Why Assad is scaling down military readiness across Syria

 'The Syrian régime's decision to reduce the readiness of its army and armed forces has raised a panoply of questions related to the motivation and timing behind the decision on the military and economic conditions in Syria and raised the question as to whether the régime is seeking to convey specific messages to parties influencing Syrian affairs.

 On Jan. 10, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a circular ordering a rollback of army mobilization to regular level, meaning the level maintained nine years ago before the start of the conflict.

 According to the Enab Baladi opposition website, the decision stipulated “scaling down the combat readiness of the Syrian military departments by the order of 66% to 33% for administrative departments, 80% to 50% for military units affiliated thereto and 100% to 80% for ground forces and the navy. In hospitals, however, readiness was maintained at 80%.”

 Mohammed Adeeb, a political science researcher who lives in the countryside of Aleppo, said, “To maintain the same level of combat readiness, the régime requires a continued flow of support and funding. The régime has been garnering support from Iran ever since it joined its ally, the Assad régime, in the war against the Syrian revolution. However, it seems that Iranian funding for the régime’s army has stopped due to the economic conditions and international sanctions imposed on the Iranian régime.”

 Adeeb said the régime, through its decision to reduce the combat readiness of its forces, "is seeking to calm the anger of its Syrian supporters who started to long for their sons recruited in the army. The decision has been seemingly taken to allow soldiers and officers to visit their families.”



 Ahmad Hasan Abdel Qader, a political activist based in the countryside of Aleppo, said, “The decision to reduce the readiness of the régime army was [seemingly] based on a Russian order, as Russia wants to convey a message to the influential countries in Syrian affairs that the war has ended. Also, the régime is preparing itself for the upcoming phase, and the decision comes in the framework of Russian efforts to entrench Assad's rule and preserve his régime.”

 Hisham Eskif, deputy head of the political bureau of the opposition Al-Salam Brigade, said, “The direct reason behind the Syrian régime’s decision to scale down the readiness of its forces is its inability to bear the high costs that the permanent state of alert requires due to the deteriorating economic situation in Syria. Consequently, we might witness a rollback in the financial allocations to the army, meaning a reduction in food, fuel and other daily expenses.”

 The brigade is affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Eskif said, “The decision will not have a noticeable effect on the Idlib fronts in northwestern Syria, for example, because it does not apply to the militias supported by Russia nor the militias supported by Iran, and we have thus far not monitored any significant changes in the military situation of the régime forces in Idlib and its surroundings.”

 Abdulslam Abdulrzak, a researcher in military affairs living in Idlib, said, “The decision to scale down the readiness of the régime’s army is a pro-forma decision that will remain ineffective. It is merely intended to convey messages to the allied forces, primarily Iran, in order for them to resume their financial and military support for the régime’s army in the fight against the Islamic State [IS] in the Syrian desert, which is a vital land route for the Iranian forces and their affiliated militias to reach their areas of influence. The timing of the decision was not coincidental but coincided with the battles taking place in the desert. It is as if Assad wants to tell the Iranians, ‘If you want us to seriously participate in fighting IS in the desert, then you should continue to support us.’”

 Abdulrzak said, “The readiness of the régime’s army will not be affected by the de-escalation, as it can mobilize its forces in record time in case there is a need to involve the forces in a battle against the FSA or the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF].”

 Younes al-Karim, an economic researcher and analyst who lives in France, said, “The decision that Assad made to scale down the readiness of his army seems to be inevitable in light of the large deficit in the army’s budget, as Assad’s soldiers do not have enough food in their military barracks, and the state of resentment in the ranks of the army is increasing by day. The Assad régime is trying, through this decision, to absorb the anger of its soldiers.”

 Karim said, “The decision conveys several messages to many parties. It conveys a message to Turkey whereby the régime will not launch a battle against the FSA — Turkey’s ally in Idlib. It also conveys a message to the United States where it [Syria] will not launch a battle against the SDF in northeast Syria and a message to Israel whereby the Assad régime is not disturbed by the airstrikes directed at the Iranian forces in Syria.”

