI] Another big news that made headlines here in the US and in Syria were the Trump administration announcing the lifting of sanctions on Syria.

 I think many are wondering how will this help with the ICRC’s work, or, or does it help the ICRC’s work? Are we seeing that this is a positive or a negative?

[STEPHAN] Well, I think that we can say it’s a tremendously positive development without any doubt. Because I was mentioning earlier what is of course the biggest concern of the population on the one hand, which is the one related to potential episodes of violence and new developments of conflicts be reached.

But the other major concern of the population of Syria today, and I’m talking about. The entire population in the sense that we are in a country where 90% of the population is below the rank of poverty right now is of course the socioeconomic situation and for addressing the many needs of the socioeconomic situation, which is basically what people need to make a living, to give food to their children, to buy the necessary medicines that their parents are in need of, or simply to access the essential services that anybody needs to survive.

This issue can only be addressed if on top of the humanitarian efforts of organizations like the ICRC or the many United Nations agencies who are still working in the country, we bring this oxygen for the economy to be kickstarted again for the banking system to be resurrected for the private companies from abroad to be able to invest again, and for the countries who are desperately trying to help, not to fear the potential direct or indirect consequences of sanctions and other restrictive regimes and these lifting of sanctions recently that came after the decision of the US administration in relation with different types of sanctions, but also a number of other countries such as the UK, the EU, and even more recently, Japan is extremely important.

Why? Because based on that more economic development can be expected. More companies will be coming in the countries and hopefully more banking institutions will be able to operate again in a country from which they have been absent for over a decade. I will finish by saying that. We still need, of course, to be careful because our experience in other countries where sanctioned regime have been lifted shows that the impact of the lifting usually takes time.

We are in a very, very complex set and, a web of sanctions that to somehow be fully withdrawn, take time and we know that before things get better they will need to still benefit from the attention and the very high attention of humanitarian organizations. We need to bridge this time when we are now, and whereby the situation is still extremely vulnerable and fragile.

And the time when things will get better, it may take some time and the same way we know that companies, private companies, banks usually also take their time before changing their policies. We are still in a country, which as I said, present some fragilities and vulnerabilities and instabilities and before trust comes back, even with the sanction relief, we will need to continue working on making the conditions for a real economy, a real recovery, and ultimately a real peace and a real reconstructions can prevail again.

[BONESSI] Going to, as far as security for your staff in Syria, I know it’s been…over the past decade, it’s been very tight. It’s been very difficult to get in and out. How is the staff doing? How is it the security access for your staff and how is the ability for your staff to access the areas they need to get to?

[STEPHAN]  Well, security remain a challenge of course, huh? We a\re in a country where law and order has not been brought back in all the corners of the country. And safety and security protocols are still very high for the teams of the ICRC. You may know that we have quite large teams on the field on a daily basis.

Syria remains the third biggest operation of the ICRC worldwide after Ukraine and Gaza. Whenever we are going on the field to reach the people who need our help, there is several risks we need to be very aware of. One of them, of course, that is sometimes a bit overlooked is the fact that , we are in a country which after 14 years of war, is highly contaminated in weapons, remnant of wars.

Mines and all kinds of unexploded ordinances. Another risk is of course, related to the plethora of armed groups, that still exist in the country. There has been definitely an effort of the newly established government to try to federate all these groups and call them to join the army so they are all serving in one military force. But ofcourse, some of them have not yet integrated the ranks of the National Army.

Some of them are still negotiating with the country and some of them [00:18:30] may simply refuse to join the government. This is why every time the ICRC is going in one or another place of the country , another thing that we need to do, it’s to ensure that all the armed groups presence in these sectors, in these areas are not only knowledgeable of what we are doing, but accepting our presence and sometimes even giving us the necessary guarantees to reach the places we need to reach. A very good example is the Tishrin Dam. Tishrin Dam has been a place that many people have talked a lot , about during the past weeks, even at the Security Council of the United Nation.

