#Rebar Estimation

[kapilasteel]

How TMT Rod Price Affects Overall Project Budget

In construction, even the smallest cost fluctuations can snowball into major budget concerns. The TMT rod price is often one of the key variables that can significantly reshape the financial planning of a project. Along with it, components like dowel bars and the 8mm rod price per piece can play a huge role in defining where costs will either stay on track or spiral out of control.

The Foundation of Construction Costs

Every construction project begins with numbers. The budget determines everything — from timelines and material selection to labor and finishing quality. TMT rods, being a primary component in structural stability, hold a big share in this cost pie.

When planning a build, project managers usually forecast steel requirements early. That’s where understanding the volatility of TMT rod price becomes essential. It’s not just a line item — it’s the backbone of the build. Any price surge directly impacts both the micro and macro decisions in the entire workflow.

Why TMT Rod Price Deserves Attention

Fluctuations in TMT rod prices aren’t rare. These rods are tied to the market price of raw materials, energy costs, transportation, and manufacturing demands. So, when the price moves even slightly, it can cause shifts in the total material budget, requiring cuts in other areas or reworking the schedule to accommodate bulk purchases.

And it’s not just about quantity. Specific sizes — especially the widely used 8mm rod price per piece — can impact budget forecasts. Since 8mm rods are frequently used in slabs, lintels, and flooring, their unit pricing plays a recurring role in procurement decisions.

How Dowel Bars Add to the Equation

While TMT rods form the structural grid, dowel bars ensure smooth load transfer and joint stability — especially in pavements and slabs. Including them in the plan might seem like a small addition, but their cumulative cost across a large project can affect the bottom line.

What makes dowel bars tricky is that they often get accounted for late in the process. When material estimates fail to factor in their pricing early, sudden additions can disturb the carefully balanced project scope.

8mm Rod Price Per Piece — A Micro Detail That Impacts the Macro

Many project estimators initially overlook the cost impact of smaller-sized rods. But 8mm rod price per piece adds up fast. These rods, though lighter, are required in higher quantities. Over an entire build, the cost deviation from even a marginal price rise can lead to budgetary stress.

For example, if there’s a sudden increase in 8mm rod pricing by even ₹3–₹5 per piece, and a project uses thousands of them, the overall material cost could spike drastically. That’s money that could’ve gone into insulation, plumbing upgrades, or finishing touches.

The Chain Reaction of Poor Price Planning

When steel prices go unchecked, the ripple effect begins. Labor costs increase due to delays. Alternative material options may not offer the same quality, leading to structural compromises. Worst case? The project might halt altogether, waiting for a budget reapproval.

A Calculated Approach Makes the Difference

While there’s no perfect prediction model for market movements, builders can still stay prepared. Leveraging local supplier relationships, monitoring daily steel rates, and always factoring in variables like dowel bars and 8mm rod price per piece ensures a stronger hold on the budget.

Conclusion

Construction budgeting isn’t just about big numbers — it’s about controlling the details. When the TMT rod price moves, so does the entire financial plan. From dowel bars to 8mm rod price per piece, every component holds the potential to tip the balance. Keeping a tight eye on these material prices ensures better decisions, stable progress, and successful project delivery.

[constructionestimating]

Why Professional Rebar Estimating Services Matter for Structural Integrity and Cost Control?

Introduction

In the world of construction, the significance of each material used in a project cannot be overstated. Among the materials that play a crucial role in ensuring the safety, durability, and longevity of a structure. Rebar is the backbone of reinforced concrete, providing strength and stability to buildings, bridges, highways, and other infrastructures. However, as vital as rebar is to construction, the process of rebar estimating services is the correct amount, size, and placement is equally important.

Ensuring Structural Integrity

A well-constructed structure depends on precise engineering, and rebar is a vital part of that equation. Rebar reinforces the concrete, helping to manage the tension forces that the concrete alone cannot handle. For instance, in a building, bridge, or road, rebar placement must be meticulously calculated and positioned to ensure safety and stability. If the rebar is insufficient, or incorrectly placed, the structural integrity of the entire project could be compromised, leading to dangerous consequences like cracks, settlement, or even failure under stress. Professional rebar estimating services ensure that the exact quantity, size, and type of rebar needed for a project are correctly calculated from the beginning. Estimators factor in various design elements, including load-bearing calculations, structural requirements, and the type of environment the structure will face (e.g., exposure to corrosive elements).

Accurate Cost Control

One of the primary reasons why professional rebar estimating services matter is their ability to control costs effectively. Rebar is often one of the most significant material costs in a construction project. A miscalculation in quantity or incorrect material specifications can lead to budget overruns, material shortages, or unnecessary procurement of excess stock. Both scenarios are costly and time-consuming, leading to delays and waste. Professional construction estimate use specialized software tools and industry knowledge to provide highly accurate estimates. These tools factor in the dimensions of the structure placement, and spacing, ensuring that the right amount of material is purchased without excess. Construction projects often produce material waste, but accurate estimates help reduce unnecessary surplus. This ensures that the project does not experience unexpected shortages or additional costs due to over-ordering.

Minimizing Delays and Enhancing Project Timelines

Accurate rebar estimating helps ensure that the project progresses smoothly without delays. When rebar quantities and materials are miscalculated, it can lead to significant setbacks. For example, if there is a shortage of rebar or incorrect materials are ordered, work may need to be halted until the issue is resolved. These delays can result in extended project timelines and higher labor costs as workers wait for materials. With professional rebar estimating, contractors can anticipate the required quantities early in the process, helping to ensure that the correct materials are on-site when needed. By planning, construction estimators can also take into account factors such as the size of the project, the delivery schedule, and the work sequence, ensuring that materials arrive on time and without delay. This helps keep the project on track and prevents costly downtime.

Reducing Risk and Enhancing Safety

Construction projects inherently involve a degree of risk, and safety should always be a top priority. Incorrectly estimated rebar quantities or poorly placed rebar can create dangerous working conditions, particularly when construction workers are handling heavy materials or dealing with tensioned structures. Structural failures, even small ones, can cause significant safety hazards on-site. Professional rebar estimating services help mitigate these risks by ensuring that the project is designed and executed with optimal structural strength. Rebar estimators are also well-versed in construction safety protocols, helping to ensure that the right amount of material is used, and the rebar is installed as designed. This reduces the likelihood of hazardous scenarios such as collapsing beams or slabs.

Precision and Detailing for Complex Projects

Large-scale or complex construction projects, such as high-rise buildings, bridges, or industrial plants, often require intricate rebar installations. These projects demand a high level of precision when construction estimating and placing rebar due to the complexity of the structural design and the scale of the work. Manual calculations can easily lead to mistakes, resulting in costly errors and project delays. Professional rebar estimating services are equipped with advanced tools and methods to handle these complex calculations accurately. They provide highly detailed takeoffs and blueprints, indicating the exact placement and number of required in each section of the structure.

Long-Term Maintenance and Durability

The longevity and durability of a structure depend significantly on the quality of the materials used, including the rebar. Incorrectly estimated or inferior-quality rebar can lead to structural issues over time, such as corrosion or weakening of the concrete. Professional estimators consider factors like environmental exposure and the long-term demands on the structure, ensuring that the right type of rebar is specified.

Conclusion

Professional rebar estimating services are crucial for any construction project, ensuring that the structure's integrity is maintained, costs are controlled, and project timelines are adhered to. The precision, knowledge, and experience estimators bring to the table help minimize errors, reduce waste, and enhance safety on-site. By working with professional estimators, contractors and project managers can avoid costly mistakes, optimize material usage, and ensure that their projects are built to last. Whether constructing a skyscraper, bridge, or residential building, investing in professional rebar estimating services is a smart decision for any construction project.

[jdass-corp370]

Precision in Every Bend | Dass Rebar | 372 New Enterprise Way, Woodbridge, ON L4H 0S8 | +19058133014

[estimatefloridaconsulting]

Cost of Rebar Installation: A Complete Guide

Rebar, or reinforcing steel bars, plays a critical role in construction by strengthening concrete structures, making them more durable and resilient. Whether it’s a foundation, driveway, or larger construction project, rebar installation is essential for reinforcing concrete against cracking and tension. However, understanding the cost of rebar installation is vital for budgeting, as it varies depending on factors like project size, type of rebar, labor, and regional prices. This guide covers everything you need to know about rebar installation costs, factors that affect pricing, and tips for estimating expenses.

Average Cost of Rebar Installation

The cost of rebar installation varies based on the project scope and the specific requirements of the concrete structure. Rebar is usually priced by weight, with the installation cost typically calculated by the square foot, depending on how much rebar is needed for the structure. Labor costs and material prices can also impact the overall expense.

Factors That Influence the Cost of Rebar Installation

Type of Rebar

Rebar comes in different grades, diameters, and types, each with its own cost range. Common types include:

Carbon Steel Rebar: This is the most common and cost-effective type, used for standard residential and commercial projects.

Epoxy-Coated Rebar: Epoxy coating provides corrosion resistance, making it ideal for structures exposed to moisture or harsh conditions. It costs more than standard rebar.

