Family members of Syrians who vanished amid the 14-year civil conflict gathered in Daraa on Sunday, appealing to the recently established interim government to persist in efforts to locate them.
In 2021, the United Nations estimated over 130,000 Syrians disappeared during the war, many detained by former President Bashar al-Assad’s intelligence agencies, along with opposition fighters and the extremist Islamic State group. The Syrian Campaign, an advocacy group, suggests around 112,000 are still unaccounted for.
Following the overthrow of Assad in December by rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, prisons were stormed, freeing detainees from government jails. Families of the missing quickly visited these sites, hoping to reunite with loved ones. Although some families found their relatives, rescue teams also uncovered mass graves, trying to identify the deceased.
On the anniversary of the nationwide protests that descended into civil war, Wafa Mustafa held a photo of her father, Ali, detained by Assad’s forces in 2013. Fleeing to Germany shortly after, she feared arrest herself and hasn’t heard from him since. Like others in exile, she frequently protested across European cities. Since returning twice after Assad’s removal, she continues her search for her father.
“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” Mustafa said. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”
A United Nations-backed commission urged the interim government, led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa, to preserve evidence from prisons as they continue searching for the missing. The commission also called for action against those responsible.
Some foreign nationals remain missing in Syria, including American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January to meet with Al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from since a 2012 video showed him blindfolded and captured by armed men.
Syria’s civil war initiated following Assad’s suppression of largely peaceful protests in 2011, part of the wider Arab Spring uprisings. The conflict resulted in the death of half a million people and forced over 5 million to flee as refugees.
