The 10th annual report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) makes for some grim reading. Released over the weekend to mark the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, it lays out in stark, clinical language the top 10 methods used by the Syrian government and other allied and rival factions in the decade-long civil war to torture prisoners and political detainees.
One segment, describing the falqa – a rod whose name is synonymous with corporal punishment in the Arab world for an older generation – reads like a paper describing a scientific experiment or a clinical trial.
The description is appropriate because the Syrian government has turned torture into a science. The report details only the most frequently used torture methods, including electrocution, the tyre (where a person is shoved into a vehicle tyre and beaten), solitary confinement, starvation, exhaustion (through a combination of little to no food and forced labour), the shabeh (hanging from the ceiling by the wrists or feet), beatings, flogging, and forcing detainees to listen to the torture of other prisoners. But more than 70 different forms of torture have been documented through the testimony of survivors and families of victims in Syria, a grim innovative approach to savagery. Ironically, they have been so effective at torture that opposition and extremist groups that operate in Syria and have tortured detainees, albeit at a much smaller scale, have replicated Syrian regime methods.
The report’s figures are also sobering – SNHR has documented the names and identities of at least 14,537 individuals who died under torture between March 2011, when the uprising in Syria broke out, and June 2021, including 180 children and 92 women, the vast majority of whom died in Syrian government custody.
These figures are also great underestimates, partly because SNHR is conservative in its figures. There are tens of thousands of prisoners within the Syrian government’s network of prisons in the various security and intelligence branches at any one time, and a significant portion of the populace has gone through the system. It can be difficult to confirm the cause of death of detainees even though it is almost certainly a result of torture or deliberate medical negligence because the government rarely surrenders the body to the family. It can even take years and tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to even determine the fate of a missing loved one, another cruelty of a system that pays no heed to the value of human life.
The extent of the torture used in Syria negates all doubts that it is systematic. It is industrial in scale, hardly even the province of one central branch or agency, and it is impossible to contemplate its existence and the extent of its depravity and not come to the conclusion that it is part of a deliberate strategy to crush a people’s spirit. Syrian law also protects its perpetrators, by specifically shielding members of the security apparatus from any form of prosecution or accountability for crimes committed by its cadres while discharging their “duties".
Torture is an essential part of the Assad regime's being. Cruelty and viciousness are in its DNA
Two particular aspects of the report stood out to me, however. The first is the horror of the photographs that accompanied some of the case studies. These are not particularly grisly or violent photographs – unlike the famous Caesar cache of photos smuggled out of the country by a defected military photographer, they mostly don’t show the twisted visages of dead detainees whose bodies are lined up en masse. Instead, they are side-by-side photos of detainees, before and after they were released. Often they are emaciated, their full smiles and bodies turned into husks and brittle, thinned out limbs by the years of torture and deprivation, and even in the photos it looks like their eyes have darkened, a spark that once existed having been burned out.
The other aspect of the report were the little details that came through in individual stories of victims and their families. In one, the report recounts how a mother was finally allowed to visit her son in the notorious Sednaya Prison, where she noticed that his nails had been pulled out. She was not allowed to see him again, only to find out he had died in detention. Somehow, the prospect of hope and it being taken away again feels like a different level of cruelty.
An accounting of the torture methods employed by a brutal totalitarian regime feels like a futile exercise, given 10 years of war and atrocities did little to spark action.
But it is worth considering and contemplating – as the war fades into memory and realpolitik takes hold, with the regime’s survival ensured – that this is what it is. That torture is an essential part of its being. That cruelty and viciousness is in its DNA.
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Best thing about your job: Getting to help people. My mum always told me never to pass up an opportunity to do a good deed.
Best part of life in the UAE: The weather. The constant sunshine is amazing and there is always something to do, you have so many options when it comes to how to spend your day.
Favourite holiday destination: Malaysia. I went there for my honeymoon and ended up volunteering to teach local children for a few hours each day. It is such a special place and I plan to retire there one day.
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The 12 Syrian entities delisted by UK
Ministry of Interior
Ministry of Defence
General Intelligence Directorate
Air Force Intelligence Agency
Political Security Directorate
Syrian National Security Bureau
Military Intelligence Directorate
Army Supply Bureau
General Organisation of Radio and TV
Al Watan newspaper
Cham Press TV
Sama TV
The Word for Woman is Wilderness
Abi Andrews, Serpent’s Tail
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Classification of skills
A worker is categorised as skilled by the MOHRE based on nine levels given in the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) issued by the International Labour Organisation.
A skilled worker would be someone at a professional level (levels 1 – 5) which includes managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals, clerical support workers, and service and sales workers.
The worker must also have an attested educational certificate higher than secondary or an equivalent certification, and earn a monthly salary of at least Dh4,000.