Stainless Steel Rebar: This type is highly durable and resistant to corrosion, but it is also the most expensive. It’s typically used for specialized projects that demand superior strength and durability.

Project Size and Rebar Density

The size of the project directly impacts the cost of rebar installation. Larger projects like foundations, walls, or multi-story structures require more rebar, driving up costs. Additionally, the density of rebar needed depends on the type of structure and load-bearing requirements. High-density configurations with closely spaced bars cost more in materials and labor.

Rebar Size and Diameter

Rebar is available in different diameters, with thicker bars offering more strength and load-bearing capacity. Larger diameter rebar costs more per linear foot but provides enhanced structural support, which is necessary for high-stress areas.

Labor and Installation Complexity

Labor costs vary depending on the complexity of the project and the region. Installing rebar requires skill to ensure proper spacing, placement, and tying. Complex structures or projects with tight deadlines can increase labor expenses, as they require additional time and precision from skilled workers.

Location and Site Accessibility

Site accessibility can affect labor costs. If a site is challenging to access or has limited space, it may take longer to install rebar, increasing the cost. Urban areas and regions with a high cost of living tend to have higher labor rates, while rural areas may offer lower installation costs.

Rebar Tying and Accessories

Tying rebar is a critical step to ensure stability, and it requires specific tools and materials. Specialized accessories, such as rebar chairs (which hold the rebar in place) or rebar spacers (used to maintain the required distance between layers), add to the installation cost.

Concrete and Rebar Spacing Requirements

The spacing of rebar within concrete is determined by structural requirements. Tighter spacing may be necessary for certain high-stress areas, adding to labor and material costs. Understanding these requirements is essential to estimating costs accurately.

Cost Estimation for Rebar Installation

Here are some steps to help you estimate rebar installation costs:

Determine Project Scope and Rebar Density: Understanding the dimensions and requirements of your project, including load-bearing specifications, will help determine how much rebar is needed. Consulting with an engineer or contractor can provide insights into rebar density and placement.

Choose Rebar Type and Size: Based on environmental exposure and structural demands, select the type of rebar (carbon steel, epoxy-coated, or stainless steel) and the diameter required. This choice will influence both material and labor costs.

Calculate Rebar Weight and Cost per Unit: Rebar costs are often measured by weight, so knowing the required weight based on bar diameter, length, and density is essential for an accurate estimate. Rebar suppliers can provide per-pound or per-ton pricing based on your project specifications.

Factor in Labor Costs: Labor costs vary depending on region, project complexity, and contractor expertise. Getting multiple quotes from experienced contractors can help you find competitive rates.

Include Accessories and Additional Materials: Rebar chairs, spacers, and tying materials are necessary for proper installation. Including these accessories in your cost estimate ensures that all materials required for a successful installation are accounted for.

Common Applications of Rebar and Cost Considerations

Concrete Foundations

Rebar is essential in foundation construction to prevent cracking and provide structural integrity. Foundations typically require high-density rebar configurations, especially for larger buildings or homes. Cost factors include rebar density, foundation thickness, and site preparation.

Driveways and Pavements

Rebar is often added to concrete driveways or pavement slabs to reinforce the structure and prevent cracking due to soil shifting. While driveways require less rebar than foundations, the size of the slab and rebar spacing will still affect costs.

Retaining Walls

Retaining walls experience significant pressure from soil, making rebar essential to their stability. Rebar density is usually higher for these structures, adding to material and labor costs.

Footings and Slabs

Rebar is used in footings and slabs to support the weight of structures. Since footings bear the load of the building, the cost of rebar installation depends on footing depth, soil conditions, and rebar density.

Tips for Reducing Rebar Installation Costs

Use Only What’s Necessary: While rebar is critical, over-reinforcing can lead to unnecessary costs. Working with a structural engineer can help determine the optimal amount of rebar for safety and budget.

Compare Material Prices: Rebar prices can vary, so check with multiple suppliers to find the best rates on materials. Buying in bulk can sometimes provide cost savings for larger projects.

Schedule Efficiently: Labor costs can increase if rebar installation takes longer than necessary. Planning the project carefully, ensuring site accessibility, and scheduling installation during favorable weather can reduce time on the job site.

Conclusion

Rebar installation is an essential component of many concrete projects, from foundations and driveways to retaining walls and footings. The cost to install rebar varies based on factors like project size, type of rebar, labor, and site accessibility. By understanding these cost drivers and consulting with experienced contractors, you can create an accurate budget for your rebar installation. Investing in quality rebar installation not only strengthens your structure but also contributes to its longevity and stability.

[iconic-rebar]

Rebar Detailers Shop | Rebar Detailing Company in USA

Expert Rebar Modeling & Estimation Service in USA. Iconic Rebar is Rebar Detailers Shop provide solution for all your construction needs

Rebar Detailers shop, Rebar Detailing Company, Rebar Estimation Service, Rebar Modeling Service

[siliconecuk]

Best Rebar Detailing Services in Swindon, UK at a very low cost

As a leading provider of Rebar Detailing Services, Silicon EC UK Limited stands at the forefront of delivering exceptional structural solutions in Swindon, United Kingdom. Rebar detailing is an essential component in the AEC industry, ensuring the accuracy and precision of reinforced concrete structures. We create precise and comprehensive Rebar Detailing Drawings in both 2D and 3D formats, utilizing industry-leading software to ensure accuracy and clarity.  We collaborate closely with fabricators and contractors to produce Shop Drawings that clearly convey the rebar layout and specifications. This collaborative approach streamlines communication and ensures seamless integration of rebar detailing into the overall construction process.

To experience the Silicon EC UK Limited difference, contact us today and let us transform your construction projects with our unparalleled Rebar Detailing Services. We are confident that we can exceed your expectations and deliver the results you need to achieve construction excellence.

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[rna-world]

Have you heard of a little game called White Knuckle? I was playing the demo just now and realllllly thought of the innards of an Iterator; it seems like something that you’d appreciate. There are weird fleshy creatures growing on the walls, a tinny voice blares from the loudspeakers to tell you that the “memory cortexes have decayed - estimated 81% data recoverable”, and there is an ever rising tide of.. stuff.

I mean it’s a really difficult climbing game but oughhhh it has ✨stuff✨, somewhere between the decaying superstructures of the first portal game and a full on Iterator.

No idea if you’ll care or anything, just thought it was neat!

Oh and you can throw rebar, and there’s “rope” rebar that looks just like an explosive spear so it’s like slugcat-pov platforming!

I looked at it, and I'll probably play the demo this week! This will be the second game I've seen recently that has been- shall I say "iteratorcore"

[fidothefinch]

“On the count of three.”

A nod. Tim’s face was pale under his Red Robin mask. His hair was damp with sweat.

Dick licked his lips and immediately regretted it; they were caked in dust. “One.”

He peeked around the corner of the half-decimated stone wall they had taken shelter behind. Just a short, fast one, to get an estimate of how many men were left.

Too many.

“Two,” he whispered. Dick wound his hands around Tim’s wrists.

Deep breath in. “Three.”

He didn’t give time for Tim to react, yanking back with his full weight. Tim made a valiant effort to stay quiet, but a strangled moan of agony wound out from between his clenched teeth anyway.

They gained an inch before the concrete and rebar shifted again, somewhere deep in the pile that had swallowed Tim’s right leg.

“Wait,” Tim whispered, an edge of desperation in his tone. “Wait.”

Dick grit his teeth and continued to pull. They couldn’t wait. They were out of options and out of time.

A high-pitched keen rang out of Tim’s mouth. “Stop!” His hands had long since let go of Dick’s wrists, but Dick only tightened his grip, continuing his steady pressure. “My foot is stuck, it’s not going to—”

A snap.

Tim gasped like he had never breathed before, and his next exhale was a visceral shout. The sound made bumps rise along Dick’s skin.

It also drew the attention of their assailants, and gunfire pattered against the far side of the wall.

“Shit!” Dick whispered as emphatically as he could. He didn’t know why he bothered to whisper; they’d already been found. But there was something irredeemable about using his normal speaking voice while he mauled his little brother’s leg against exposed rebar.

Tim was getting impossibly paler. Blood loss? Nausea from the pain? Shock?

The gunfire paused for reload, and Dick took the opportunity to adjust his grip. His fingers shook from exertion and adrenaline and guilt. “Almost there,” he tried to reassure.

It was a lie. The heavy debris still encased his leg from the knee down.

Tears left tracks in the dust on Tim’s face. He bit down on his lip hard enough he broke skin. He just nodded, eyes squeezed shut.

Deep breath in.

Dick pulled again, this time using momentum to add extra force on the initial tug. His feet slid over rubble as he threw himself backward, narrowly avoiding falling over onto rebar himself.

He stopped when he ran out of breath. He didn’t ask Tim how his leg felt; he could see the mangled mess of tissue and exposed bone himself. One more good tug would probably pull the rest free, and then he could—

Footsteps on the other side of the wall.

Dick reached for his only remaining escrima as a man rounded the corner, neatly dispatching him with a well-aimed whack.

Time was up.

Dick pulled, and Tim screamed. His leg broke free, his foot limp and hanging at an unnatural angle.

Dick threw him over his back in a fireman’s carry and retrieved his escrima again. “Hold on,” he commanded.