It’s a critical infrastructures, where the ICRC. Since December has been called by the authorities of Syria to go to, in order to provide a much-needed fuel, spare parts for the repair of the dam, and even sometimes accompany buses of engineers of the government for them to be able to take shifts and to maintain and operate this very important power and water facility.

To do so, the ICRC had literally to call four different time groups, ask for their temporary ceasefire, and then give a window of opportunity for the ICRC to go to Tishrin Dam, do its work, and after 24 hours, go back to a safer place. So this is the kind of security challenge we also need to address sometimes the groups.

And last but not least, I mean, there are still also a lot of weapons in the hands of many communities in Syria. And as you could see in the recent days, it is not it always the case that humanitarian workers or providers of vital services like ambulances are not targeted by unknown groups

So all these kind of risks are to be addressed. And I would of course mention we have 600 Syrian colleagues in Syria, and some of them are living simply in those very places that I mentioned at the beginning and which have been subjected to episodes of very high violence recently, like the coastal areas or the communities around the rural Damascus or  As Suwayda, more recently.

[BONESSI] So going to the infrastructure, over the past decade and a half we saw terrible scenes of, of civilians, children in their home sleeping in their beds, being pulled out of rubble unaware that something had just happened to their home.

How do you start the process of, of rebuilding, I mean, cities that have been completely just flattened?

[STEPHAN]  Well, I mean, you mentioned the rubbles and the destruction, and it’s true that Syria is unfortunately known in the recent history to be one of the countries where destruction has reached some of the highest limits You can imagine there are entire cities or quarters of cities which are still literally flattened.

You can see that in Homs. You can see that in Aleppo, you can see that Raqqa in Deir Ez-Zor and even in Damascus. And, uh, it’ll take years and, uh, hundreds of billions of dollars for reconstructions to be possible. One of the first challenge we have seen, I mentioned it earlier, has been the one of weapon contamination during the past five month.

There has been more people, victims of explosion, of weapons remnants than we have seen in an entire year, 2024. And that’s why it’s precisely because people are coming back to their communities or starting coming back either when they were displaced in Syria or even coming from a neighboring country like Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan.

And then when they come back to their community of origin, they often find either nothing because their house or their building has been literally destroyed, or sometimes they find something that remains, but which is contaminated by weapons. So one of the first action that we are taking, ICRC together with our partner of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, has been to expand and to augment our weapon awareness programs, which are literally targeting hundreds of thousands of people for them to be aware of the risks of being exposed to the explosive remnants when you come back to a contaminated areas. We have launched campaigns recently. We have sent text messages on the phones for over 2 million people.

We are going in communities to literally teach kids about the risks of these problems. And we will continue to do so in parallel with reinforcing efforts of the country in terms of mine clearance and weapon contamination clearance. ICRC is one of the very few organizations today who is able to clear contaminated areas and we are now approaching the government to try to put in place a mechanism whereby we could share our know-how for these weapon clearance. This contamination by remnants of war can be addressed by the government themselves. So this is something that will be the step one of our response For the rest, it is of course the reconstructions of infrastructures. ICRC has developed a huge program in Syria during the past years. In the absence of state capacity and in the absence of foreign    companies, it is a program called Too Big to Fail, which is literally maintaining afloat, the seven biggest water station of the country who are providing water to 12 million people.

If it was not for the ICRC and the Syria Arab Red Crescent and efforts to repair and to maintain these facilities together with the Ministry of Water and the Ministry of Energy, these facilities would’ve failed a long time ago. We are still supporting these facilities, but now what we look for it is precisely thanks to the lifting of the sanction, the return of foreign companies from Europe, from the United States, from neighboring Gulf countries to literally not only repair these destroyed and facilities, but maybe rebuild them. And this will take millions of investments of course. So ICRC will here not only have the task to continue working as long as it’s needed, but to bridge the gap between humanitarian and development efforts. And this will have to do it in close synchronization with the government of Syria.

With the foreign states who are willing to help and with the private sector who is, uh, at the forefront of, of course, repairing or maintaining these, uh, very sophisticated structures.

