When insurgents threw open the doors of Aleppo central prison as they overran the city in December, Wafa Mustafa watched the scenes in disbelief from exile in Germany. Shocked detainees ran into the night as the dictatorship built on a network of prisons and torture chambers crumbled. Mustafa prayed the insurgents would reach the detention centers in Damascus, where she believed her father, Ali, kidnapped from their home over a decade ago, was being held.
In the years since her father’s disappearance, Mustafa has become the relentless public face of the tens of thousands of families suffering the constant weight of enforced disappearances in Syria. “I have done everything I could these past years,” she says. “I exhausted myself. I cried, I got angry, I talked to politicians, I protested, and then … someone just opened the door and everyone is free. All that stood between me and my father’s prison was just a door that could easily open.”
A Bittersweet Homecoming
Almost two months on from the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Syria’s notorious detention centers lie empty for the first time. But the opening of the country’s prisons has brought solace only to some: the International Commission on Missing Persons estimates that between 100,000 and 200,000 people remain missing. Mustafa has returned to Syria to join thousands of others searching for traces of loved ones. Posters bearing the faces of the disappeared line city squares, alleyways, and even ancient mosque walls.
Clues Amidst the Chaos
Mustafa’s own frantic search, ranging from security branches to hospital morgues, has yielded just one clue so far: three documents discussing her father and the friend he was detained with in 2013 were found in the notorious military intelligence detention center known as branch 215 in Damascus. The information went all the way back to 1995.
“Despite the fact they said this is the most important file, frankly I don’t really see any progress, and they’re not speaking to people yet. They said they will work on it, but there’s no progress that we know of until now.”
– Wafa Mustafa
Mustafa says the new regime has provided little support and demonstrated scant planning for families trying to find out what happened to loved ones kidnapped, tortured and imprisoned by the Assad regime. Rooms full of files are still held in Damascus’s labyrinth of detention centers. “Now, it is said that these places are protected and the new authorities don’t allow people to just go inside. They say they will organise these sites, but I still don’t know how, and they’ve said nothing specific about how they will do this,” she explains.
Disappointment and Determination
Despite meetings with Syria’s chief prosecutor and others from the caretaker authority, Mustafa found herself quickly disappointed by their lack of planning to tackle the monumental issue of the missing. “Unfortunately there is zero clarity from the new government regarding what the families of the disappeared should do to find the truth about their loved ones, to find information or to contact the new government,” she laments.
Mustafa bristles at the perceived reluctance of the de facto head of government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to meet with the families of the missing, even as he holds talks with the mother of missing US journalist Austin Tice. While emphasizing solidarity with Tice’s plight, Mustafa balked at Sharaa’s choice to focus on the case of a white American detainee over the hundreds of thousands of Syrian families desperate for answers.
“I was scared that one of these documents that has been damaged or destroyed might have the only truth about father, and now I will never know. It’s very sad.”
– Wafa Mustafa
Sifting Through the Wreckage
In the absence of official support, Mustafa has spent weeks poring over the deluge of information spreading across social media: pictures of identity cards, rooms overflowing with documents, videos of tortured detainees in hospital beds. “I had to pause every video and repeat it over and over, to see if I can identify my father’s face somewhere,” she recounts tearfully.
Images from Sednaya prison, an infamous facility where thousands were secretly executed, left Mustafa furious. People could be seen rummaging through papers strewn across the floor – papers she feared held the only clues to missing loved ones that Syrian families in exile were now powerless to preserve. “I was scared that one of these documents that has been damaged or destroyed might have the only truth about father, and now I will never know. It’s very sad.”
An Agonizing Limbo
With international organizations caught off-guard by the downfall of the Assad regime and scrambling to examine evidence of its crimes, Mustafa says she and other families of the missing feel abandoned. “Of course Assad is the main perpetrator, but everyone who let us down, allowed this chaos to happen, everyone who had the resources and the mandate and did not use it in the earliest days after his fall, is responsible.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross in Damascus is working to trace an estimated 35,000 missing people. A United Nations body set up two years ago to find out the fate of Syria’s missing has called on the new authorities to protect all possible evidence. But for Mustafa and countless other Syrian families, the agonizing wait for answers drags on. “I am terrified,” she confesses, “that I will not have any information ever.”
