Zakaria Zakaria

1 month ago | washingtonpost.com | Zakaria Zakaria |Salwan Georges

FAHIL, Syria — As the pickup truck carrying the body of the dead general wound through this mountainside village, residents lined the roadside. No one dared lift a phone to record. Officials from Syria’s new government had decreed no videos, residents said. The deceased, an officer from the ousted regime of President Bashar al-Assad, had been killed along with 15 others as government forces swept through the community hunting for weapons and “remnants” of the old regime.

1 month ago | washingtonpost.com | Louisa Loveluck |Zakaria Zakaria

DAMASCUS, Syria — In the days after the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, rescue workers began to receive calls about the trail of bodies that his loyalists had left in people’s homes. For years, Syrians had stayed quiet about what they found upon returning to houses they had fled during the civil war’s worst years. So vengeful were the government security forces that residents worried they might meet the same fate as the abandoned skeletons if they reported them.