HAMA, Syria — For over four decades, the Assad family ensured that the atrocities committed here remained unspoken—killing tens of thousands of Hama residents during a brutal month-long siege, then silencing those who survived.
Few in this western Syrian city ever dared to recount how, in February 1982, they watched through their curtains as soldiers separated men from women for execution. Many tried to forget the packs of dogs that roamed the streets, tearing apart the bodies long after the violence had ended.
It was in Hama that Hafez al-Assad, father of the now-deposed president Bashar al-Assad, solidified the family’s brutal rule by crushing an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood. This month, however, the family’s decades-long reign and the silence they imposed on the city collapsed in just a few days.
Rebel forces, who had waged a years-long war against the Syrian government, launched a swift offensive from their northern stronghold, overwhelming a demoralized army and seizing power in Damascus as the president fled to Russia.
On a pine-covered hilltop near Hama, where government troops lost their final battle to Islamist rebels, dugouts were scattered with green fatigues and the food the soldiers had carried to the front. Their bodies lay twisted in the grass where they had fallen.
In the city below, residents were still coming to terms with the abrupt end of a chapter they had long feared would never close. Estimates of those killed during the 1982 military offensive range from 10,000 to 40,000, with the majority being civilians.
The immense scale of the loss was compounded by the hidden trauma that deeply wounded the spirit of Hama, according to residents.
In many ways, Hafez al-Assad’s brutal crackdown in Hama served as the blueprint for his son’s response to anti-government protests in 2011, which ultimately plunged the country into civil war. While most Syrians never learned the full details of what happened in Hama, they understood that the city had become synonymous with massacre—a stark reminder that death or imprisonment awaited those who dared to dissent.
Before the infamous horrors of Sednaya prison, there was Tadmour, where men from Hama were imprisoned and executed. One former inmate, a poet, later described it as a “kingdom of death and madness.”
Mayssa Zaloukh was born in 1982, during the government siege. Her father, once known for his warmth and sociability, had become a shadow of his former self, her aunt recalled. The man who raised her had no friends—those he had grown up with were either killed or disappeared. “He was so fearful that he didn’t trust anyone,” Zaloukh said.
The first time Mayssa Zaloukh saw her father cry was on December 5, when rebels entered the city, and he finally realized that the regime was on the brink of collapse.
“It was unbelievable—he was so happy,” Zaloukh recalled. “He said he had always thought there were only seven wonders in the world, but now this was the eighth.”
On a nearby park bench, Hamed Shaaban, 54, and his friend Hassan exchanged a look and laughed when asked about the first time they had spoken openly about the crackdown 42 years ago.
“Right now,” they both replied.
From their vantage point, they could see the public square that had been filled with demonstrators in 2011, dancing, chanting, and calling for political change. Security forces opened fire on the crowd, then set up “investigation committees” to arrest an expanding group of civilians accused of involvement in the protests, whether real or imagined.
“I just watched from afar back then,” Shaaban said. “We knew the cost of rising up, and we were too scared.”
In the Kilaniya neighborhood, just across the river from the city’s iconic water wheels, passersby paused to listen as their neighbors began to open up, sharing the memories they had kept hidden for so many years.
In 1982, a 12,000-strong force led by Rifaat al-Assad, Hafez’s youngest brother, descended on Hama, shelling entire districts into rubble. With the city under siege, escape was impossible. Then came the “cleansing” operations, according to residents.
One man gestured to the empty space where his family home had once stood, recalling how gunmen went from house to house. Another pointed to a rooftop, describing how a young child had been shot while crying for food.
“It’s hard to believe this is happening, to be honest,” said one man, still too frightened to reveal his name. “We never imagined it. We thought they had built a regime that would last forever.”
Even within families, discussing the killings was so dangerous that most parents warned their children to never speak of them.
So when Abdelaziz Shamah, 57, began photographing the city’s rebuilt neighborhoods in 2011, he used a pseudonym to post them on social media. Over time, he said, he grew bolder and started interviewing residents about what they had witnessed.
On December 14, after Assad was gone, Shamah posted a video featuring his mother-in-law, Fatma Mahmoud Mantash, who was finally able to share her full story.
“She used to start speaking, but she couldn’t continue,” Shamah said. “She couldn’t finish.”
Fatma recalled how soldiers came to her home, taking two of her sons and one of her daughters. They beat the remaining family members and ransacked the house, stealing money before leaving. She never heard from her missing children again. In her pain, she sought solace by sitting with other women from the city who shared her suffering. When she prayed, she didn’t know whether to ask for her children’s safe return or for their souls to rest in peace.
“I used to cry every night and day,” she said. “I wish I could still see them. Even if they’re dead. I want to see them dead.”
Shamah then spoke directly to the camera. “To all the mothers who saw their boys taken, even though they had no weapons,” he said. “They weren’t terrorists, they were people of the Sham,” referring to the Arabic term for greater Syria.
“We want to share these stories. Everyone here has a story,” he continued.
Many of those who were adults during the regime’s assault on Hama in 1982 are no longer alive. Shamah’s aunt, whose husband Mohammed and six sons were executed, has developed Alzheimer’s. “She has good days and bad days,” he said.
When reporters visited her family home this week, 88-year-old Amina Baradeh lay in bed, wrapped in thick blankets to ward off the winter chill. Syria’s electricity grid was crippled by decades of corruption, war, and economic collapse, but in Baradeh’s mind, it was still the 1980s.
She often mistook the sound of the front door opening for the return of her youngest son, Mokhlis, who was 11 at the time. “Where are they?” she would cry out for her boys at night. “Why won’t they come home?”
Shamah gently approached her bed and leaned down to kiss her cheek. She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. “It’s okay,” he whispered repeatedly, “it’s okay.”