Tim didn’t respond. Another man appeared around he corner, and Dick used his electricity to dispatch him right on top of the last guy. He wasted no time in tossing his last flashbang over the wall and diving into the waiting fray.

[tgtbata]

tagged by @nigeltde-fic to art-ify these questions for writers and i would never deny her:

How many works do you have?

if i estimated correctly, i have over 350 posts with at least one drawing each on this tumblr account. which gave me a heart attack tbh, that's so many haha. there's some more my art floating around the internet elsewhere like on the terrebus account.

What fandoms do you draw for?

the main one currently is supernatural, before that it was the terror and before that it was football (the soccer kind) rpf. but i still do all of 'em! there are some others i play with like sherlock holmes, fdtd or mtw.

What are your top 5 drawings by notes?

using a random internet tool to rank posts:

dean/cas phallic angel blade (2492 notes)

sam/dean rebar kiss (1569 notes)

possum!dean (1510 notes)

blanky & tuunbaq dinner date (1492 notes)

dean with tattoos (1475 notes)

conclusion: big destiel still rules tumblr

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i usually do when it feels like something directed at me, like asks/dms or replies on twitter and tumblr. not so much when it's tags on tumblr or qrts on twitter - those feel more like the other person is talking into the void and not to me directly lol

What is a piece of art you drew with the angstiest ending?

hard to define 'ending' in the context of art - it supposes a sort of narrative structure not every of my drawings has. maybe this one. because, in the words of the rolling stones, you can't always get what you want.

What's the piece of art you drew with the happiest ending?

i guess this defines happy ending but i also had to think of this one, just because i can hallucinate the story that it took for them to get to that cocktail sippin' ending.

Do you get hate on art?

yes, sometimes lol i've had people fighting wars in my twitter replies when i posted cas/jack art. wah wah wah he's his dad. wah wah wah they're brothers. wah wah wah kill yourself. ridiculous and irrelevant. i do still think fondly of some replies i get though, like the one that was in russian and said 'such a talent and only for the sake of lust... sad.'

Do you draw smut?

yeah, but it's one of the things i want to get better at.

Do you draw crossovers? What's the craziest one you've draw?

not really. i want to draw an spn/fdtd crossover but that's not super crazy

Have you ever had art stolen?

reposted without credit, if that counts.

Have you ever collaborated on art before?

yes, having one person do the lineart and one do the colouring. it's a fun exercise to make you consciously realise your own art processes

What's your all-time favorite ship?

wincest is up there, of course. holmes/watson is simply a staple. humboldt/bonpland because mtw shaped me in my adolescence. i don't like to define THEEE favourite though because there's different ships for different flavours and that's great.

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

does it count as a wip if i haven't even started creating it lmao! if yes - a longer story s4 sam/dean dean/cas piece set to dessa's 551. if that sounds insane, it's because it is.

What are your drawing strengths?

i think depicting connection between two characters and portraying a sense of want/love/doubt even through a distance between them.

What are your drawing weaknesses?

stiff poses and inability to draw without reference. also backgrounds and feet :(

First fandom you drew for?

football rpf. the reason i started drawing regularly at all haha

Favorite art you've drawn?

probably this one. it just... worked out, from idea to product, and it feels smooth and it makes me happy :)

thank u for tagging me, nige!!

[nainad123]

Basalt Fiber Market - Size, Projections, Drivers, Trends, Vendors, Analysis 2034

The global basalt fiber market is set to reach US$ 121.8 million in 2024 and is projected to grow at a 12.4% CAGR, reaching US$ 392.1 million by 2034, according to Fact.MR.

Increasing use in EVs and construction, along with its superior mechanical properties, is driving demand. Basalt fiber’s role as an alternative to steel and glass rebar, along with applications in pipe containers, reinforced nets, and electrical insulation, is fueling market expansion.

For More Insights into the Market, Request a Sample of this Report: https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=1312

Basalt Fiber Market Growth Projections

South Korea: Sales of basalt fiber are expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.8% from 2024 to 2034.

North America: The region is estimated to hold 17.5% of the basalt fiber market share by 2034.

Global Demand: The worldwide market for non-composite basalt fiber is projected to expand at a 12.4% CAGR, reaching US$ 271.3 million by 2034.

Country-wise Insights

Fac.MR, a provider of market research and competitive intelligence, states in its latest report that East Asia is expected to account for 24.6% of the global market share by 2034. The growing expansion of various end-use industries, including automotive and aerospace, is anticipated to drive increased demand for basalt fiber in the region.

Meanwhile, the United States is projected to hold 73.5% of the North American market share by 2034. The rising preference for environmentally friendly materials across multiple sectors is driven by stringent regulatory policies, boosting demand for basalt fiber. Additionally, key industries such as construction, shipbuilding, and automotive are fueling this growth due to basalt fiber’s lightweight properties and cost-effectiveness.

Category-wise Insights

According to a research report by Fact.MR, the global demand for non-composite basalt fiber is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.4%, reaching a valuation of US$ 271.3 million by the end of 2034. This growth is primarily driven by the increasing adoption of non-composite basalt fibers, attributed to their lightweight properties and environmentally friendly nature.

Basalt fiber is available in various forms, including roving, chopped strands, mesh & grids, and fabric. Among these, the demand for roving basalt fiber is witnessing significant growth in countries such as the United States, Ukraine, Russia, and China. Additionally, continuous investments by market players in research and development (R&D) to enhance product efficiency and meet end-user requirements are expected to further drive market expansion.

Browse Full Report: https://www.factmr.com/report/1312/basalt-fibers-market

Competitive Landscape

Leading companies in the basalt fiber market are focusing on supply chain management and quality assurance to strengthen their competitive position. A key strategy among market players is the development of innovative products to enhance their market presence. Additionally, companies are actively engaging in mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships to expand their reach into untapped markets.

Notable Developments:

Kamenny Vek, on April 30, 2021, expanded its product portfolio with the introduction of new offerings, including basalt assembled roving 18 microns 4800 tex, basalt assembled roving 18 microns 3000 tex, and basalt direct roving 22 microns 2400 tex.

Mafic USA, in July 2020, commenced operations at its production facility in Shelby, North Carolina. This facility is expected to play a crucial role in meeting the specific demands of its customer base.

Key Players:

Prominent companies operating in the basalt fiber market include Zhejiang GBF Basalt Fiber Co., Ltd (GBF), TECHNOBASALT-INVEST LLC, Shanxi Basalt Fibre Technology Co., Ltd., BASALTEX NV, Sudaglass Fiber Technology, Isomatex SA, Mafic SA, Kamenny Vek, and Shanxi Basalt Fiber Technology Co., Ltd.

Segmentation of Basalt Fiber Market Research

By Product Type :

Roving

Chopped Strands

Fabric

Mesh & Grids

By Usage :

Composites

Non-composites

By End-use Industry :

Building & Construction

Automotive

Aerospace & Defense

Ship Building

Wind Energy

Sport Accessories & Others

By Region :

North America

Europe

East Asia

Latin America

Middle East & Africa

South Asia & Oceania

Check out More Related Studies Published by Fact.MR:

The global silicone sealant market is projected to reach US$ 3,699.3 million in 2024 and grow at a CAGR of 4.1% to US$ 5,528.7 million by 2034.

The global industrial hydrogen market is expected to reach US$ 19,800 million in 2024 and grow at a CAGR of 4.9%, reaching US$ 31,946.3 million by 2034.

The global building insulation material market is valued at US$ 37.56 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a 6.7% CAGR, reaching US$ 71.85 billion by 2034, according to Fact.MR.

According to Fact.MR's latest report, the global low foam surfactant market is expected to reach US$ 20.74 billion in 2024 and grow at a 6.4% CAGR, reaching US$ 38.58 billion by 2034.

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐭:

US Sales Office 11140 Rockville Pike Suite 400 Rockville, MD 20852 United States Tel: +1 (628) 251-1583, +353-1-4434-232 Email: sales@factmr.com

[jdass-corp370]

Strength meets durability with Dass Rebar | 372 New Enterprise Way, Woodbridge, ON L4H0S8 | +19058133014

Strength meets durability with Dass Rebar—engineered to provide the support your projects need for lasting stability! 🔧

[xtruss]

The Secret Life and Anonymous Death of the Most Prolific War-Crimes Investigator in History

When Mustafa Died, in the Earthquakes in Türkiye, his Work in Syria had Assisted in the Prosecutions of Numerous Figures in Bashar al-Assad’s Regime.

— By Ben Taub | September 14, 2023

Photo Illustration By Cristiana Couceiro; Source Photograph From Getty Images

It Was 4:17 A.M. on February 6th in Antakya, an Ancient Turkish City Near the Syrian Border, when the earth tore open and people’s beds began to shake. On the third floor of an apartment in the Ekinci neighborhood, Anwar Saadeddin, a former brigadier general in the Syrian Army, awoke to the sounds of glass breaking, cupboard doors banging, and jars of tahini and cured eggplant spilling onto the floor. He climbed out of bed, but, for almost thirty seconds, he was unable to keep his footing; the building was moving side to side. When the earthquake subsided, he tried to call his daughter Rula, who lived down the road, but the cellular network was down.