 Karim added, “Through its messages to the three influential countries in Syrian affairs, the régime is trying to get them to sympathize with it to mitigate the effects of the Caesar Act, and is preparing itself for the presidential elections scheduled for mid-2021.'

Syria: Which way forward under Biden?

 Frederic C. Hof

 'March 2021 will mark the tenth anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s decision to wage war on peaceful protestors. Assad’s decision would produce refugee flows that would ultimately change the politics of Europe in ways that delighted the Kremlin. It would also lead to the destruction of the Syrian state. And it would produce American policy responses that would only deepen the crisis while compromising the credibility of the United States, both inside Syria and far beyond. Now a new administration must grapple with this problem from hell. What is to be done?

 The default position of President Joe Biden and his team will likely be along the lines of trying to manage the mess. In fairness, however, its Syria inheritance from the Donald Trump administration is not as toxic as what the Barack Obama administration bequeathed to its successor.

 Eager to do a nuclear deal with Assad’s regional champion, Iran, President Obama adamantly refused to lift a finger to oppose or punish the mass civilian homicide survival strategy of the Syrian regime, even as Obama deployed troops to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in northeastern Syria and Iraq. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported on a letter from Obama to Iran’s Supreme Leader, assuring him that US military operations in Syria would not target his client. Already encouraged by the 2013 “red line” collapse, Assad made maximum sanguinary use of a renewed and gratuitous blank check.

 The Trump administration twice responded militarily to regime chemical attacks on civilians, disproving the Obama thesis that punishing and deterring Assad’s Syria would only lead to invasion and occupation. The slippery slope to escalation argument of a supine Obama administration was further undermined when a Russian attack across the Euphrates River was routed. The Trump administration accelerated the battle against ISIS in the northeast, leading to the erasure of the physical “caliphate.” But even this victory was spoiled by bad policy. The thoughtlessly casual Obama administration decision to partner against ISIS with the Syrian chapter of the terrorist PKK both alienated Turkey and prolonged the battle against ISIS, employing as it did a militia instead of professionals against armed extremists. And then President Trump, after speaking to Turkey’s president, casually betrayed the Kurds while administration officials proclaimed that the post-combat stabilization of areas liberated from ISIS was just too hard for Americans to organize.



 Parties interested in promoting the political fortunes of Assad—starting with the dictator himself—are trying hard to take advantage of the new administration’s preoccupations. The Syrian regime has argued consistently that US economic sanctions—not its own corruption, incompetence, and brutality—are predominantly responsible for the Syrian economy’s failure. This line is supported by the Carter Center, which is doubling down on President Jimmy Carter’s 2018 New York Times op-ed in which he identified the lifting of sanctions as the key to Syria’s economic recovery and called for gradual diplomatic reengagement with Assad—the twenty-first century’s greatest war criminal to date.

 Undoubtedly, the Biden administration should review sanctions placed on regime kingpins and institutions to try to ensure that nothing the US does to hold them accountable adds even marginally to the suffering Syrians endure due to their misrule. Sanctions can often be blunt instruments producing unintended effects. But there is no need for the new administration to take instruction from those seeking to solidify the rule of Syria’s principal destroyer.

 Unless challenged again militarily by the Russians or other regime enablers, the Biden administration will try in the near-term to keep Syria on the back burner or off the policy stove altogether, continuing to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees and to Syrians living in areas not controlled by the regime. Indeed, every effort should be made—partners included—to provide emergency aid to all needy Syrians regardless of where they live. Yet doing so in regime-controlled areas is, as the United Nations has discovered, difficult, as members of the regime’s entourage have successfully garnered self-enriching aid contracts.

 What to do operationally in areas of northeastern Syria where American forces and local partners seek to prevent the resurgence of ISIS should be a matter of urgent internal review. A prominent American former diplomat has suggested that the anti-ISIS mission be handed to Russia and the regime, along with the areas liberated from ISIS in northeastern Syria. The Islamist extremists trying desperately to mount an insurgency comeback will pray that the advice be accepted. They know all too well that the caliphate never would have existed absent the misrule of Assad in Syria and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq.