[BONESSI] You say passing off to development efforts to help rebuild, are you saying development efforts as far as like a private sector development or,, how does that work if we don’t have a, an agency here in the US that was providing a. I mean, it wasn’t the only of course agency, but it was a very large portion of a lot of the aid that you see around the world. I’m just wondering how does that affect sort of the calculation there?

[STEPHAN] Well, I would say that, I mean, everybody’s aware that currently I. All the humanitarian sector, and to a certain extent, sometime the development sector, in different ways have been largely affected, by what we see becoming a trend unfortunately, which is a trend of decreasing, aid funds,, throughout the world.

It is not only in the United States, but it also in Europe, that many countries have announced that they may not be able to sustain the same level of efforts as they have done during the past years to either provide much needed and vital humanitarian assistance. Or invest even bigger amounts of money for what is the reconstruction and recovery of a country like Syria.

So here, of course, there is a lot of concerns on all the fronts. First of all, the concerns of the people of those countries who are desperately in need of this help coming from abroad because they’ve been exhausted by years and decades of war. The concern of the government who is now taking over, if I may say, and which is need of tremendous help to be able to stabilize the country. It’s not only alaw enforcement and military challenge, it is literally the challenge of any state who needs to provide health, who needs to provide electricity, who needs to provide essential services like education to their people. They are in need of international help.

And of course, it is the case of organizations like the ICRC or many other humanitarian actors who are heavily depending on the donors around the world to be able to do their job and to fulfill their mission. So here you are very right to stress the fact that there are some big challenges for us in Syria.

Like there are challenges in other countries in the region of Middle East and beyond. And it’s true that it’s somehow a bit frustrating as humanitarian workers to see that at the moment when precisely the space and the oxygen, oxygen is given to us to do maybe things that were impossible still a few months ago.

We are facing these big question marks when it comes to funding because there is so much we could do and so much we still must do not to fail the Syrian population that we will go to every single country who is able and willing to help us and try to secure their support. As long as it’ll be needed for maybe Syria to stand back on their feet and for a normal life, including through this private sector to resume.

[BONESSI] Last question, it’s more of a hypothetical, if you had a crystal ball and you could look into the future, what would you foresee for , Syria where the humanitarian needs and the security concerns are minimal?

[STEPHAN]  Well, nobody has a crystal ball and I think that a vivid illustration of that is that what has happened in December and the months that have followed in Syria.

Has not been predicted by anyone. I don’t remember a humanitarian worker, a diplomat, or an academic who predicted what we have done gone through during the past month. So predicting the future is always an exercise we try to, to not really, engage in. But for sure as a humanitarian organization, we need a, a good dose of optimism on the one hand because we need to bring hope and we need to bring solutions to people.

Whereas we need to prepare for the worst because experience shows that at any moment anything can happen in a country which has gone gone through a war such as the one we have seen in Syria for many years. So as far as the International Committee of the Red Cross is concerned, I think that. We look on the one hand hopefully at a brighter future, and I think that I already spelled a number of positive developments recently.

That makes us hopeful. And which probably will pave the way towards more possibilities for the humanitarian and the development sectors. But at the same time, we need to get prepared for what may still happen if justice and accountability do not prevail, if the country cannot enforce law and order, it is of course resumed violence.

And I think here the task of not only humanitarian, but   All across the world because Syria is not only a local problem, it is a regional problem, and it is a global problem as well to be addressed. I think that the support of countries like the United States, the European countries, the Gulf countries, neighboring countries like Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and even further countries in other parts of the world, will be much needed to ensure that humanitarian can continue to work as long as needed.

And then the state of Syria. The development actors and foreign states can continue to help and take over the hard job that the humanitarians have carried out for the past 14 years.

[BONESSI] That was Stephan Sakalian, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Syria Delegation.

Additional thanks go to our colleagues in Syria, Malavika Subba and Ammar Saboh.

If you liked this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to Intercross wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’d like to find out more about what’s happening in Syria please visit intercrossblog.icrc.org and follow us and our colleagues on X.com at ICRC_DC and ICRC_Sy (for Syria).

See you next time on Intercross.

Music for this episode provided by 687949__seelengold__german-melancholy.