The Syrian neighborhood is at the heart of Assad’s killing machine

In solidarity, children know the difference between a human jaw and a dog jaw.

They are so accustomed to the decaying remains of living in this desolate suburb of Damascus that the boys wander around with skulls and broken femurs.

Once a rebel stronghold, Tadamon was turned into an industrial killing field by militias loyal to Bashar al-Assad during the 13-year Syrian civil war. Large swaths of the area were reduced to rubble, and it was the site of a notorious massacre by regime loyalists in 2013 before government forces recaptured it five years later.

It has remained a barren wasteland ever since, a reflection of Assad’s policy of mercilessly punishing those who stood against him: a sea of ​​rubbish and human body parts; An ash purgatory redolent of the spirits of the unknown dead.

The Financial Times found human bones scattered across piles of rubble and decomposing, blood-stained clothes in the hollowed-out buildings. In one of the basements, there were several gallows made of frayed ropes hanging from the rafters. Elsewhere, the smell of death wafts from a pile of unidentified bodies.

This is the result of what residents and human rights groups have described as years of unrestrained atrocities committed by pro-Assad forces, including sieges, slaughter, torture and brutal sexual violence. Until last Sunday, the neighborhood was under the control of the National Defense Forces, a pro-Assad militia that has terrorized residents into surrender.

“Everywhere we stand, we are probably standing on dead bodies,” a 10-year-old boy told the Financial Times. He recalled how a few days ago he discovered a decomposed hand sticking out of a pile of rubble. He and his friends covered it with a pile of dirt.

The neighborhood is home to an unknown number of hastily dug mass graves, some of the worst examples of Assad’s industrial violence exposed since his regime was overthrown by rebels this month. While human rights groups and anti-Assad activists have documented individual atrocities that occurred here, the staggering number of human remains has led many to believe that only a fraction of what happened is known.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Syria since 2011, when Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters led to a full-scale civil war. Extrajudicial killings, mass executions and enforced disappearances were constant features of Assad’s rule and that of his father Hafez, who ruled from 1970 until his death in 2000.

What happens next in neighborhoods like Tadamon will be a test for Syria’s new rulers. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the most powerful opposition faction supporting the country’s interim government, pledged to be a unified force. However, the 13-year conflict has eroded Syria’s social fabric, leaving many demanding revenge.

Solidarity has become synonymous with the regime’s bloodshed since a video emerged in 2022 showing evidence of mass killing in 2013. In the video, a man in military fatigues was shown leading unarmed and blindfolded men towards a large trench in the middle of a ditch. A narrow street and shooting them from close range when they approached the edge or after they fell into it.

He was later identified as National Defense Forces member Amjad Yousef, and the location was confirmed by Human Rights Watch researchers, who matched satellite images to the scene in the video. A forensic examination of the site has not yet been conducted, but the group has already found evidence of war crimes.

Heba Ziyadin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the group “did not expect to find human remains scattered over an area much larger than the neighborhood.” “A lot has happened in Solidarity,” she said.

The open-air mass grave remains clearly visible, although it is unclear whether regime forces exhumed the bodies to hide their crimes. Until this week, most residents stayed away, terrified of the narrow alleyway where some of their worst memories were formed.

Residents said the atrocities in this alley and nearby piles of rubble continued for years. They recall regularly seeing pro-Assad militias bringing men into the area, sometimes blindfolded and covered in blood. They often heard the slow, incomparable sound of single gunshots, followed by the crash of bodies falling to the ground.

“Sometimes they were boys from the neighborhood – revolutionaries who rose up against Assad,” one resident said, describing how his two sons were killed by NDF soldiers in this way. “But sometimes we didn’t know who they were and they were brought here just to die,” he said, still too afraid of retaliation to use his name.

He described how the sounds of shots rang out from the neighborhood night after night, between 2013 and 2018. Residents also took the Financial Times to the basement of a mosque, where they said militia leaders would bring the women they had kidnapped from the neighborhood, then rape and kill them.

Solidarity is one example of the pattern of fear and repression that characterized life under the NDF.

One resident said: “The men who ruled here would rape the women in front of their husbands and then shoot the husband.” Another described how “no one dares to speak out when they are around – they will threaten you, beat you, burn your house, kidnap your children or kill you.”

The names of NDF commanders continue to strike fear into the hearts of Tadamon residents, demonstrating how the militias have been empowered to create terror under Assad’s rule. The children talked about how one of the commanders would regularly shoot at them, making their legs dance erratically to avoid his darting bullets.

It appears that the neighborhood was used as a dumping ground for bodies of unknown origin, who were killed there or elsewhere. Young men and boys are often gathered at gunpoint to come and dig trenches to throw the bodies into. One man spoke of his inability to forgive himself for his involvement in digging the graves of young revolutionaries.

Sometimes, bodies are removed for reasons residents cannot understand.

Salah (59 years old), a former ambulance driver in the Damascus Health Directorate, remembers how they received orders to send to Tadamon in 2018 to pick up bodies, load them into ambulances, and deposit them in the morgue of Al-Mujtahid Governmental Hospital in the capital.

He said his instructions came shortly after an agreement was reached that year between the rebels and Assad’s government to evacuate the rebels and their families from Tadamon to opposition-controlled Idlib in northwestern Syria, and return the neighborhood to regime control.

Some residents suspect that the regime is trying to remove evidence of its crimes. Salah added that the bodies were women and children. Most were completely burned, and some were wrapped in black body bags.

He and his comrades kept their eyes glued to the ground, avoiding the wrath of the soldiers who kept their rifles trained on them. “One driver was saying that the bodies didn’t fit in the car, so he was told: ‘They fit, or I will fit them (your body)’.”

“After the fourth or fifth time, I swore I would never work in health care again,” Salah said.

With the fall of the regime, a handful of thousands who were displaced from Tadamon as part of the 2018 agreement began to return to see what had happened in their neighborhood.

In doing so, some discovered that the National Defense Forces had confiscated their homes, or sold or rented them to others. Quarrels broke out between the two families who claimed ownership of the same house, a sign of impending trouble.

Many in solidarity now hope for revenge. Residents spoke of a local NDF commander, Abu Montaser, who was reportedly captured by rebels while trying to flee on the eve of Assad’s fall.

The Financial Times was unable to confirm whether he is now being held by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. But for several days after rumors of his “arrest,” Tadamon residents ran to a nearby public square, expecting to see Abu Mujib publicly executed. He never came.