 In terms of an overall objective for Syria, political transition producing legitimate governance remains the goal. It will not happen in the next twenty minutes, figuratively speaking. But Syria under Assad and his entourage will never be anything short of a serious threat to the peace. It will be a menace to its neighbors, a promoter of Islamist extremism and terrorism, and a platform for Iranian regional hegemony. Under Assad, Syria will always threaten to empty itself, even if—or perhaps especially—reconstruction funding is lavished on an insatiable regime.

 There are no near-term fixes for Syria. The most damaging option in terms of American interests and the future of Syria would be to assume that Assad has won and crawl into his oily embrace. It will be important to continue supporting the UN Special Envoy and to uphold the international community’s political transition decisions as embodied in the 2012 Final Communique of the Action Group on Syria and Security Council Resolution 2254. Efforts to build a full record supporting the eventual legal accountability of Assad and his associates should be redoubled and, as recommended in 2019 by the Syria Support Group, an investigation into Russian war crimes in Syria should be undertaken.

 The new administration must commit itself to punishing militarily any renewed campaign of mass killings of civilians and state terror undertaken by the Assad regime. Regime stalwarts were heading for the exits in the summer of 2013 when President Obama erased his own chemical weapons red line. Senior Biden administration officials have publicly acknowledged regret for the Syria policies of the Obama administration. The sincerity of those regrets and their operational significance will be tested if the Assad regime resumes mass slaughter, whether by chemical weapons, barrel bombs, or any other instruments of state terror in its inventory.

 American action and inaction in Syria instructed adversaries of the US how hard and how far they could push in Ukraine and elsewhere. Syria has never been a candidate for self-containment. It is possible that ten years of bad American policy has rendered thoughtfulness and discipline in defining objectives and devising a strategy useless. Assad and his regime are not about to empty their prisons, welcome home refugees, or share power with anyone. They await, patiently, the Western surrender their enablers assure them is sure to come.'

Settlement pacts in Syria's Daraa: A hunt for dissidents

 

 ' “Listen, this settlement of yours is worthless. It's just a smart way for the State to distinguish civilians from armed militants.”

 These were the last words an officer in the Special Tasks branch at Mazzeh airport in Damascus said to activist Zaid al-Haraki (who uses this alias to conceal his identity from the Syrian régime) before the officer began torturing him.

 After the war ended in South Syria, members of the opposition agreed in July 2018 to the terms of a settlement sponsored by the Russian Military Police, which supports Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. Left with no other choice, they thought that doing so would protect them from the régime's security forces, which had recaptured the region.

 According to the settlement, displaced Syrians could return to their cities and the Syrian régime was obliged to release hundreds of detainees, address mandatory military service issues, reduce arrests and violations, as well as improve services in those areas. Under the settlement, members of the opposition and defectors from the régime would also have the right to remain in Daraa and other regions, provided they surrendered their weapons.

 However, more than two years after the agreement, the settlement has failed to achieve its goal of ridding the towns bordering Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territories from any régime-supporting Iranian presence. Moreover, régime forces have failed to fully enforce its influence in the governorate of Daraa.

 The city, which was the cradle of the Syrian revolution, continues to experience chaos and insecurity as clashes between régime forces and the remaining opposition pockets continue, with multiple assassinations, instance of torture incidents and other violations being committed against the opposition, and a complete absence of protective measures or supervision over the parties’ implementation of the terms of the agreement.

 Al-Haraki, a native to Daraa, said: “I was headed to the city of Izra'a on 14 April 2019 carrying the settlement card which I thought was an official document that allowed me to move around freely and safely. Suddenly, a vehicle of the Syrian régime's Air Force Intelligence department kidnapped me in al-Hirak city, East of Daraa.”

 Al-Haraki continues: “I was taken to the Special Tasks branch located at Mazzeh airport in Damascus. There, they interrogated me about my connection with the Free Army factions of the opposition and about my activism.”

