Mass graves: revealing Syria’s horror

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The Economist. Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

And I'm Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

After a tumultuous couple of weeks, France now has a new prime minister and an emergency budget. What it doesn't have is any certainty that a stable government can be cobbled together or that the prime ministerial merry-go-round will stop.

And I bet you're hoping that you'll actually have a bit of downtime in the next few weeks. Well, if so, we've got plans for you. Let our culture team be your guide to the best films of 2024.

But first, so what we have is this huge walled compound, and the road leading directly to it was blocked with dirt. And then we get to it and every entrance is blocked with dirt.

Gareth Brown has been in Syria since the Assad regime fell 10 days ago.

Yesterday I traveled just north of Damascus, about 20 miles to the town of Al-Qateifa, and we'd heard rumors and reports that there was a mass grave in this town. This one's open. You know, since the Assad regime fell a week and a half ago, its soldiers, its forces have abandoned positions across the country. And so we went to this site which we understood could be a mass grave, and when we got there, there was really very little there other than two stray dogs and an abandoned officer's quarters where clearly some soldiers had left in quite a hurry.

Just a dog.

Hello.

It's a walled compound on the outskirts of the town, probably the size of 2 or 3 football fields. This feels really eerie. And it's a wasteland, you know, there's gravel, there's some weeds. Oh, there's another dog. And there are these electricity pylons literally running through it, you know, so it was eerily silent and all I could hear was the buzz of the electricity pylons, and these two stray dogs sort of running around barking and playing.

And do you know exactly what this place was, Gareth?

So several years ago, human rights organizations used satellite imagery to identify this compound as the site of a possible mass grave, and locals believe it is probably the biggest mass grave in Syria. I mean, some of the figures you hear them talking about The number of bodies that have been buried there likely go well into the thousands, tens of thousands. Some even say there are over 100,000 people buried there. And this is the perfect place. Al-Qateifa, this town, was a garrison town. This town had a huge military presence, and for over a decade, people were petrified to speak out. You know, if you stopped your car in the wrong place in this town under Assad, You'd be arrested, you'd be thrown in jail, you could well end up in this mass grave. And so, being there yesterday, you know, for the first time, people are discovering this ability to speak out and tell their stories, and it seemed that everyone in the town had an idea of what was going on, but no one had the ability or the power to do anything about it.

And did they say who those people were in the grave?

We don't know. There are some lists which have circulated, but the local officials we spoke to who are still there says there's no record of who or how many people have been buried there. But what we did hear from people living in the town is that a lot of these were political prisoners who came from places like Saydnaya, which I visited last week. So these are Assad's dungeons. These are places where he kept dissidents, political prisoners. And you know, when the Syrian revolution started in 2011 and then eventually turned into a civil war, Assad's repression grew significantly. He became a far more brutal dictator as the civil war went on. So he was arresting more people, his security forces were torturing more people, and more people were dying. And they were literally running out of space in the regular cemeteries. And so that prompted the construction of mass grave sites like the one in al-Qata'if that I visited.

So what else did you see there, Gareth?

What you notice is as you approach the compound, the road leading to it has been blocked with dirt, and all of the entrances have also been blocked with piles of dirt. Now. We were told that the locals did that in order to protect the site, you know, for potential evidence. But one of the doors had been sort of jarred open, and we went in. And you go in, and there were 4 Russian military satellite trucks, which we understood were being used to jam radar signals to make it harder to understand or, or find out what was going on in there. And it's just a sparse wasteland You know, you look in the offices, it's a very small room where obviously there were some guards staying there. They clearly left in a hurry. There was some military uniforms sort of strewn on the floor. But the most striking thing in there was these Russian-made radar trucks. And I had a look in, and again, clearly they'd left in a hurry. What we were told by people in the town was that this site was abandoned. On the Sunday, that's the day that Assad fell, just in a matter of hours, this site which held some of the regime's deepest, darkest secrets was just left.

When you went to Sadnaya Prison, as you talked about on the show last week, you also talked about Syrians trying to find their relatives, looking for signs. Did you see that yesterday as well?

When we got to the site, we found a man who was there looking for his uncle. One of your relatives was here?

Yes.