Thirty seconds after the first quake, the building started moving again, this time up and down, with such violence that an exterior wall sheared open, and rain started pouring in. The noise was tremendous—concrete splitting, rebar bending, plates shattering, neighbors screaming. When the shaking stopped, about a minute later, Saadeddin, who is in his late sixties, and his wife walked down three flights of stairs, dressed in pajamas and sandals, and went out into the cold.

“All of Antakya was black—there was no electricity anywhere,” Saadeddin recalled. Thousands of the city’s buildings had collapsed. Survivors spilled into the streets, crowding rubble-strewn alleyways and searching for open ground, as minarets toppled and glass shards fluttered down from tower blocks. The general and his wife set off in the direction of the building where Rula lived, with her husband, Mustafa, and their four children.

A third quake shook the ground. When Saadeddin made it to his daughter’s apartment block, flashes of lighting illuminated what was now a fourteen-story grave. The building—which had been completed less than two years earlier—had twisted as it toppled over, crushing many of the residents. Saadeddin felt his body drained of all emotion, almost as if it didn’t belong to him.

Saadeddin was not the only person searching for Rula and her family. For the past decade, her husband, Mustafa, had quietly served as the deputy chief of Syria investigations for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, a group that has captured more than a million pages of documents from Syrian military and intelligence facilities. Using these files, lawyers at the cija have prepared some of the most comprehensive war-crimes cases since the Nuremberg trials, targeting senior Syrian regime officers—including the President, Bashar al-Assad. After the earthquake, the group directed its investigative focus into a search-and-rescue operation for members of its own Syrian team, many of whom had been displaced to southern Turkey after more than a decade of war. By the end of the third day, nearly everyone was accounted for. Two investigators had lost children; one of them had also lost his wife. But Mustafa was still missing.

For as long as Mustafa had been working for the cija, the group had kept his identity secret—even after it captured a Syrian intelligence document that showed that the regime knew about his investigative work and was actively hunting him down. “He was probably my best investigator,” Mustafa’s supervisor, an Australian who goes by Mick, told me, during a recent visit to the Turkish-Syrian border. Documents that Mustafa obtained, and witness interviews that he conducted, have assisted judicial proceedings in the United States, France, Belgium, Germany, and several other European jurisdictions. According to a cija estimate, Mustafa “either directly obtained or supported in the acquisition” of more than two hundred thousand pages of internal Syrian regime documents, likely making him—by sheer volume of evidence collected—the most prolific war-crimes investigator in history.

Twelve years into the Syrian war, at least half the population has been displaced, often multiple times, under varied circumstances of individual tragedy. No one knows the actual death toll—not even to the nearest hundred thousand. And yet the Syrian regime’s crimes continue apace. “The prisons are full,” Bill Wiley, the cija’s founder and executive director, told me. “All the offenses that started being carried out at scale in 2011 are still being perpetrated. Unlawful detention, physical abuse amounting to torture, extrajudicial killing, sexual offenses—all of that continues. War crimes on the battlefield, particularly in the context of aerial operations. There are still chemical attacks. It all continues. But, as long as there’s the drip, drip, drip of Western prosecutions, pursuant to universal jurisdiction, it’s really difficult to envision the normalization of the regime.”

Before the Syrian Revolution, Mustafa was a trial lawyer, living and working in Al-Rastan, a suburb of the central city of Homs. He and his wife, Rula, had three small children, and Rula was pregnant with the fourth. In early 2011, when Syrians took to the streets to protest against the regime—which had ruled for almost half a century—Assad declared that anyone who did not contribute to “burying sedition” was “a part of it.” Suddenly Mustafa was caught in a delicate position, since many of Rula’s male relatives were military officers.

Her father and her uncles had joined the Syrian armed forces as young men, and served Assad’s father for many years before they served him. In the mid-nineties, Assad’s older brother died in a car crash, and he was called back from his studies in London and sent to a military academy in Homs. Eventually, he joined a staff officers’ course, where Anwar Saadeddin—then a colonel and a military engineer—says he spent a year and a half in his class.

Assad became President in 2000, after his father died, and for the next decade Saadeddin carried on with his duties without complaint. In 2003, Saadeddin was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. At the outset of the revolution, his younger son was a lieutenant, and he was two years from retirement.

Mustafa and Rula’s fourth child was born on April 5, 2011. Three days later, security forces shot a number of protesters in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, including a disabled man, who was unable to run away. They dragged him from the site and returned his mutilated corpse to his family the following evening. From then on, Homs was the site of some of the largest anti-regime protests—and the most violent crackdown.

On April 19th, thousands of people gathered for a sit-in beneath a clock tower. At about midnight, officers warned that anyone who didn’t leave voluntarily would be removed by force. A couple of hours passed; a thousand people remained. At dawn, the people of Homs awoke to traces of a massacre. A witness later reported that religious leaders who had stayed to treat the wounded and to tend to the dead were summarily executed. Several others recalled that the bodies were removed with dump trucks, and that the blood of the dead and wounded was washed away with hoses.

The day after the massacre, according to documents that were later captured from Assad’s highest-level security committee, the regime decided to embark on a “new phase” in the crackdown, to “demonstrate the power and capacity of the state.” Nine days later, regime forces killed at least nineteen protesters in Al-Rastan, where Mustafa and Rula lived. Mustafa wasn’t involved in politics or human-rights work, beyond discussions of basic democratic reforms, but he was appalled by the overtly criminal manner in which security forces and associated militias carried out their campaign with impunity. Locals formed neighborhood-protection units, and soon took up arms against the state.

A few months later, Mustafa briefly sneaked out of Syria to attend a training session in Turkey, led by Bill Wiley, a Canadian war-crimes investigator who had previously worked for various tribunals and the International Criminal Court. Wiley, and others in his world, had noticed a jurisdictional gap in accountability for Syria and had begun casting about for Syrian lawyers who might be up for a perilous, but worthy, task. Although there was no tribunal set up for Syria, and Russia and China had blocked efforts to refer Syria to the I.C.C., Wiley and his associates had reasoned that the process of collecting evidence is purely a matter of risk tolerance and logistics. The work of criminal investigators is different from that of human-rights N.G.O.s: groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch produce and disseminate reports on horrific violations and abuse, but Wiley trained Mustafa and the other Syrians in attendance to collect the kind of evidence that could allow prosecutors to assign individual criminal responsibility to senior military and intelligence officers. A video showing tanks firing on unarmed protesters might influence public opinion, but a pile of military communications that proved which commanders were in charge of the operation could one day land someone in jail.

“The first task was to ferret out primary-source material—documents, in particular, generated by the regime,” Wiley told me. “We were looking for prima-facie evidence, not intelligence product or information to inform the public.”

Mustafa instantly grasped the urgency of the project. By day, he carried on with his law practice. But, in secret, he started building up sources within the armed opposition. As they captured new territory, he would go into security and intelligence facilities, box up documents, and move them to secret locations, like farmhouses or caves, farther from the confrontation lines.

“By 2012, we had already started to get some structure,” Wiley recalled. He secured funding from Western governments, and eventually the group settled on a name: the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. “We had our guys in Raqqa, Idlib, Aleppo, and so forth—at least one guy in all the key areas,” he said. From there, the cija built out each team—between two and four individuals, working under the head of each provincial cell. “And Mustafa was our core guy in Homs.”

Anwar Saadeddin soon found himself wielding his position in order to rescue relatives who were caught up in the conflict. His younger son, an Army lieutenant, was detained by military operatives on the outskirts of Damascus, after another officer in his brigade reported him for watching Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera. According to an internal military communication, which was later captured by the cija, Assad believed that foreign reporting on Syria amounted to “psychological warfare aimed at creating a state of internal chaos.”

When Saadeddin’s son was detained, he recalled, “I interfered just to decrease the detention period to thirty days.” Soon afterward, he learned that Mustafa was a target of military intelligence in Homs, where the local facility, Branch 261, was headed by one of Saadeddin’s friends: Mohammed Zamrini.

Mustafa wasn’t calling for an armed rebellion, and, at the time, neither the regime nor his father-in-law knew of his connection to Wiley and the cija. But rebel factions were active in Al-Rastan, and Mustafa was known to have urged them not to destroy any public establishments. To hard-liners in the regime, such interaction was considered tantamount to collaboration. “So I went with Mustafa to the branch,” Saadeddin told me. Zamrini agreed to detain him as a formality—for about twelve hours, with light interrogations and no torture or abuse—so that he could essentially cross Mustafa off the list.

In the next few months, the security situation rapidly deteriorated. The Army encircled rebellious neighborhoods near Homs and shelled them to the ground. Saadeddin’s son, who was serving near Damascus, was arrested a second time, and in order to get him released Saadeddin had to supplicate himself in the office of Assef Shawkat, Assad’s brother-in-law and the deputy minister of defense. In Homs, Saadeddin started driving Mustafa to and from work in his light-blue Kia; as a brigadier general, he could move passengers through checkpoints without them being searched or arrested.

