A year after the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, growing reports of vigilante violence in are both disturbing and confusing.
For example, in October, two men were shot dead in the Christian-majority village of Anaz in Homs province by assailants dressed in black, riding a motorcycle. Some commentators described the murders as motivated by sectarian hatred and blamed the new Syrian government. Others blamed remnants of the Assad regime, who want to inflame community tensions.
But further investigation later found that one of the dead men was known to be associated with an Assad-affiliated militia responsible for the deaths of as many as 700 people during the country’s 14-year civil war.
As Syrian publication Enad Baladi then reported, many of the young men in Anaz were on the Assad regime’s side in the war, while another nearby village, Qalaat, was on the side of Syria’s anti-government revolutionaries. It’s highly likely the double homicide was a targeted killing, motivated by revenge.
Vigilantism rising
It’s unlikely anybody will find out exactly what happened anytime soon. But one thing is clear — this is not the only such incident in Syria recently, nor will it be the last.
Vigilante violence in Syria is on the rise. Over the last two weeks of August, one observer estimated that 36% of over 70 violent deaths recorded were due to targeted killings, or vigilantism. This figure has recently been as high as 60%.
The vigilante killings are not like the in Syria, where hundreds died at once; they’re usually attacks directed at an individual.
“When it comes to true vigilante violence — what I would call violence that’s targeting regime collaborators, regime soldiers or anyone who was in the regime — this is trending up,” says Gregory Waters, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who’s traveled extensively in Syria and monitors events on his site, Syria Revisited.
“It varies week by week,” Waters told DW. “But it’s definitely getting worse and the lack of transitional justice is increasing the pressure,” Waters adds.
Since the ousting of the Assad regime in December 2024, the new, interim government has promised to bring the worst of those who worked with the regime to justice, including people who committed war crimes and human rights violations. Syria’s interim president, has met with community leaders, asking people to be patient, Waters says.
“But I’ve also heard people talking about those meetings, saying, ‘We had a million martyrs, a million homes destroyed, millions displaced. What are you asking us to be patient for? How long should we wait?’” Waters recounts.
The Syrian government has also offered amnesty to many who served in the Syrian army, saying only those with Syrian “blood on their hands” would face criminal retribution.
So far, efforts to arrest suspected regime criminals “have been inconsistent, opaque, and poorly communicated,” Waters wrote in a June briefing for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Those with high-ranking positions or linked to prominent massacres are kept in prison and their arrests widely publicized, but not all suspects are treated the same.
“Many former informants and lower-level personnel continue to walk the streets,” Waters explains. “Locals regularly report such criminals to the security forces, but oftentimes they are released after just a few days.”
On social media, inciting violence
Some Syrians want to expose those they think should be brought to justice. Waters points to an Arabic-language social media page that’s very popular because it posts pictures of people affiliated with the regime.
“They post pictures saying, ‘This guy was a regime soldier, now he’s free, and he’s from this village, so he’s probably there,’” Waters explains. “That could be viewed by some people as a call to violence.”
A deluge of makes the situation even worse, experts say.
Most of the victims of vigilante violence have been members of Syria’s Sunni majority. “Sunni [regime] collaborators are despised by their own communities, so it is easier to target them,” Waters explains. But if a member of a minority is attacked, there are always accusations of sectarianism, observers say — even if the victim is later found to have been involved in war crimes.
What can be done to stop vigilantism?
Currently, Syria’s interim government doesn’t appear to be doing much about vigilantism targeting those associated with the Assad regime. Whether that’s because it doesn’t want to or because it can’t due to insufficient resources is unclear.
Waters gives the example of a long-established vigilante group in Aleppo that assassinated Assad regime officers during the civil war and continues to do so.
“It’s a huge struggle for the government to go after this group; it is essentially an insurgent cell,” Waters explains. “Right now, they [the Aleppo group] are attacking ex-regime guys instead of the government forces. But if you arrested two or three of them, maybe they’d start attacking you.”
Instead, the government strategy seems to be to before the vigilantes get to them, Waters says.
Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. says he believes more public information about a government commission on transitional justice, announced in March 2025, could improve the situation.
“I’ve heard they’re doing a lot of good work behind the scenes, but they’re worried that talking about it more publicly might undermine it,” he told DW. “But I think being quiet may undermine trust and transparency since nobody has any idea of the timeline or how it’s all going to play out.”
The increase in vigilantism actually highlights how poorly the process is going, argues Mohammad al-Abdallah, director of the Washington-based Syrian Justice and Accountability Center.
“The authorities didn’t detain people complicit in violations and . People see them, and they think, ‘You detained my father or executed my brother, you killed my son.’ They end up ‘taking their rights by their own hands’ because they don’t have any further information on the state’s plan to hold these individuals accountable,” al-Abdallah told DW.
“It’s very chaotic, it’s causing fear, its causing displacement and it’s causing people to think about taking justice into their own hands,” he added.
Edited by Sean Sinico
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