His uncle. How do you know he's here? He was here. And his uncle had been disappeared since 2015. And he looked everywhere in the last week and a half, and he'd found his uncle's name online on a list of people who were possibly buried in this site. But he told us, and he was very emotional, he'd had no luck finding it. It's not just a case of going there and digging and looking for bodies, you know. It's just too big. Exhumation here needs to be done on an industrial scale, and there's so much chaos in the country. You have this rebel faction trying to establish a government, some people trying to return, some people trying to leave. There's still sporadic incidents of violence. In certain parts, and they just haven't got around to this yet, beginning to exhume these mass graves. So perhaps there are answers. As you said, when I was at Saydnaya prison last week, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people there desperately looking for answers. And a few people have limped out of those prisons alive, and there have been euphoric scenes because many people who go into those prisons don't come out. But I think as those prisons have all pretty much been emptied now, for the family members of over 100,000 people in Syria who are still missing, their final hope for answers and for closure is probably in these mass graves.

Gareth, you're talking about horrific scenes, giant mass graves. How did this actually operate?

So from speaking to people, witnesses, people who live very close to the compound and in the town, and people who were in the municipality, working in the municipality, it was quite a set structure. And they described how in the early hours of the morning, soldiers would come in earth movers and diggers, and they'd dig the graves. And then a few hours later, refrigerator trucks full of bodies would arrive. You know, nobody really knew where these refrigerator trucks were coming, and there could be 20 or 30 bodies in each truck. And so the bodies would be dumped in the pit, and then the earth movers would come back and they would fill the graves in. What we also heard was that initially The graves were dug at a shallow depth of maybe a metre, and that was problematic because, one, it didn't fully hide the smell of the decomposing bodies, but it also meant that animals would dig and retrieve bones and body parts. So, you know, at a later date, the army had to come back and they had to re-dig the graves. They had to dig them deeper to a depth of 3 or 4 meters.

You know, I spoke to a farmer who—

his farm is less than 200 meters away from this building. He described this stench of decomposing bodies just washing over the whole place, the whole town.

And who did the local people say was responsible for this?

Locals said that Assad regime military officials in the area were responsible for administering the mass grave. And there was one name in particular that kept coming up. We were told it by a former mayor, we were told it by the farmers, we were told it by people in the town. And we're not going to reveal that name for legal reasons, but we looked into the name and we found a profile of this individual. Online, and in that profile there was a phone number. So we called the phone number. Um, he asked, who is this? We said, we're journalists with The Economist. And he gave his name as Walid Abdullah. Although he changed that and gave another name a little bit later. We ended the phone call very abruptly, and we can't say for sure, but I suspect this was the man we were looking for. That was him. Yeah, I know.

He's misleading us.

Yeah, he was lying. I will stress that we were given this name by locals, and we checked it with Syrian opposition organizations and NGOs, and they confirmed that this man was responsible for al-Qutaifa. He was responsible for what was going on in the area. And I think this leads to a wider issue. We know Assad has fled to Moscow, and many of his aides, his closest associates, have left the country. But it's believed that there is still a great number of people from his regime and responsible for the crimes of his regime in Syria. They're hiding out, and Syrians have a thirst for justice. They want to see justice served against these people.

Gareth, you've been in Syria since Assad fell 10 days ago. You've seen scenes of extraordinary jubilation, but you've also seen these horrific scenes in the prison and in this terrible sight of this huge grave. What's it like in Syria now, just a few days after Assad fell?

There's a nervous energy. I think people are elated that the past is over. 50 years of fear is no more. But with that comes a lot of trepidation because Frankly, Syrians don't know what to expect next. Nobody really knows what this new government, this new regime is going to look like. And if you speak to minorities in particular, there are fears. Syria is just coming to terms with the trauma that it's been through over the last 50 years. The reality of Assad's brutal regime is coming to light, and that's coming out of places like Saydnaya. Places like al-Qutayfah. But still, we know only a small amount of what he's really done. And I think more than anything, more than wanting a particular style of government or democracy, a lot of Syrians want answers and they want a better future.

Gareth, incredible reporting. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me on.

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France's political turmoil didn't start two weeks ago. That's just when it got serious. Prime Minister Michel Barnier tried a bit of constitutional acrobatics to push his budget through Parliament without a vote. Parliament then voted to sack him. When we talked about it last, the questions were how long it would take President Emmanuel Macron to find a replacement and whether that replacement would have any chance at forming a stable government. The answer to the first question: a little over a week. François Bayrou is a 3-time presidential candidate for Mr. Macron's centrist alliance. The answer to that second question, though, well, it doesn't look good.

François Bayrou has taken office, so France has a prime minister, which is a first step.

Sophie Petter is The Economist's Paris bureau chief.

France still does not have a government and does not have anything like the beginnings of a proper new budget for 2025. But what has happened is that Parliament has voted to roll over into next year the budget for 2024. It's a sort of an emergency way of making sure that benefits keep getting paid, civil servants get their salaries, pensioners get their pensions, and the state ticks over. But Bayrou needs to get a government if he's going to start preparing the budget for next year.