But Saadeddin was beginning to find his position untenable. He sensed that the regime’s policy of total violence would lead to the destruction of the country. That spring, he began to share his fears and frustrations with close colleagues and friends, including the commander of his son’s brigade. But it was a perilous game: Assad’s highest-level security committee had instructed the heads of regional security branches to hunt down “security agents who are irresolute or unenthusiastic” in carrying out their duties. According to a U.N. inquiry, some officers were detained and tortured for having “attempted to spare civilians” on whom they had been ordered to fire.

That spring, Saadeddin’s car was stopped at one of the checkpoints that ordinarily waved him through. It was the first time that his position served not as protection against interrogation but as a reason to question his loyalty. The regime was quickly losing territory, and as the conflict spiralled out of control many senior officers found themselves approaching the limits of their willingness to go along. He and his brothers had “reached a point where we would either stand by the regime and have to take part in atrocities, or we would have to defect,” he told me.

That July, Saadeddin gathered his brothers, his sons, two nephews, and several other military officers in front of a small camera, somewhere near the Turkish-Syrian border. Dressed in his uniform, he announced that the army to which he had pledged his allegiance some four decades earlier had “deviated from its mission” and turned on its citizens instead. To honor the Syrian public’s “steadfastness in the face of barbaric assaults by Assad’s bloody gangs, we have decided to defect from the Army,” he said. It was one of the largest mass defections of Syrian officers, and his plan was to take a leading role in the rebellion—to fight for freedom “until martyrdom or victory.” In response, Saadeddin told me, their former colleagues sent troops to destroy their houses and those of their family members. They expropriated their land and killed several of their relatives.

By now, the regime had ceded swaths of Syria’s border with Turkey to various rebel forces. Saadeddin moved his family across the border and into a refugee camp that the Turkish government had set up for military and intelligence officers who defected. Then he went back to Syria, to try to bring some order and unity to the rebel factions that were battling his former colleagues.

But Mustafa and his family stayed behind in Al-Rastan, which was now firmly in rebel hands. The regime’s loss of control at the Turkish border meant that the cija could start moving its captured documents out of the country.

“It was complicated, reaching the border, because the confrontation lines were so fluid,” Wiley recalled. “And there were multiple bodies who were overtly hostile to cija”—not only the regime but also a growing number of extremist groups who were suspicious of anyone working for a Western N.G.O. During the first document extraction, a courier was shot and injured. During the next, another courier vanished with a suitcase full of documents. “Just fucking disappeared,” Wiley said. “Probably thought he could sell them.” Mustafa recruited a cousin to transport some files to Turkey. But, after the delivery, on the way back to Al-Rastan, the cousin took a minibus, and the vehicle was ambushed by regime troops. “He was shot, but it was unclear if he was wounded or dead when they took him away,” another Syrian cija investigator, whom I’ll call Omar, told me. For the next several weeks, regime agents blackmailed Mustafa, saying that for twenty thousand dollars they would release his cousin from custody. But, when Mustafa asked for proof of life, they failed to provide it—suggesting that the cousin had already died in custody.

By now, Wiley had issued new orders for the extraction process. “I said, ‘O.K., there needs to be a plan, and I need to know what the plan is,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘How are you getting from A to B? What risks are there between point A and point B? And how are you going to ameliorate those risks?’ As opposed to just throwing the shit in the car and going, ‘Well, God decides.’ ”

Saadeddin Spent Much of the next eighteen months trying to organize disparate rebel groups into a unified command. He travelled all over northern Syria, as rebels took new ground, and met with all manner of revolutionaries—from secular defectors to hard-line field commanders. By the summer of 2013, the regime had ceded control of most of northern Syria. But there was little cohesion between the rebel factions, and isis and Al Qaeda had come to exploit the power vacuum in rebel territory. At some point, Saadeddin recalled, he scolded a Tunisian isis commander for arousing sectarian and ethnic tensions, and imposing extremism onto local communities. “He responded that I was an apostate, and suggested that I should be killed,” Saadeddin told me.

In Al-Rastan, a regime shell penetrated the walls of Mustafa’s house, but it didn’t explode. At that point, Rula and the children moved to Reyhanli, a small Turkish village that is so close to the border that you can eat at a kebab shop there while watching sheep graze in Syria. It was also a short drive from the defected officers’ camp, where Rula’s mother and several other relatives were living. But Mustafa stayed behind, to carry out his investigative work for the cija.

“When new areas were liberated, the security branches were raided, and many people took files,” Omar recalled. Some of them didn’t grasp the significance of the files; at least one soldier burned them for warmth. “But most people knew the documents would be useful, someday—they just didn’t know what to do with them. So they just kept them. And the challenge was in identifying who had what, where.”

But, before long, Omar continued, “Mustafa built a wide network of contacts in rebel territory. Word got out that he was collecting documents, and so eventually people would refer others who had taken documents to him.” Sometimes he encountered a reluctance to turn over the originals, until he shared with them the outlines of the cija’s objective and paths to accountability. “At that point, they would usually relent, understanding that his use for them was the best use.”

As his profile in rebel territory grew, Mustafa remained highly secretive. But, from time to time, he asked his father-in-law for introductions to other defected military and intelligence officers. By now, Saadeddin recalled, “I knew the nature of his work, but I didn’t discuss it with him.” There was an understanding that it was best to compartmentalize any sensitive information, for the sake of the family. “Sometimes my wife didn’t even know what I was doing,” Saadeddin said. “But I do know that, at a certain point, through his interviews, Mustafa came to know these defected officers even better than I did.”

In 2014, Wiley restructured the cija’s Syrian team; as deputy chief of investigations, Mustafa now presided over all the group’s provincial cells. “He was very good at finding documents, and he understood evidence and law,” Wiley said. “But he was also respected by his peers. And he had a natural empathy, which translated into him being a very good interviewer” of victims and perpetrators alike. According to Omar, Mustafa often cut short his appearances at social gatherings, citing family or work. “I know it’s a cliché, but he really was a family guy,” Wiley told me. “But where he excelled in our view—because we don’t need a bunch of good family guys, to be blunt—is that he could execute.”

That July, Assad’s General Intelligence Directorate apparently learned of the cija’s activities, long before the group had been named in the press. In a document that was sent to at least ten intelligence branches—and which was later captured by the cija—the directorate identified Mustafa as “vice-chairman” of the group, and also listed the names of the leading investigators within each of the cija’s governorate cells. At the bottom of the document, the head of the directorate handwrote orders to “arrest them along with their collaborators.”

By now, Western governments, which had pledged to support secular opposition groups, found the situation in northern Syria unpalatable; there was no way to guarantee that weapons given to a secular armed faction would not end up in jihadi hands. Saadeddin had begun to lose hope in the revolution—a sentiment that grew only stronger when Assad’s forces killed more than a thousand civilians with sarin gas, and the Obama Administration backed away from its “red-line” warning of retaliation. “At that point, I lost all faith in the international community,” Saadeddin told me. “I felt that they didn’t want Syria to become liberated—they wanted Syria to stay as it was.” He moved into the defected officers’ camp in southern Turkey, where he remained—feeling “rotten,” consumed by a sense of impotence and frustration—for most of the next decade.

I First Came Into Contact with the cija late in the summer of 2015. By that point, the group had smuggled more than six hundred thousand documents out of Syria, and had prepared a legal brief that assigned individual criminal responsibility for the torture and murder of thousands of people in detention centers to senior members of the Syrian security-intelligence apparatus—including Assad himself. In the following years, the cija expanded its operations to Iraq, Myanmar, Libya, and Ukraine. But Syria was always at the core.

“In terms of the opposition overrunning regime territory—that effectively ceased in September, 2015, when the Russians came in,” Wiley recalled. In the following years, Russian fighter jets pummelled areas under rebel control, while fighters from Russian mercenary groups, Iranian militias, and Hezbollah reinforced Assad’s troops on the ground. In time, the confrontation lines settled, with the country effectively carved into areas under regime, opposition, Turkish, and Kurdish control. But Mustafa and other investigators continued to identify troves of documents, scattered among various hidden sites. “We’d acquire them from different places, and then concentrate them,” Wiley said. Omar told me that it was best to keep files as close to the border as possible, to limit the chance of their being destroyed in the event that the regime took back ground. “Mustafa would sometimes spend a week or more prepping for document extractions,” Omar said. “He would sleep in tents,” in camps filled with other displaced civilians, “while he waited for the right moment to move the files closer to the border.”

At the cija’s headquarters, in Western Europe, the organization built cases against senior intelligence officers, like the double agent Khaled al-Halabi, and provided evidence to European prosecutors who were investigating lesser targets all over the continent. In recent years, Western prosecutors and police agencies have sent hundreds of requests for investigative assistance to the cija headquarters; when the answers can’t be found in the existing files, analysts refer the inquiries, via Mick, the Australian in southern Turkey, to the Syrians on the ground. “We wouldn’t tell them who’s asking, or who the suspects are,” Wiley said. “We’d just say, ‘O.K., we’re interested in witnesses to a particular crime base’—a security-intelligence facility, a static killing, an execution, that kind of thing. And then they would identify witnesses and do a screening interview.” When requests came through, Mick told me, “Mustafa was usually the first team member that I went to, because his networks were so good.”

