After Assad's fall, Ghouta's chemical attack victims wait for justice

Damascus, Syria - A few minutes before the attack, Mohammed Hantush noticed some strange behaviour. The stray dogs in his neighbourhood were climbing onto cars and up flights of stairs. It was a warning, he said, a sign from God that a chemical attack was imminent.

Perhaps by then they had learnt that sarin, a gas heavier than air, sinks and collects in low ground and basements, where it is especially lethal.

But if the local strays did serve as a warning, it did not come soon enough. Mohammed and his brother, Maher, heard the rockets approach in the darkness, but then, not a sound. “There was no explosion,” he said. “But the gas was leaking out.”

On 21 August 2013, at around 2.30am, surface-to-surface rockets loaded with the deadly nerve agent sarin were fired into Eastern Ghouta in the suburbs of Damascus.

The rockets hit the Zamalka neighbourhood, where Mohammad and Maher were living, and nearby Ein Tarma. Hundreds were killed, at least 502 according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based group. But there may have been as many as 1,500 casualties that night, including hundreds of children.

In early December, a few days after Assad was ousted by a blitz rebel offensive, The New Arab visited chemical attack victims in Eastern Ghouta. Its residents had just emerged from five decades of suffocating dictatorship and 14 years of war. There was an atmosphere of newfound hope and relief.

Under siege for five years, residents were forced to eat grass to fend off starvation. They were living in bombed-out apartment blocks, with no electricity or running water. All had lost loved ones to gas attacks and bombings, and many had been detained and tortured. Maher lost several teeth to his jailor’s hammer.

But six months later, little has changed. The residents of Eastern Ghouta can speak freely now, but many cannot afford bread. They demand justice and a dignified standard of living, but they feel ignored. They are exhausted by poverty, and they have had enough of waiting.

However, if impatience turns into anger and anger grows into social unrest, experts say that this could unsettle Syria’s fragile security situation.

According to a recent report by the UN Development Programme, 90% of Syrians are living below the poverty line, earning less than $2.15 per day. Almost 14 million people, around two-thirds of the population, face “extreme food insecurity,” which means families face high levels of child malnutrition and go entire days without eating.

The lifting of US sanctions is expected to ease these conditions in the next six months to a year, but for the families left without their main breadwinner, they say an uplift in the economy alone will make little difference to their standard of living.

Clearing Assad's chemical weapons stockpile

The 2013 attack on Ghouta was the deadliest use of chemical weapons in the 21st century, and it was a night that Mohammed and Maher still find acutely painful to recall.

“I had my sons Ahmad and Abdulrahman with me,” Mohammed said between drags on a cigarette. “We were like sheep - not to offend, but we were like sheep. Packed together. Hundreds. 400, 500 people, hit with one strike.”

At the time, the targeted neighbourhoods were held by rebel groups - or thuwwar, revolutionaries, as they called themselves. It was bitterly contested territory during Syria’s civil war, then under siege by Bashar Al-Assad’s forces and Iran-backed militias.

Today, many of the survivors are still living with the chronic effects of sarin and the psychological impact of what they witnessed. “My daughter saw her mother die, saw her sisters die, but she survived. Now she has epilepsy. She’s 17 now, but the chemicals never left her system,” Maher said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a laminated card - a collage with a photo of his daughters, the three-starred flag of the Syrian revolution, and a still from a newsreel showing Maher carrying the limp bodies of his daughters shortly after the attack.

“The martyrs of the chemical attacks, Zamalka, 2013,” it reads. Maher carries the card with him everywhere.

The use of chemical weapons in Syria, prohibited under international law, was widely attributed to the Assad regime, which denied responsibility and accused rebel forces instead. In September 2013, Syria signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, which required the destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal.

Assad’s military went on undeterred, carrying out scores of chemical attacks that killed hundreds more.

The new transitional government has been cooperating with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to rid Syria of its remaining chemical weapons stockpile, but challenges remain.

After a visit by inspectors in March, the OPCW believes there may be more than 100 chemical weapons sites that remained undeclared by the previous authorities. Another issue hindering investigations was the barrage of Israeli airstrikes on military assets in Syria following Assad’s overthrow.

“What did we get?” Mohammed said. “They are getting rid of the chemical weapons - that’s not enough … what about the people who were hurt by chemical weapons? Germany is partly to blame. European countries are partly to blame for supplying chemical weapons to the Assad regime.”

His brother nodded in silent agreement. They were referring to reports that German companies sent chemicals to the Assad government that could have been used to manufacture sarin, despite EU restrictions in place at the time.

The barriers to justice

Federica D’Alessandra, a specialist in international law at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says that making progress towards transitional justice is not just necessary, but also urgent.

If victims feel their grievances are being ignored, this could fuel the kind of sectarian violence that has plagued Syria in recent months.

There are judicial proceedings underway, including 13 legal cases in the French courts on the use of chemical weapons, one of them against Assad himself. While these processes might be slow, Federica says that cases of chemical weapons use and torture are two of the easiest to prove.

“Judicial processes take time … they’re not what’s going to help victims feed their children today … Helping victims understand not just the complexities but how these processes work can be a public service,” D’Alessandra told The New Arab.

Syria faces a massive challenge in its pursuit of transitional justice and accountability. The crimes committed by the Assad family dynasty stretch back 54 years, and Syria’s legal system is still riddled with corruption and in need of profound reforms.

On 17 May, the interim government, under former rebel leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, established the National Commission for Transitional Justice. The commission’s role will be to investigate serious violations committed under the Assad regime and pursue accountability and reparations.

But concerns have been raised around the new government’s top-heavy approach, its lack of inclusivity of victims and civil society groups, and its exclusive focus on investigating the Assad regime.

If the scope of investigations is expanded to include other civil war groups, it could mean bringing forces aligned with the new government - and perhaps sitting officials - under the spotlight.

“Holding former regime officials accountable can be seen as a unifying element of a national reconciliation process, sort of turning a page. There might be more extremist factions that are willing to play along with the transitional justice process as long as it's focused on certain actors,” Federica said.

Adding complexity to what will be a tortuous process is the question of what justice looks like in reality. There are hundreds of thousands of victims of all kinds of international crimes who will have different expectations and demands.

For Joumana Seif, a Syrian lawyer and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, transitional justice should take a “holistic approach” that considers what victims need to regain some semblance of normal life, from rebuilding their homes to providing psychosocial support.

“Justice is not only accountability or the criminal part of the process … but also recognition, compensation, reparations, and [public] services,” Joumana told The New Arab from Damascus, where she is opening a human rights centre after years in exile.

She has been a vocal advocate for the Syria Victims Fund - an initiative aimed at compensating not just the survivors of chemical attacks, but also torture, rape, and the many other violations committed by the former Syrian government and other actors.

Joumana says that proceeds from monetary judgements linked to violations in Syria should go towards funding the initiative and hopes Western governments will contribute too. And, like most Syrians, she wants to see the frozen assets linked to Assad’s regime used for reparations.

For Mohammed and Maher, this would be a fitting retribution. Sarin asphyxiated ten members of the Hantush family on that August night. Mohammed lost his two sons, Abdulrahman and Ahmad.

Maher’s wife, Shadia, was killed, and so were two of his daughters, Rama and Lana. They were five and three years old. Their brother, Khaldun, was killed alongside his wife, Muna, his sons Mohammad and Ahmad, and daughter Suad.

“We want the international court to try the criminal who killed our children,” Mohammad said. “We are patient. But we’ve waited for years in ruins … We’ve waited 12 years for justice.”

Alex Martin Astley is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, foreign policy, and social justice issues

Follow him on X: @AlexMAstley