Before we get into the politics part here specifically, tell me about Mr. Bayrou. What kind of politician is he?

Well, he's a very familiar figure in France. You know, he's been in politics for the better part of half a century. He's 73 years old. He's a part-time farmer, and he's the mayor of Pau, which is a town at the foot of the Pyrenees. His politics are very much in the center, but they sort of veer between center-left, center-right, depending on the mood and the presidential election. He has in the past served as an education minister in various conservative governments, but he also famously backed François Hollande in 2012 for the presidential election, which was much to the irritation of the conservative candidate that year, who was Nicolas Sarkozy. So centrism is his politics in a way. You could say he was sort of centrist before Macron. And in 2017, he gave up his own candidacy. He was running for president in order to back Emmanuel Macron. So in that respect, he really was a key figure who swung behind Macron in the early days when nobody else really believed in him.

And what about outside the political center, though? What do the rest of France's parties make of his appointment?

Well, it's a complicated picture. We have this lower house of parliament in France which is divided into three hostile blocks. On the left, it looks as if there are two views. On the far left, the parties are very clear: they will vote a motion of no confidence immediately. But the Socialist Party has been a little bit warmer. They have taken part in conversations with Biru, and they are waiting to see what he really wants to do as a project before judging whether they can support the government. They won't take part in it, but they might be a sort of silent, tacit backer in Parliament if they get the sorts of concessions they want. On the far right, Marine Le Pen has again taken part in talks. She doesn't say that she will automatically vote no confidence. In fact, she said that the talks went fairly well with François Bayrou. She was the very first person to be invited in because her party, very narrowly defined, is the biggest in Parliament. So I think we're in a very sort of fluid situation where it is going to still be incredibly difficult for Bayrou to form anything that looks close to a majority government. I don't think that's possible at all. But it's a question of how much the other parties are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and potentially not vote him out right away. That's probably the minimum he's looking for at this point.

You say it's going to be hard for him to form a government. I mean, what's in the playbook? What should he do? What will he be forced to do?

Well, the first thing at the top of François Bayrou's list is the drafting of a new budget. The budget that Michel Barnier, his predecessor, had put to Parliament, tried to force through Parliament, is now in the bin. And so they have to start again. And that is a laborious process. It's a process that has to follow the normal procedure through the lower house and then the upper house, and that will all take place at the beginning of next year, 2025. It's going to be very difficult for him because the previous budget ran into difficulties with a center-right government, and there was no majority in Parliament for it. But then again, to find compromises between those on the left who want, for example, much higher taxes on wealth and to reverse the pension reform that Emmanuel Macron brought in, bring down the retirement age, and those on the right who are hoping to sort of— or in the center rather— who are hoping to keep most of Macron's economic policy in place. It's an incredibly difficult circle for François Bayrou to square, and it's going to be, I think, no easier for him than it was for Michel Barnier.

Which is to say that the prospects for a stable situation are still pretty poor.

It's difficult to see why François Bayrou will manage to work better with the parties in Parliament than Michel Barnier did. He's been handed exactly the same situation and the same sort of deadlocked politics. So he will have to find some kind of way of bringing the parties together if he's going to manage to do what Barnier didn't. So I think the chances are not high, and that probably points to yet more instability towards the beginning of next year.

In the longer term here, what might fix that? What might change that? Or are we stuck with that situation for really quite some time now, do you think?

It's an interesting question. When you think about the constitution and what is possible, there cannot be any legislative elections called until next July, which realistically means holding them probably in September after the summer break. That is a long time to wait. And there is also the possibility that if you held fresh elections, it wouldn't change anything to the outcome. If anything, you might have a stronger far right, possibly. But I think Even if there were to be a fresh parliamentary election next year, the parliamentary arithmetic probably wouldn't change greatly in any case. And after that, in terms of the presidential election, that is not scheduled until 2027. And Emmanuel Macron has said very clearly he has no intention of stepping down, despite there being pressure from some quarters, notably on the left, for him to do so.

Sophie, thanks very much for your time.

Thanks, Jason. It's a pleasure.

Sophie will be on a panel of editors and correspondents taking part in a live event tomorrow debating The Economist Country of the Year for 2024. She'll be considering the contenders alongside our foreign editor Patrick Fowles and geopolitical editor David Rennie. Register to watch the live event and vote in our straw poll at economist.com/country.

2024 was a big year in cinema, with a few new offerings entering the cultural canon, or at least generating a few viral moments. It's a crowded field of contenders so to cut through the thicket of celluloid, we asked our writers and editors to recommend their favorites from the year.