During the peak years of the pandemic, Mustafa identified and collected witness statements against a trio of Syrian isis members who had been active in a remote village in the deserts of central Syria and were now scattered across Western Europe. All three men were arrested after his death.

Perhaps Mustafa’s most enduring contribution to the cija’s casework is found in one of the group’s most comprehensive, confidential investigative briefs, which I read at the headquarters this spring. It’s a three-hundred-page document, with almost thirteen hundred footnotes, establishing individual criminal responsibility for war crimes carried out during the regime’s 2012 siege of Baba Amr, a neighborhood in the southern part of Mustafa’s home city, Homs. Other cases have centered on torture in detention facilities; this is the first Syrian war-crimes brief that focusses on the conduct of hostilities, and it spells out, in astonishing and historic detail, a litany of crimes, ranging from indiscriminate shelling to mass executions of civilians who were rounded up and killed in warehouses and factories as regime forces swept through. The Homs Brief—for which Mustafa collected much of the underlying evidence—also assigns criminal responsibility to individual commanders within the Syrian Army’s 18th Tank Division, which carried out the assault.

“He thought he was contributing to a better Syria,” Wiley said. “When—and what it would look like—was unsure. But he believed in what he was doing. He could have fucked off years ago. We probably could have gotten him to Canada. We talked about it, because one of his daughters had a congenital heart issue.” Nevertheless, he stayed.

Last year, Mustafa bought an apartment on the eleventh floor of a new tower block in Antakya. Rula’s aunt moved into the same building, a couple of stories below. Her parents left the defected officers’ camp and moved into another apartment block, a short walk up the road. A few months later, Mick recalled, “Mustafa said to me, ‘When I’m at home with my family, it doesn’t matter what’s happening outside—it doesn’t matter if there’s a war. When I’m at home, I’m at peace.’ ”

Last December, Mick was visiting Mustafa’s apartment when the floor began to shake. “It spooked me—it was my first time feeling this kind of tremor,” Mick recalled. Mustafa laughed and said that they happen “all the time.” Then he went to check on Rula and the children, who reported that they hadn’t even felt it.

A couple of months later, Mick awoke to news of the catastrophic earthquake and tried to call members of his Syrian team. But the cellular networks were down in Antakya, and it was impossible for him to travel there, because the local airport’s runway had buckled, along with many local roads.

Saadeddin’s sister was dug out of the complex alive; her husband survived as well, but died in a hospital soon afterward, without anyone in the family knowing where he was. On the fourth day of search-and-rescue operations, Mustafa’s passport was found in the rubble. Then his laptop, then his wife’s handbag. “When they found the bodies,” Omar said, “Mustafa was hugging his daughter, his wife was hugging their son, and the other two children were hugging each other.”

Omar spent the next several days sleeping in his car, along with his wife and six children. Thousands of aftershocks shook the region, and, by the time I met with him, a few hundred metres from the Syrian border, he was so rattled that he reacted to everyday sounds as if they might signal a building’s collapse. His breath was short and his eyes welled with tears; Mustafa had been one of his best friends, and he had also lost eleven relatives to the quake, all of whom had been displaced from the same village in northern Syria. Then his young son walked into the room, and he turned his head. “We try to hide from our children our fear and our grief, so that they don’t feel as if we are weak,” he said.

A few weeks after the earthquake, there was an empty seat at a prestigious international-criminal-investigations course, in the Hague. Mustafa had been scheduled to attend. “We can mitigate the effects of war, except bad luck, but we didn’t factor an earthquake into the plan, institutionally,” Wiley told me. Mick coördinated humanitarian assistance for displaced investigators, and, as Wiley put it, “the operational posture came back really quickly.” Omar has now taken over Mustafa’s leadership duties. “Keep in mind how resilient this cadre is,” Wiley continued. “They’re already all refugees, perhaps with the rare exception. They had already lost their homes, lost all their stuff.”

It was the middle of April, more than two months after the quake. Much of Antakya had been completely flattened, and what still stood was cracked and broken, completely abandoned, and poised to collapse. Mick and I made our way through the old city on foot; the alleys were too narrow for digging equipment to go through, and so we found ourselves climbing over rubble, as if the buildings had fallen the day before. The pets of those entombed in the collapsed buildings followed us, still wearing their collars—bewildered, brand-new strays. ♦

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It was 4:17 A.M. on February 6th in Antakya, an ancient Turkish city near the Syrian border, when the earth tore open and people’s beds began to shake. On the third floor of an apartment in the Ekinci neighborhood, Anwar Saadeddin, a former brigadier general in the Syrian Army, awoke to the sounds of glass breaking, cupboard doors banging, and jars of tahini and cured eggplant spilling onto the floor. He climbed out of bed, but, for almost thirty seconds, he was unable to keep his footing; the building was moving side to side. When the earthquake subsided, he tried to call his daughter Rula, who lived down the road, but the cellular network was down.

Thirty seconds after the first quake, the building started moving again, this time up and down, with such violence that an exterior wall sheared open, and rain started pouring in. The noise was tremendous—concrete splitting, rebar bending, plates shattering, neighbors screaming. When the shaking stopped, about a minute later, Saadeddin, who is in his late sixties, and his wife walked down three flights of stairs, dressed in pajamas and sandals, and went out into the cold.

“All of Antakya was black—there was no electricity anywhere,” Saadeddin recalled. Thousands of the city’s buildings had collapsed. Survivors spilled into the streets, crowding rubble-strewn alleyways and searching for open ground, as minarets toppled and glass shards fluttered down from tower blocks. The general and his wife set off in the direction of the building where Rula lived, with her husband, Mustafa, and their four children.

A third quake shook the ground. When Saadeddin made it to his daughter’s apartment block, flashes of lighting illuminated what was now a fourteen-story grave. The building—which had been completed less than two years earlier—had twisted as it toppled over, crushing many of the residents. Saadeddin felt his body drained of all emotion, almost as if it didn’t belong to him.

Saadeddin was not the only person searching for Rula and her family. For the past decade, her husband, Mustafa, had quietly served as the deputy chief of Syria investigations for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, a group that has captured more than a million pages of documents from Syrian military and intelligence facilities. Using these files, lawyers at the CIJA have prepared some of the most comprehensive war-crimes cases since the Nuremberg trials, targeting senior Syrian regime officers—including the President, Bashar al-Assad. After the earthquake, the group directed its investigative focus into a search-and-rescue operation for members of its own Syrian team, many of whom had been displaced to southern Turkey after more than a decade of war. By the end of the third day, nearly everyone was accounted for. Two investigators had lost children; one of them had also lost his wife. But Mustafa was still missing.

For as long as Mustafa had been working for the CIJA, the group had kept his identity secret—even after it captured a Syrian intelligence document that showed that the regime knew about his investigative work and was actively hunting him down. “He was probably my best investigator,” Mustafa’s supervisor, an Australian who goes by Mick, told me, during a recent visit to the Turkish-Syrian border. Documents that Mustafa obtained, and witness interviews that he conducted, have assisted judicial proceedings in the United States, France, Belgium, Germany, and several other European jurisdictions. According to a CIJA estimate, Mustafa “either directly obtained or supported in the acquisition” of more than two hundred thousand pages of internal Syrian regime documents, likely making him—by sheer volume of evidence collected—the most prolific war-crimes investigator in history.

Twelve years into the Syrian war, at least half the population has been displaced, often multiple times, under varied circumstances of individual tragedy. No one knows the actual death toll—not even to the nearest hundred thousand. And yet the Syrian regime’s crimes continue apace. “The prisons are full,” Bill Wiley, the CIJA’s founder and executive director, told me. “All the offenses that started being carried out at scale in 2011 are still being perpetrated. Unlawful detention, physical abuse amounting to torture, extrajudicial killing, sexual offenses—all of that continues. War crimes on the battlefield, particularly in the context of aerial operations. There are still chemical attacks. It all continues. But, as long as there’s the drip, drip, drip of Western prosecutions, pursuant to universal jurisdiction, it’s really difficult to envision the normalization of the regime.”

Before the Syrian revolution, Mustafa was a trial lawyer, living and working in Al-Rastan, a suburb of the central city of Homs. He and his wife, Rula, had three small children, and Rula was pregnant with the fourth. In early 2011, when Syrians took to the streets to protest against the regime—which had ruled for almost half a century—Assad declared that anyone who did not contribute to “burying sedition” was “a part of it.” Suddenly Mustafa was caught in a delicate position, since many of Rula’s male relatives were military officers.

Her father and her uncles had joined the Syrian armed forces as young men, and served Assad’s father for many years before they served him. In the mid-nineties, Assad’s older brother died in a car crash, and he was called back from his studies in London and sent to a military academy in Homs. Eventually, he joined a staff officers’ course, where Anwar Saadeddin—then a colonel and a military engineer—says he spent a year and a half in his class.

Assad became President in 2000, after his father died, and for the next decade Saadeddin carried on with his duties without complaint. In 2003, Saadeddin was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. At the outset of the revolution, his younger son was a lieutenant, and he was two years from retirement.