 Al-Haraki added that when he said he was part of the settlement and that he carried its card, which made his arrest “arbitrary, and the interrogation illegal or legitimate,” he was given the aforementioned response. “It was a clear statement by the officer that the Syrian régime is using this settlement at this stage to punish those who opposed it or carried arms against it once it gets a proper security grip over the area.”



 Al-Haraki described one of the methods of torture to which he was subjected: his arms were bound in metal chains attached to the ceiling, and he was left suspended for several hours. During his nine months of detention, he witnessed the deaths of three fellow detainees as a result of psychological and physical torture. One of them, Mohammed Mahmoud Badran from Douma, was accused of liquidating prisoners from Syrian régime forces during the eastern Ghouta battles between the régime and opposition factions in 2018.

 On December 18, 2019, Al-Haraki was released by the Syrian régime under an amnesty issued by the Security Committee in Damascus. He was subsequently conscripted into military service in the régime army.

 Al-Haraki says: “I was sent to the fronts in northern Syria with a number of my colleagues. We received orders to liquidate everyone. They made us believe we were fighting ISIS only to find out that we were fighting civilians.”

  Al-Haraki wanted to defect but did not succeed, until he received news that his brother, a defector from the régime's army who had agreed to the 2018 settlement, had been killed under torture in Saydnaya prison in Damascus on June 29, 2020.

 Al-Haraki says: “I was shocked and almost lost my mind. I applied for leave of absence to go home, and that's when I decided to defect and never return to my unit.”

 In a report titled “On the Ruins of the Second Settlement” published on 8 January, the “Daraa Martyrs’ Documentation Office” (DMDO) reported the assassination of 83 military dissidents who had accepted the settlement, in addition to 31 others who did not agree to it.

 While similar to the agreements signed in the same year in the eastern Ghouta in Damascus countryside or the northern countryside of Homs, Daraa's agreement had one main difference, which was, according to Syrian journalist Basil al-Ghazawi, the régime's reliance on figures considered to be in the opposition at the time, to promote these pacts.

 Al-Ghazawi, who is native to Daraa, said: “The régime had deceived everyone. Some of those who were on the fronts fighting the régime had come to see the settlement as their only safety raft. But less than a month later, everyone felt deceived as detainees were not released; defectors’ settlement was not respected; mandatory military service issues were not addressed; services were not provided, and régime abuses did not end as arrests continued.”

 Al-Ghazawi added: "Assassinations, arrests and violations were not new to the régime, as they have always happened, before and after the settlements. People of Daraa have been killed by air shelling, internationally banned weapons, such as napalm, and thousands were arrested. What is new now is their silent death; death under the banner of treaties and conventions."

 The DMDO echoed al-Ghazawi's testimony, saying in its report: "2020 witnessed the demise of many martyrs and victims and a significant increase in the frequency of assassinations in conjunction with the continued arrests, forced disappearances of civilians and fighters of the 'settled' factions as well as defectors who joined the settlement."

 During the interview, al-Ghazawi listed the régime's most significant violations of the agreement since 2018. These included the erection of over 40 check-points for the Fourth Division West of Daraa, although the agreement stipulated the army's withdrawal to the pre-2011 barracks. Added to this was the non-disclosure of the fates of pre-settlement detainees, the barring of thousands of employees from returning to their jobs, the security forces’ harassment of people, and the recruitment of the young men of Horan—the province where Daraa is located—into militias of the security branches of the régime.

 Lawyer and jurist Asim al-Zoubi, Director of the Documentation Office at the Ahrar Horan Assembly foundation, said that his local organisation had documented the arrest of 1,293 people by Syrian régime forces since the beginning of the settlement through October 2020. Of those, 183 were arrested while trying to illegally migrate to opposition areas in northern Syria to escape the Syrian régime's failure to comply with the settlement agreement.

 “The Office also documented 528 operations and assassination attempts that resulted in 378 deaths and left 230 wounded, most of whom were former members and leaders of opposition factions. Syrian régime intelligence is behind the majority of these operations. We revealed this in an investigative report we had published,” al-Zoubi said.



