The death of young Mohammad Ghamira in custody sent shockwaves through Syrian society, reigniting fierce debates over physical abuse and mistreatment inside detention facilities. Although dozens of similar fatal cases preceded his—and countless others involved severe beatings that stopped short of murder—Ghamira’s death rapidly evolved into a major public issue, a “trending topic” in contemporary terms.
Government officials responded with emphatic condemnation, vowing accountability and insisting that such brutality is wholly alien to the ethos of the “New Syria.” Yet this official narrative warrants careful scrutiny. To any objective observer, these practices are anything but foreign to the realities of Syria today.
Violence has long been woven into the fabric of Syrian public life. It intensified under Hafez al-Assad’s iron-fisted rule and persisted throughout the uprising against his son, Bashar. The Assad regime deployed every conceivable form of torture and abuse—whether in Tadmur and Sednaya prisons, inside security branches, at checkpoints, or during military raids on civilian neighborhoods.
The well-known warning that “he who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster” has been repeated endlessly over the past fifteen years, yet it appears to have gone largely unheeded. The archetype of the security officer exerted a corrosive influence, pulling many former victims into becoming victimizers themselves, though to varying degrees.
A similar scandal shook Idlib’s mini-state in early 2024, when the family and faction of young Abdul Qader al-Hakim (Abu Ubaida) discovered he had been tortured to death in prisons run by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The incident sparked widespread protests that directly threatened the authority of HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (Ahmed al-Sharaa) and his chief security officer, Abu Ahmad Hudud (Anas Khattab).
Conditions in northern Aleppo were no better, even if less organized. Factions nominally operating under an Interim Government—with a Ministry of Defense that theoretically oversaw the Syrian National Army—ran private prisons where detainees endured severe abuse upon entry and systematic extortion upon release.
Recalling this past is essential precisely because it has not ended. The former General Security service remains the backbone of both the Interior Ministry and the intelligence apparatus in the new era. It continues to control key levers of policing and security, despite a massive influx of new recruits whose rapid training programs and underlying instructional philosophy remain opaque. Few appear to have absorbed the bureaucratic “Code of Conduct” published late last year. Plans for the “Moral Guidance Directorate,” intended to operate across Interior and Defense branches, remain incomplete. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry’s stated ambition to establish structured human-rights training for its personnel has stalled before implementation.
These shortcomings expose a deeper structural contradiction within the armed forces. Their history is marred by grave violations, and their recent past is similarly stained by abuses committed under tacit approval or deliberate neglect. After an initial period of commendable discipline following the fall of the regime—a period that helped facilitate the transition—acts once dismissed as “individual transgressions” escalated into collective abuses carried out by organized groups. Humiliation evolved from verbal insults to the notorious use of scissors to forcibly shave detainees’ heads, a practice many perpetrators boasted about openly.
The state has placed its security personnel in a paradox that defies resolution. It demands a force capable of ruthless action in the Coastal region and Suwayda, yet restrained in Damascus; a force that can be unleashed at will, yet instantly conform to the standards of “New Syria” when ordered. This deliberate ambiguity has left much of the government’s base in a state of confusion. The administration praises tribal mobilizations one day, then forms committees to investigate their violations the next, ultimately detaining individuals who became infamous through viral photos and recordings. It expects human-rights compliance from forces mobilized under raw sectarian or tribal slogans. Even when accountability measures are largely symbolic, their mere existence sends contradictory signals to loyalists.
On a deeper political level, a broad Sunni Arab majority continues to experience a lingering euphoria born of a sustained sense of victory. With regional extensions into Lebanon, Iraq, and beyond, the symbolic horizon for this group evokes a softened restoration of the Saddam Hussein era—cleaner, milder, and less destructive under today’s geopolitical constraints. In a political landscape dominated by strongman dynamics, it is taken for granted that the scene will be populated by “tough men” who rough up detainees, and detainees who are expected to be “manly” enough to endure a slap without complaint.
Like many developments in the “New Syria,” the country is being governed through two fundamentally incompatible playbooks. One is rooted in hyper-masculinity, populist harshness, and disdain for modern norms; the other in formal commitments to international treaties, obligations to Western powers, and diplomatic polish. These contradictions cannot be dismissed as mere hypocrisy, as simplistic analyses often suggest—reducing the situation either to opportunistic rule, according to critics, or clever maneuvering, according to supporters. Both camps assume the regime operates according to a fixed, inherited genetic code, knowing precisely what it wants and what step it will take next. In reality, that assumption may be entirely unfounded.
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.
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