At Basel al-Sati's souvenir shop in a central Damascus market, socks bearing caricatures that ridicule ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and his once feared family now sell like hot cakes.

All strongmen have an element of caricature about them, yet there was little of Assad that fit the kind of strongman Sacha Baron Cohen spoofed in his 2012 comedy, The Dictator. Instead ...

The Assad regime thrived on erasing memory. Forced disappearances, propaganda and violence weren’t just tools of control; they were weapons aimed at obliterating the past. Anti-regime ...