 On 7th December, following criticism of the settlement, Syrian régime forces concluded a new settlement in Daraa. Similar to the 2018 pact, the new agreement guarantees that those wanted by the régime would not be prosecuted, and removes the names of men who did not join the compulsory or reserve military service from the lists of régime checkpoints in the area.

 The new settlement followed an upsurge in clashes in Daraa after the assassination of opposition leader Adham Karad and the Syrian régime's disregard of the commitments set out in the agreement.

 It was the outcome of meetings between the central committee that is authorized to negotiate on behalf of Daraa's people, officers from the Syrian régime, and Russian forces, under direct supervision of representatives from the National Security Office in Damascus, which is considered the highest security department in the Assad régime. A judge from the régime's side, present during the signing of the new settlements, is tasked with handing over new settlement documents sealed by the Ministry of Justice, allowing their holders to move across checkpoints without being prosecuted, under Russian guarantee.

 A senior member of the central committee responsible for negotiating with Russian and régime forces in Dara'a, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, said: "The lack of tangible results from the first settlement was the motivation for the new settlement. There are no results so far as the security files of many people have not been written off yet. Moreover, many have not been returned to their jobs and the file of the dissidents of the Assad régime has not been resolved yet. The new settlement was concluded to cover those gaps and address these dossiers; but we are yet to see any tangible outcome."



 In recent days, tensions have escalated as the régime pursues six individuals it says are connected to ISIS. The régime has given Daraa's central committee till Thursday January 28th to hand them over, failing which it will launch airstrikes against the region in collaboration with Russian fighter jets.

 According to opposition figures, the wanted six are free from these accusations, and the régime's threats are a violation to the settlement pacts, both old and new.'

FSA fighters graduate after years out of school

 

 'The Third Legion of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Jan. 14 held an event to honor several of its fighters who graduated from universities in opposition-held areas in northeast Syria, mainly the International Sham University, the University of Aleppo in the liberated areas and the International University of Science and Renaissance.

 Several commanders of the Turkish-backed FSA and officials in the opposition-led interim government as well as fighters who graduated attended the event held in the Cultural Center in Azaz in Aleppo’s northern countryside.

 I was present to see the joy on the faces of the graduates and their families. University of Aleppo President Abdul Aziz al-Daghim said at the ceremony, “There have been great accomplishments in the opposition-held areas in the field of science, and they have produced results that were unexpected years ago.”

 Mahmood Talha, a journalist who works for Thiqa News Agency in Aleppo’s countryside, said, “With the onset of the Syrian revolution in 2011 and the widening stretch of protests calling for toppling the régime of Bashar al-Assad, it has become difficult for many opposition Syrian young people to pursue their education in universities [in régime-held areas] out of fear of arrest and the risk of moving between Syrian provinces. But the dream of returning to college never left them. As soon as they got the opportunity, dozens of them resumed their studies and benefited from the facilitations offered by their factions, amid the relative stability in the opposition-held areas in northwest Syria.”

 Hoda al-Abssi, the education minister of the opposition-led interim government, said during the ceremony, “Education generally is quite important, especially for the fighters of the FSA, because it allows them to develop their capacities and teach other members who could not pursue their studies. This will reflect well on the development of their fighting capacity and applying their knowledge in the military field.”



 Ceremony organizer Ismail Barakat, the head of the Training Department of the Third Legion, said that 55 fighters in the Third Legion were honored in the ceremony “after graduating at the end of 2020 from several disciplines, including graduates from the Arabic language faculties and departments, Islamic sharia, law, economics and other scientific disciplines.”

 He added, “We offered the graduated fighters gifts and symbolic financial sums. We held the ceremony to thank them for their efforts, and we hope they will encourage their peers in the FSA ranks to pursue their university studies, because education is the cornerstone to developing any country, and these young people will build a free Syria. We promise to support any fighter who wants to pursue his education.”

 Mustafa al-Khatib, a fighter in the Third Legion who graduated, said, “Since I am an opposition figure who participated in the peaceful movement and later became a fighter in the FSA, I could not pursue my studies at the régime-affiliated University of Aleppo. I am now a fighter in the Third Legion, which helped us financially and encouraged us to pursue our studies by paying our tuition and giving us permits to attend lectures and sit the exams at the University of Aleppo in the liberated areas.”



