What was once promised as a new beginning in Syria has, for many, become a symbolic shroud. The so-called “settlement document” no longer serves as a tool for reconciliation or reintegration. Instead, it has morphed into a delayed death certificate — a haunting bureaucratic marker that tells the Syrian individual: You are neither fully alive nor fully erased. You are merely postponed.
The range of terminology required to describe the punitive mechanisms created by Syria’s new authority is vast and complex. These are not arbitrary terms; they reflect an intricate web of psychological, social, and political functions — a disciplinary power structure applied to a wide spectrum of Syrians. That spectrum stretches from former regime loyalists (“remnants”) to anyone accused of “insulting the state’s dignity,” to those who simply “harassed a girl.”
Layers of Guilt: From the Obvious to the Obscured
From the outset of the new regime’s rule, the idea of accountability took centre stage — initially focused on those directly responsible for atrocities: security officers and soldiers captured on video beating, torturing, and murdering civilians. These individuals became “the naked accused,” where not just the act, but also the body, the face, and the name became part of the crime scene.
Yet these visible cases represent only a fragment of a far more elusive spectrum. Many did not pull a trigger or strike a blow, but they supported the regime in subtler ways — by remaining silent, collaborating administratively, or benefiting from the system. These individuals, often labeled as “accomplices,” include ordinary civilians who turned their backs on the violence out of fear, complicity, or self-interest. Ironically, only Alawites — the group historically associated with the Assad regime — appear to bear the full weight of this accusation.
Then there are those who embodied the regime’s symbolic apparatus: journalists, actors, academics, and public intellectuals who echoed the state’s sectarian and security-driven narratives. Their punishment has been “symbolic social retribution” — not legal prosecution, but mockery, exclusion, public shaming, and the erasure of their legitimacy or credibility.
Together, these figures form a wide “gray zone of guilt” — from executioners to bystanders, from officers to media producers, from soldiers to filmmakers who aestheticized fear, or TV hosts who ritualized denial of state violence.
Beyond Legal Justice: The Need for Cultural Reckoning
This tangled moral landscape cannot be addressed through legal justice alone. It requires cultural, ethical, and social justice — a critical reexamination of roles and masks, not just individual identities. Transitional justice cannot rely solely on courtrooms. It must also interrogate the language of power, its psychological impact, and its social residue. It must involve accountability, not mere settlement; acknowledgement, not denial.
The danger of this moment lies not only in past violence but in how the new regime is reconstituting power — by reintegrating former regime figures without critique, through administrative tools instead of structural change. This is why dismantling the symbolic institutions of power — from media and art to education and religion — is essential for any genuine break from the architecture of tyranny.
A New Queue of Paperwork and Memory
On the fifth day after Assad’s fall, a new kind of queue emerged — not for bread or fuel, but for bureaucratic salvation. Men in civilian clothing stood in silence outside designated centres, waiting for a piece of paper prepared by the new authorities. It was designed for those who had served in the former regime’s military or security agencies, or collaborated in civilian capacities.
This was the “settlement.”
What Is the “Settlement”?
On its surface, the settlement was meant to offer a path forward for those whose hands were not directly stained with blood and who had not fought the new regime. It granted its holder the status of “regularized,” allowing temporary freedom of movement while awaiting official documentation or a final decision from a court or review committee.
But in practice, it created a new category of suspended identity — a legal and existential limbo. Neither condemned nor acquitted, the individual was trapped between the old and the new orders, inhabiting a psychological and social vacuum marked by that single sheet of paper.
This liminal identity produced what might be called “anticipatory anxiety” — fear of future prosecution, dread that the document might later serve as evidence of guilt, or that it could brand one as having belonged to the wrong side at the wrong time.
From Paper to Punishment
The settlement was a preventive mechanism, a political and administrative tool intended to avoid civil unrest while projecting the image of a flexible and forward-looking authority. But it was never a form of justice or recognition. It was what might be called negative acknowledgment — the bearer of the document became the object of suspicion, not exoneration.
Instead of facilitating closure, the paper functioned as a delaying tactic, a symbol of fear, not inclusion. The new regime presented it as an act of societal reconciliation, as a substitute for mass trials. Violence was thus displaced — from physical assault to bureaucratic process, from bullets to files, from blood to queues.
At its core, however, the settlement was a confused blend of punishment and pardon, of inclusion and condemnation. It failed to rebuild collective memory, establish justice, or shape a new future. It became an administrative device designed to diffuse anger, calm public sentiment, and reassert control — all without any clear framework of accountability.
The Paper as Psychological Weapon
In this way, punishment became a form of symbolic dilution — not grounded in a legal narrative, but in a fragile convergence of fear, desire for inclusion, and the unresolved need to redefine one’s relationship with the state, the self, and the community.
The settlement was also a form of collective psychological engineering. It gave hope to the guilty, cast doubt on the innocent, and left everyone suspended in a permanent state of waiting — in a volatile public space where a single piece of paper signaled not forgiveness, but the indefinite postponement of fate.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