According to some critical theorists, fiction only has a finite number of basic plots, either 6, 7, 20, or 36, depending on your view.

Andy Miller writes Backstory, our column on culture.

These are things like overcoming the monster or rags to riches. Voyager and Return. You get the picture. Whether you believe that or not, it's true that originality in storytelling often lies not in breaking the mold but in finessing it. Sean Baker's Annora does that beautifully. The heroine is called Annora, but she goes by Annie. She's a lap dancer from Brooklyn who meets the son of a Russian oligarch called Vanya. He takes her to Las Vegas on a bender and marries her.

Welcome to Vegas!

If I get married to an American, I wouldn't have to go back to Russia.

You want me to be your little wifey?

I am serious. Before long, his extremely displeased parents dispatch a trio of threatening henchmen to get the marriage annulled. This is a story, as you may already have gathered, that seems full of stock character types. We know these people, we think. There's a sex worker who's a kind of Cinderella in stilettos, and there are the Russian heavies that we know from noirish crime dramas. Now things go very wrong for Annie, but not altogether in the ways that you might expect.

This is not a real marriage.

We're getting it annulled and you have no say in it.

Anora is a breath of fresh air in the way it subverts both character types and genres. It's a film that confounds your expectations. Life isn't a feel-good movie, and neither is this film. It's clear-eyed about Annie's chances in the world dominated by oligarchs and money, but nor does it discard her on the junk heap of social realism either. It's a story that you need to watch until the very, very end.

Tender and funny, Enora hits every emotional note. But as hard-hitting as the film's lessons are, it isn't remotely our saddest selection.

Ghost stories are often thought of as spooky rather than heartrending. One of the year's best films, however, was a surreal tearjerker.

Rachel Lloyd is The Economist's deputy culture editor.

All of Us Strangers follows Adam, a lonely screenwriter played by Andrew Scott. He returns to his childhood home to find his parents there. Not so unusual, you might think. Only his parents died when he was a child. At the same time, he embarks on a relationship with his neighbour Harry.

You don't need to be shy around me. Yes, that's easier said than done. Would you like me to close my eyes?

Yes, please.

All is not as it seems in Adam's life, however, and reality and imagination begin to blur. All of a Stranger's is worth watching for the central performances from Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. They are both mesmerizing on screen, and the cinematography as well is extremely beautiful.

Things are better now. Of course they are. It doesn't take much to make you feel the way you felt back there again, skin all raw.

I was drawn to this film because even though there is a slightly surreal premise, there is a very human and universal experience of what would it be like if you could sit down with someone that you've lost and speak to them again, and you could tell them about how your life had changed in the intervening years. And see them as they were.

It hasn't been long enough. It hasn't been close to long enough.

I know, but it never could be, could it?

Sure, Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are strong selling points, but if you don't want movie night to end in uncontrollable sobbing, we get it. In which case, our final offering might be a bit more up your street. As long as you're not squeamish. Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?

If I had to describe The Substance in 3 words, I would say satirical, thought-provoking, disgusting.

Nicholas Barber writes about films for The Economist.

It's a film that's camp and colorful and fun, but also compelling and revolting in equal measure. And it has that rare ability to make you feel truly uneasy in your own body. The film is a showbiz satire spliced with a body horror movie starring Demi Moore as a former Oscar-winning A-lister called Elizabeth Sparkle. She's now reduced to presenting an aerobics workout class on daytime TV, but she loses even that because her slimy boss wants a younger, perkier presenter instead. So Elizabeth signs up to use a mysterious substance called The Substance, which creates a clone of her as she was in her 20s.

I'm Sue.

I'm Sue.

Sue. So the idea is that the two women have to take it in turns to live their lives. So it's kind of an update of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Portrait of Dorian Gray. And then towards the end, it really goes for broke. It becomes truly disgusting in a kind of David Cronenberg meets Monty Python kind of way and leaves you not quite believing what you've seen. Pretty girls should always smile. What I like about it is that it's a film which people want to talk about. Its commentary on the sexism and the ageism of the entertainment business is pretty blunt and obvious, but some people have said that it really speaks to relationships between mothers and daughters, how one's stuck at home feeling old while their younger doppelganger is out having a good time. Some people have said that it really speaks to gay relationships and the various pressures that gay men are under. So it gives you that nice feeling that cinema can still spark some interesting conversations. At the same time as being a lot of disgustingly gruesome fun.

The Economist is not liable for any nausea, vomiting, or body dysmorphia induced by the substance. But we hope our selection of films is enough to keep you busy over the holidays.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch at podcasts@economist.com. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmers market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free-range self-directed investing. Or perhaps you pick up a few farm-fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full-service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more.