 Firas Hamasho, an officer of the education bureau in the Third Legion, said, “Helping fighters receive private education allows them to understand the difficult scientific material and to attend lectures and prepare for exams. One of the key facilitations is paying the annual university tuition of the institution where the fighter is enrolled. Tuitions vary depending on the university, from $100 (300,000 Syrian pounds) to $300 (900,000 Syrian pounds) per year. The annual tuition also differs depending on the discipline.”

 Imad Karsho, a fighter who graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Aleppo in the liberated areas, said at the honoring ceremony in Azaz, “I had not been to any school for seven years, but in 2018, I decided to return to school and complete my education at the Faculty of Law of the University of Aleppo affiliated with the opposition in Aleppo. Indeed, I was able to fulfill my dream.”

 He added, “I tried to juggle between carrying weapons and education, as I participate in battles when they break out and take exams on time. Being dedicated to fighting without receiving knowledge is one of the biggest mistakes. We cannot promote Syria without knowledge, and a fighter without education becomes a scoundrel.”



 Ahmed Raslan is a fighter who was in his fourth year of studying at the Faculty of Information Engineering, specializing in software engineering, at the régime’s University of Aleppo when Syria's civil war erupted in 2011.

 He said, “I had to drop out because all of my family members were threatened with arrest. We could not enter the régime-controlled areas in Aleppo, and I later joined the FSA.” Seven years later, Raslan returned to complete his education at the University of Aleppo in the liberated areas and received a degree in informatics engineering.

 Abdul Hakim al-Masri, the minister of finance and economy in the opposition-led interim government, saidr, “As we know, the fighter must be educated, because education alters their way of thinking and conduct. The initiative of the FSA factions and their support for their fighters in returning to education is a great step. It is also important to employ these graduates in suitable positions for their specializations to have a trained and educated army.” '

Aleppo’s security branches deploy indiscriminate tactics

 

 'On the way to his work in Aleppo in mid-November 2020, Abdul Fattah was arrested by a group of armed men who stopped suddenly and emerged from a vehicle in front of him. Abdul Fattah did not know the reason for his arrest.

 The young man told Enab Baladi that he heard the armed men talk about taking large sums of money to release detainees. He added that he was put in a dark solitary cell for a few days, during which one morsel did not pass his lips.

 The state security branch arrests numerous men on charges of “posing damage to the prestige of the State.” Other people are arrested because they express their dissatisfaction with deteriorating living conditions. In fact, arrest campaigns also target the former opposition members, who were previously released after paying large amounts of money and settling their situation. Additionally, civilian people whose relatives live in areas controlled by the Syrian opposition factions, northern Syria, are arrested.

 After Abdul Fattah spent several days in the detention center—he did not know the number of days—he was driven to a group room designated for interrogation. He also heard,” screaming of a beaten, insulted and tortured prisoner” while he was blindfolded.

 The questions posed to the young man frightened him. “How long have you been in contact with the terrorists in Idlib? The contacts on your phone belong to people living in Idlib. Besides, all of them are cooperating with the terrorists,” the interrogator told Abdul Fattah, right before he started beating him.

 The intimidation did not take long. After the detainee was transferred to another room, and his eyes were still blindfolded, he heard a new voice telling him, “You may die here. No one will ever know your fate, but you can simply pay us and leave.” The speaker added, as Abdul Fattah recalls, “If you cannot pay us, you can stay here as our guest for a few days—of course, if you survive the torture.”

 Abdul Fattah asked the security elements to contact his father to obtain money in exchange for his release before being taken to a new room, which he shared with 76 other detainees.

 The charges of the inmates of the so-called state security branch varied: some were detained without charges, while others were accused of having collaborated with the opposition factions in Idlib, despite a lack of evidence. Almost all the detainees were subjected to torture in order to extract and sign forced confessions. Many people were arrested on charges of using money other than the Syrian pound, carrying out money transfers, and conducting illegal currency exchange transactions.