Mustafa and Rula’s fourth child was born on April 5, 2011. Three days later, security forces shot a number of protesters in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, including a disabled man, who was unable to run away. They dragged him from the site and returned his mutilated corpse to his family the following evening. From then on, Homs was the site of some of the largest anti-regime protests—and the most violent crackdown.

On April 19th, thousands of people gathered for a sit-in beneath a clock tower. At about midnight, officers warned that anyone who didn’t leave voluntarily would be removed by force. A couple of hours passed; a thousand people remained. At dawn, the people of Homs awoke to traces of a massacre. A witness later reported that religious leaders who had stayed to treat the wounded and to tend to the dead were summarily executed. Several others recalled that the bodies were removed with dump trucks, and that the blood of the dead and wounded was washed away with hoses.

The day after the massacre, according to documents that were later captured from Assad’s highest-level security committee, the regime decided to embark on a “new phase” in the crackdown, to “demonstrate the power and capacity of the state.” Nine days later, regime forces killed at least nineteen protesters in Al-Rastan, where Mustafa and Rula lived. Mustafa wasn’t involved in politics or human-rights work, beyond discussions of basic democratic reforms, but he was appalled by the overtly criminal manner in which security forces and associated militias carried out their campaign with impunity. Locals formed neighborhood-protection units, and soon took up arms against the state.

A few months later, Mustafa briefly sneaked out of Syria to attend a training session in Turkey, led by Bill Wiley, a Canadian war-crimes investigator who had previously worked for various tribunals and the International Criminal Court. Wiley, and others in his world, had noticed a jurisdictional gap in accountability for Syria and had begun casting about for Syrian lawyers who might be up for a perilous, but worthy, task. Although there was no tribunal set up for Syria, and Russia and China had blocked efforts to refer Syria to the I.C.C., Wiley and his associates had reasoned that the process of collecting evidence is purely a matter of risk tolerance and logistics. The work of criminal investigators is different from that of human-rights N.G.O.s: groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch produce and disseminate reports on horrific violations and abuse, but Wiley trained Mustafa and the other Syrians in attendance to collect the kind of evidence that could allow prosecutors to assign individual criminal responsibility to senior military and intelligence officers. A video showing tanks firing on unarmed protesters might influence public opinion, but a pile of military communications that proved which commanders were in charge of the operation could one day land someone in jail.

“The first task was to ferret out primary-source material—documents, in particular, generated by the regime,” Wiley told me. “We were looking for prima-facie evidence, not intelligence product or information to inform the public.”

Mustafa instantly grasped the urgency of the project. By day, he carried on with his law practice. But, in secret, he started building up sources within the armed opposition. As they captured new territory, he would go into security and intelligence facilities, box up documents, and move them to secret locations, like farmhouses or caves, farther from the confrontation lines.

“By 2012, we had already started to get some structure,” Wiley recalled. He secured funding from Western governments, and eventually the group settled on a name: the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. “We had our guys in Raqqa, Idlib, Aleppo, and so forth—at least one guy in all the key areas,” he said. From there, the CIJA built out each team—between two and four individuals, working under the head of each provincial cell. “And Mustafa was our core guy in Homs.”

Anwar Saadeddin soon found himself wielding his position in order to rescue relatives who were caught up in the conflict. His younger son, an Army lieutenant, was detained by military operatives on the outskirts of Damascus, after another officer in his brigade reported him for watching Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera. According to an internal military communication, which was later captured by the CIJA, Assad believed that foreign reporting on Syria amounted to “psychological warfare aimed at creating a state of internal chaos.”

When Saadeddin’s son was detained, he recalled, “I interfered just to decrease the detention period to thirty days.” Soon afterward, he learned that Mustafa was a target of military intelligence in Homs, where the local facility, Branch 261, was headed by one of Saadeddin’s friends: Mohammed Zamrini.

Mustafa wasn’t calling for an armed rebellion, and, at the time, neither the regime nor his father-in-law knew of his connection to Wiley and the CIJA. But rebel factions were active in Al-Rastan, and Mustafa was known to have urged them not to destroy any public establishments. To hard-liners in the regime, such interaction was considered tantamount to collaboration. “So I went with Mustafa to the branch,” Saadeddin told me. Zamrini agreed to detain him as a formality—for about twelve hours, with light interrogations and no torture or abuse—so that he could essentially cross Mustafa off the list.

In the next few months, the security situation rapidly deteriorated. The Army encircled rebellious neighborhoods near Homs and shelled them to the ground. Saadeddin’s son, who was serving near Damascus, was arrested a second time, and in order to get him released Saadeddin had to supplicate himself in the office of Assef Shawkat, Assad’s brother-in-law and the deputy minister of defense. In Homs, Saadeddin started driving Mustafa to and from work in his light-blue Kia; as a brigadier general, he could move passengers through checkpoints without them being searched or arrested.

But Saadeddin was beginning to find his position untenable. He sensed that the regime’s policy of total violence would lead to the destruction of the country. That spring, he began to share his fears and frustrations with close colleagues and friends, including the commander of his son’s brigade. But it was a perilous game: Assad’s highest-level security committee had instructed the heads of regional security branches to hunt down “security agents who are irresolute or unenthusiastic” in carrying out their duties. According to a U.N. inquiry, some officers were detained and tortured for having “attempted to spare civilians” on whom they had been ordered to fire.

That spring, Saadeddin’s car was stopped at one of the checkpoints that ordinarily waved him through. It was the first time that his position served not as protection against interrogation but as a reason to question his loyalty. The regime was quickly losing territory, and as the conflict spiralled out of control many senior officers found themselves approaching the limits of their willingness to go along. He and his brothers had “reached a point where we would either stand by the regime and have to take part in atrocities, or we would have to defect,” he told me.

That July, Saadeddin gathered his brothers, his sons, two nephews, and several other military officers in front of a small camera, somewhere near the Turkish-Syrian border. Dressed in his uniform, he announced that the army to which he had pledged his allegiance some four decades earlier had “deviated from its mission” and turned on its citizens instead. To honor the Syrian public’s “steadfastness in the face of barbaric assaults by Assad’s bloody gangs, we have decided to defect from the Army,” he said. It was one of the largest mass defections of Syrian officers, and his plan was to take a leading role in the rebellion—to fight for freedom “until martyrdom or victory.” In response, Saadeddin told me, their former colleagues sent troops to destroy their houses and those of their family members. They expropriated their land and killed several of their relatives.

By now, the regime had ceded swaths of Syria’s border with Turkey to various rebel forces. Saadeddin moved his family across the border and into a refugee camp that the Turkish government had set up for military and intelligence officers who defected. Then he went back to Syria, to try to bring some order and unity to the rebel factions that were battling his former colleagues.

But Mustafa and his family stayed behind in Al-Rastan, which was now firmly in rebel hands. The regime’s loss of control at the Turkish border meant that the CIJA could start moving its captured documents out of the country.

“It was complicated, reaching the border, because the confrontation lines were so fluid,” Wiley recalled. “And there were multiple bodies who were overtly hostile to CIJA”—not only the regime but also a growing number of extremist groups who were suspicious of anyone working for a Western N.G.O. During the first document extraction, a courier was shot and injured. During the next, another courier vanished with a suitcase full of documents. “Just fucking disappeared,” Wiley said. “Probably thought he could sell them.” Mustafa recruited a cousin to transport some files to Turkey. But, after the delivery, on the way back to Al-Rastan, the cousin took a minibus, and the vehicle was ambushed by regime troops. “He was shot, but it was unclear if he was wounded or dead when they took him away,” another Syrian CIJA investigator, whom I’ll call Omar, told me. For the next several weeks, regime agents blackmailed Mustafa, saying that for twenty thousand dollars they would release his cousin from custody. But, when Mustafa asked for proof of life, they failed to provide it—suggesting that the cousin had already died in custody.

By now, Wiley had issued new orders for the extraction process. “I said, ‘O.K., there needs to be a plan, and I need to know what the plan is,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘How are you getting from A to B? What risks are there between point A and point B? And how are you going to ameliorate those risks?’ As opposed to just throwing the shit in the car and going, ‘Well, God decides.’ ”

Saadeddin spent much of the next eighteen months trying to organize disparate rebel groups into a unified command. He travelled all over northern Syria, as rebels took new ground, and met with all manner of revolutionaries—from secular defectors to hard-line field commanders. By the summer of 2013, the regime had ceded control of most of northern Syria. But there was little cohesion between the rebel factions, and ISIS and Al Qaeda had come to exploit the power vacuum in rebel territory. At some point, Saadeddin recalled, he scolded a Tunisian ISIS commander for arousing sectarian and ethnic tensions, and imposing extremism onto local communities. “He responded that I was an apostate, and suggested that I should be killed,” Saadeddin told me.

In Al-Rastan, a regime shell penetrated the walls of Mustafa’s house, but it didn’t explode. At that point, Rula and the children moved to Reyhanli, a small Turkish village that is so close to the border that you can eat at a kebab shop there while watching sheep graze in Syria. It was also a short drive from the defected officers’ camp, where Rula’s mother and several other relatives were living. But Mustafa stayed behind, to carry out his investigative work for the CIJA.

