From Christmas trees being toppled by Syria’s transitional government, to local women sold as slaves by terrorist “head choppers”, to reports about a leading Syrian rebel leader being secretly Jewish: Misinformation and disinformation about since the ousting of the authoritarian Assad regime has run from ridiculous to horrific, and there’s more around than ever.
“It has markedly increased since the fall of the Assad regime,” confirms Zouhir al-Shimale, a researcher and communications manager for Syrian fact-checking organization, Verify-Sy. “Years of revolution, then civil war, have left behind deeply entrenched grievances, and various factions — both local and international — are now leveraging disinformation to strengthen their positions, delegitimize rivals, and further their own agendas,” he told DW.
In early December, an offensive led by the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, toppled the brutal, dictatorial regime of the Assad family, which had controlled Syria for 54 years. HTS were previously affiliated with extremist organizations like Al Qaeda and the — although over recent years, from these groups.
Still, many ordinary Syrians were concerned about how the HTS-led rebels would behave, whether they would seek revenge or try to impose their brand of Islamist politics on others in the country who have different beliefs.
In particular, groups seen to support the Assad regime — such as Syria’s Alawites, the religious minority the Assad family belonged to — were worried Assad’s opponents would now take revenge on them.
So far at least, even as security remains a significant concern for civilians, there seem to have been comparatively few verified cases of vigilante justice or religious persecution
And in fact, that number is dwarfed by alleged and unverified instances of abuse seen online, the majority of which are misleading or fake, various fact-checking organizations suggest.
For example, as fact-checking group Misbar reported, Christmas trees were not removed last week by the new Syrian government but by authorities in the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala in 2023. And posts about female slave markets in Syria came from a 2013 project by a Kurdish artist, Misbar found.
Who is responsible?
Partially or completely untrue social media posts likely originate from a variety of sources. There are so many interests with a stake in Syria and such a large amount of misinformation, it would be hard to easily trace anything back to one actor. This is also due to overlapping interests and unrelated bad actors amplifying one another’s fake news.
Firstly, Syrians are likely publishing false posts on social media either accidentally because they believe them to be true and don’t have tools to verify them, or because of their own personal agendas or concerns.
The Assad regime “enforced something akin to an information ‘iron dome’,” al-Shimale from Verify-Sy explained. It “dominated the information landscape in Syria and has fed Syrians propaganda and fake news about the opposition since day one in 2011.” The end of the Assad regime has resulted in an information vacuum for those who may have considered Assad-controlled media outlets a trusted source, he notes.
Additionally, as Rana Ali Adeeb, a scholar at Canada’s Concordia University who researches how emotion shapes perceptions of fake news, wrote in an op-ed last month, there’s still a lot of uncertainty and fear in Syria. “The emotional contagion of fake news is especially dangerous in fragile times like these,” she pointed out.
All this makes ordinary people “far more vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation, something Assad supporters, Iran and Russia know and are exploiting,” al-Shimale told DW.
International interference
Over the 13 years of Syria’s civil war, several other states positioned themselves as for or against the Assad regime. Researchers already know that Assad’s staunchest allies, Russia and , supported or ran disinformation campaigns targeting the Syrian opposition. Now, they suggest, those international actors are again playing a similar role.
“The Russian and Iranian information manipulation apparats have been operating at full capacity,” Marcos Sebares Jimenez-Blanco, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, wrote in a mid-December briefing. “[They are] seeking to shape the narrative surrounding developments in Syria to compensate for their military, strategic and geopolitical defeats.”
Verify-Sy’s al-Shimale has previously pointed to a number of inauthentic Facebook pages launched in December with names that resemble groups monitoring human rights. However the accounts focus mostly on the Alawite community. By posting disinformation and using mechanized, fake accounts or “bots” to amplify disinformation, these fake pages frighten Alawites, then advocate they take up armed resistance, he explained.
Dangerous alignment
What makes the current flood of disinformation about Syria all the more worrying is the convergence of different agendas and opinions.
Those who support the Syrian Kurdish groups in northern Syria and advocate for their independence, are more likely to view HTS with suspicion and fear. So are locals who support a secular Syria, or are part of a Syrian minority.
Meanwhile Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, right-wingers in the US and Europe also amplify posts that crudely identify HTS as “head choppers” and Syria as “Jihadistan.” At the same time, conspiracy theorists outside Syria have speculated (incorrectly) that HTS is simply a puppet for the US or Israeli governments.
There are some outliers — for instance, agitating against Syrian Kurds. But most of the opinions that result from misleading social media reports tend to align against the Syrian rebels currently leading the transitional government.
Disturbing the peace
Disinformation has already had impact inside Syria, For example, last week a video showing an apparent revenge act — the desecration of an Alawite shrine — caused thousands of people in to protest. Later, fact checkers discovered the video was misleading.
Disinformation can also have an impact on how sees and supports Syria, al-Shimale suggested. “It could shape external perceptions of Syria as a nation incapable of stabilizing itself post-Assad.”
“This is a fragile moment for Syria, and for all of us witnessing its unfolding history,” Ali Adeeb argued in her op-ed. “The stakes are extraordinarily high. As the situation in Syria evolves, every piece of information carries the potential to shape opinions, influence decisions and spark actions.”
Edited by: Matt Pearson
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