As part of its monitoring of misinformation about Syria, this investigation reviews the August 2026 record of the "Kashaf" platform by the numbers: 125 claims that were checked and refuted, based on the site's own classification of outcomes, techniques and tags. The figures reveal a heavy reliance on recycled old material, and a concentration of misinformation waves around Damascus and the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Verification Outcomes: 114 Claims Did Not Survive Refutation
The classification of the month's claims shows that 88 of them (70%) fall under misleading news, while 24 claims (19%) were classified as false news, and only 11 items (9%) proved true, in addition to two claims that mixed the accurate with the misleading. These figures prove that more than nine in ten claims did not survive verification.
Deception Techniques: Old Clips in the Lead
An analysis of the 114 claims that did not survive verification reveals the dominance of the false-context technique: 48 claims (42%) relied on genuine material that was old or filmed elsewhere and presented as current events, while 34 claims (30%) took the form of entirely fabricated content, and the rest were spread across other techniques detailed in the chart. 47 of the 125 claims also relied on a video clip. The recycled material breaks down as follows:
- Old Syrian clips: scenes from earlier years republished as a current event.
- Clips filmed outside Syria: 12 clips filmed in Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, Turkey, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Jordan and Libya and circulated as if from inside Syria.
- Artificial-intelligence material: 5 claims relied on generated or technically altered images and videos.
Impersonating the Official Source: 14 Fabricated Statements and Communiques
Over the month, the "Kashaf" team detected 14 statements, communiques and decisions attributed to officials and official institutions that had issued none of them, in a technique that exploits public trust in the official source, and their official platforms carried no trace of them. The targeted parties break down as follows:
- The Syrian government and its institutions: two statements attributed to the interior and foreign ministers, and two decisions attributed to the Syrian Telecom company and the civil registry.
- The Israeli side: two statements attributed to the defence minister and the commander of the 210th Division, alleged evacuation warnings for Damascus airport, and an alleged official media directive.
- Other parties: an announcement attributed to the Kremlin, a statement to Lavrov, an Emirati communique on the Golan, two statements to SDF commanders, and a decision attributed to "FIFA".
The Geographic Map: Damascus and the Iraqi Border in Front
72 of the 125 claims carried the tag of a Syrian governorate, and Damascus topped this map with 24 claims, followed by Deir ez-Zor and Suwayda with 8 claims each. 53 claims also named an external party, led by Israel in 19 claims and then Iraq in 18. The Syrian-Iraqi border formed the most prominent wave of the month with 12 claims between 2 and 15 August about tank columns, reinforcements and clashes, 9 of which were old clips recirculated.
The Most Targeted Names: al-Sharaa in Front
The number of distinct tags accompanying the claims reached 203, 149 of which appeared only once, while the big names took the repetition. Among individuals, President Ahmad al-Sharaa led with 10 claims, followed by Hikmat al-Hijri and Asaad al-Shaibani with 5 each; among state institutions, the Syrian army led with 10 claims followed by Internal Security with 8, while the Israeli army appeared in 11 claims and the Popular Mobilization Forces in 6.
The Most Dangerous Pattern: Crimes Attributed to State Personnel
The investigation detected 12 claims in which killings, abductions or assaults were attributed to personnel affiliated with the Syrian state, from Tal Minin and Latakia to al-Bab, Homs and Tartus, and several carried an explicit sectarian or regional label for the supposed victim, an indicator of their use for incitement. The checks ended in a documented official denial, in a different perpetrator who confessed to the crime, in an edited photo and an old clip, or in a real incident wrongly attributed to the security body.
These figures come together to draw the picture of the month's misinformation, which relied mostly on recycling genuine scenes and attaching them to current flashpoints rather than on invention, with a notable presence of impersonated official sources. Yet these figures measure what reached the checking table, not the actual volume of what circulated in the digital space, and they do not record the platform from which each claim started.