“When new areas were liberated, the security branches were raided, and many people took files,” Omar recalled. Some of them didn’t grasp the significance of the files; at least one soldier burned them for warmth. “But most people knew the documents would be useful, someday—they just didn’t know what to do with them. So they just kept them. And the challenge was in identifying who had what, where.”

But, before long, Omar continued, “Mustafa built a wide network of contacts in rebel territory. Word got out that he was collecting documents, and so eventually people would refer others who had taken documents to him.” Sometimes he encountered a reluctance to turn over the originals, until he shared with them the outlines of the CIJA’s objective and paths to accountability. “At that point, they would usually relent, understanding that his use for them was the best use.”

As his profile in rebel territory grew, Mustafa remained highly secretive. But, from time to time, he asked his father-in-law for introductions to other defected military and intelligence officers. By now, Saadeddin recalled, “I knew the nature of his work, but I didn’t discuss it with him.” There was an understanding that it was best to compartmentalize any sensitive information, for the sake of the family. “Sometimes my wife didn’t even know what I was doing,” Saadeddin said. “But I do know that, at a certain point, through his interviews, Mustafa came to know these defected officers even better than I did.”

In 2014, Wiley restructured the CIJA’s Syrian team; as deputy chief of investigations, Mustafa now presided over all the group’s provincial cells. “He was very good at finding documents, and he understood evidence and law,” Wiley said. “But he was also respected by his peers. And he had a natural empathy, which translated into him being a very good interviewer” of victims and perpetrators alike. According to Omar, Mustafa often cut short his appearances at social gatherings, citing family or work. “I know it’s a cliché, but he really was a family guy,” Wiley told me. “But where he excelled in our view—because we don’t need a bunch of good family guys, to be blunt—is that he could execute.”

That July, Assad’s General Intelligence Directorate apparently learned of the CIJA’s activities, long before the group had been named in the press. In a document that was sent to at least ten intelligence branches—and which was later captured by the CIJA—the directorate identified Mustafa as “vice-chairman” of the group, and also listed the names of the leading investigators within each of the CIJA’s governorate cells. At the bottom of the document, the head of the directorate handwrote orders to “arrest them along with their collaborators.”

By now, Western governments, which had pledged to support secular opposition groups, found the situation in northern Syria unpalatable; there was no way to guarantee that weapons given to a secular armed faction would not end up in jihadi hands. Saadeddin had begun to lose hope in the revolution—a sentiment that grew only stronger when Assad’s forces killed more than a thousand civilians with sarin gas, and the Obama Administration backed away from its “red-line” warning of retaliation. “At that point, I lost all faith in the international community,” Saadeddin told me. “I felt that they didn’t want Syria to become liberated—they wanted Syria to stay as it was.” He moved into the defected officers’ camp in southern Turkey, where he remained—feeling “rotten,” consumed by a sense of impotence and frustration—for most of the next decade.

I first came into contact with the CIJA late in the summer of 2015. By that point, the group had smuggled more than six hundred thousand documents out of Syria, and had prepared a legal brief that assigned individual criminal responsibility for the torture and murder of thousands of people in detention centers to senior members of the Syrian security-intelligence apparatus—including Assad himself. In the following years, the CIJA expanded its operations to Iraq, Myanmar, Libya, and Ukraine. But Syria was always at the core.

“In terms of the opposition overrunning regime territory—that effectively ceased in September, 2015, when the Russians came in,” Wiley recalled. In the following years, Russian fighter jets pummelled areas under rebel control, while fighters from Russian mercenary groups, Iranian militias, and Hezbollah reinforced Assad’s troops on the ground. In time, the confrontation lines settled, with the country effectively carved into areas under regime, opposition, Turkish, and Kurdish control. But Mustafa and other investigators continued to identify troves of documents, scattered among various hidden sites. “We’d acquire them from different places, and then concentrate them,” Wiley said. Omar told me that it was best to keep files as close to the border as possible, to limit the chance of their being destroyed in the event that the regime took back ground. “Mustafa would sometimes spend a week or more prepping for document extractions,” Omar said. “He would sleep in tents,” in camps filled with other displaced civilians, “while he waited for the right moment to move the files closer to the border.”

At the CIJA’s headquarters, in Western Europe, the organization built cases against senior intelligence officers, like the double agent Khaled al-Halabi, and provided evidence to European prosecutors who were investigating lesser targets all over the continent. In recent years, Western prosecutors and police agencies have sent hundreds of requests for investigative assistance to the CIJA headquarters; when the answers can’t be found in the existing files, analysts refer the inquiries, via Mick, the Australian in southern Turkey, to the Syrians on the ground. “We wouldn’t tell them who’s asking, or who the suspects are,” Wiley said. “We’d just say, ‘O.K., we’re interested in witnesses to a particular crime base’—a security-intelligence facility, a static killing, an execution, that kind of thing. And then they would identify witnesses and do a screening interview.” When requests came through, Mick told me, “Mustafa was usually the first team member that I went to, because his networks were so good.”

During the peak years of the pandemic, Mustafa identified and collected witness statements against a trio of Syrian ISIS members who had been active in a remote village in the deserts of central Syria and were now scattered across Western Europe. All three men were arrested after his death.

Perhaps Mustafa’s most enduring contribution to the CIJA’s casework is found in one of the group’s most comprehensive, confidential investigative briefs, which I read at the headquarters this spring. It’s a three-hundred-page document, with almost thirteen hundred footnotes, establishing individual criminal responsibility for war crimes carried out during the regime’s 2012 siege of Baba Amr, a neighborhood in the southern part of Mustafa’s home city, Homs. Other cases have centered on torture in detention facilities; this is the first Syrian war-crimes brief that focusses on the conduct of hostilities, and it spells out, in astonishing and historic detail, a litany of crimes, ranging from indiscriminate shelling to mass executions of civilians who were rounded up and killed in warehouses and factories as regime forces swept through. The Homs Brief—for which Mustafa collected much of the underlying evidence—also assigns criminal responsibility to individual commanders within the Syrian Army’s 18th Tank Division, which carried out the assault.

“He thought he was contributing to a better Syria,” Wiley said. “When—and what it would look like—was unsure. But he believed in what he was doing. He could have fucked off years ago. We probably could have gotten him to Canada. We talked about it, because one of his daughters had a congenital heart issue.” Nevertheless, he stayed.

Last year, Mustafa bought an apartment on the eleventh floor of a new tower block in Antakya. Rula’s aunt moved into the same building, a couple of stories below. Her parents left the defected officers’ camp and moved into another apartment block, a short walk up the road. A few months later, Mick recalled, “Mustafa said to me, ‘When I’m at home with my family, it doesn’t matter what’s happening outside—it doesn’t matter if there’s a war. When I’m at home, I’m at peace.’ ”

Last December, Mick was visiting Mustafa’s apartment when the floor began to shake. “It spooked me—it was my first time feeling this kind of tremor,” Mick recalled. Mustafa laughed and said that they happen “all the time.” Then he went to check on Rula and the children, who reported that they hadn’t even felt it.

A couple of months later, Mick awoke to news of the catastrophic earthquake and tried to call members of his Syrian team. But the cellular networks were down in Antakya, and it was impossible for him to travel there, because the local airport’s runway had buckled, along with many local roads.

Saadeddin’s sister was dug out of the complex alive; her husband survived as well, but died in a hospital soon afterward, without anyone in the family knowing where he was. On the fourth day of search-and-rescue operations, Mustafa’s passport was found in the rubble. Then his laptop, then his wife’s handbag. “When they found the bodies,” Omar said, “Mustafa was hugging his daughter, his wife was hugging their son, and the other two children were hugging each other.”

Omar spent the next several days sleeping in his car, along with his wife and six children. Thousands of aftershocks shook the region, and, by the time I met with him, a few hundred metres from the Syrian border, he was so rattled that he reacted to everyday sounds as if they might signal a building’s collapse. His breath was short and his eyes welled with tears; Mustafa had been one of his best friends, and he had also lost eleven relatives to the quake, all of whom had been displaced from the same village in northern Syria. Then his young son walked into the room, and he turned his head. “We try to hide from our children our fear and our grief, so that they don’t feel as if we are weak,” he said.

A few weeks after the earthquake, there was an empty seat at a prestigious international-criminal-investigations course, in the Hague. Mustafa had been scheduled to attend. “We can mitigate the effects of war, except bad luck, but we didn’t factor an earthquake into the plan, institutionally,” Wiley told me. Mick coördinated humanitarian assistance for displaced investigators, and, as Wiley put it, “the operational posture came back really quickly.” Omar has now taken over Mustafa’s leadership duties. “Keep in mind how resilient this cadre is,” Wiley continued. “They’re already all refugees, perhaps with the rare exception. They had already lost their homes, lost all their stuff.”

It was the middle of April, more than two months after the quake. Much of Antakya had been completely flattened, and what still stood was cracked and broken, completely abandoned, and poised to collapse. Mick and I made our way through the old city on foot; the alleys were too narrow for digging equipment to go through, and so we found ourselves climbing over rubble, as if the buildings had fallen the day before. The pets of those entombed in the collapsed buildings followed us, still wearing their collars—bewildered, brand-new strays. 

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