 All of them were given the option to be released from the prison in exchange for large sums of money (some of which amounted to about 100 million Syrian Pounds- 35,000 USD according to the exchange rate during that period), Abdul Fattah said.

 On 2 December 2020, Abdul Fattah was released after his father paid 30 million SYP (more than ten thousand USD)to the state security branch.

 Fattah’s father managed to negotiate with the state security branch members, who asked for 50 million SYP (17,301 USD) at first. He told Enab Baladi, “I asked them for proof that my son is alive. Then, they made him talk to me and ask me to give the money.”

 The father gave the money at dawn near the “Military Academy” to masked men riding in a black tinted car, with a poster of Bashar al-Assad on its window, Fattah told Enab Baladi. He pointed out that the security elements threatened his son with his life if he spoke about what happened to him.



 The Air Force Intelligence (AFI) Branch seeks to forcibly recruit young men within its ranks by arresting young men. Thus, the young men are forced to choose either to join the AFI ranks or to pay large sums of money for their release.

 Young people in the city of Aleppo generally refrain from joining the ranks of the security branches. They fear that they are likely to be targeted by warring parties. Furthermore, their families who prefer to remain civilians and refuse any kind of relationship with the Syrian régime will disown them.

 Mahmoud was arrested while he was going to buy food in the al-Shaar neighborhood at the beginning of October 2020. Mahmoud was surprised that even though he completed the mandatory and reserve military service, he got arrested, as he told Enab Baladi.

 During an arrest campaign carried out by Aleppo’s AFI branch, Mahmoud was arrested along with nine others. The AFI agents put them in one car and took them to the branch. After he arrived, they forced him to undress completely for inspection, then put him in a solitary cell for hours. He said, “I heard the sound of the cell door opening. They put a blindfold over my eyes and took me to another room. I stood for a long time blindfolded until I fainted due to hunger and thirst.”



 Mahmoud woke up feeling the water drops sprayed on his face; after a period of time, he did not know how much it lasted. “They gave me a loaf of crusty bread and an undercooked boiled potato. While I was eating, the cell door was opened. They tied me up and took me to an interrogation room,” Mahmoud added.

 “And here, the AFI agents showered me with questions, such as ‘Why didn’t you join us after you were discharged from the military, and why do you blame the competent authorities for the current situation when you spoke to others? Why do you tend more to support the terrorists?…etc.’”

 Mahmoud, who worked as a tailor after finishing his compulsory military service, pulled himself together and asked, “Whom should I join?”. Here, the AFI agents hit him again and again until he lost consciousness. They also threatened to kill him in case he repeated the question.

 Four days later, Mahmoud regained his consciousness, according to what the detainees in the cell told him.

 After several days, the interrogators called him again, but this time to offer him two options: “Either you have to work with us or, if you want to be released, you must contact your family to give us 15 million SYP (5,190 USD)” Three days later, he was released after his family gave them the money.



 The Political Security (PS) branch also targets gas station owners and attendants to obtain money and fuel.

 Firas, a gas station owner, told Enab Baladi that the PS agents blackmailed him. At the end of the working day, on 20 December 2020, Firas was arrested and taken to the branch, where he was inspected and robbed. The PS agents took 356 thousand SYP (around 130 USD) found in Firas’s pocket. Then, he was offered the option directly: “Payment of two million SYP( about 698 USD) for release.”

 Firas promised the PS agents to give them the required money in the morning, which happened after his immediate release.

 “I gave them the money, and then I went to work. If I did not do this, they would arrest me. Besides, they would not be satisfied with the amount of money they took from me.”

 The PS elements do not pay for the petrol and diesel they obtain from the fuel stations, the gas station employee said. They also bypass the drivers waiting in line to fill their cars with 20 liters of fuel every two days.



 The security branches take turns arresting the owners of money transfer agencies and foreign exchange bureaus, with the intent of blackmailing them. Aasim, a worker at a foreign exchange bureau, told Enab Baladi that the security branches consider the workers “an expensive commodity.” He pointed out that those who work in money transfer companies and foreign exchange bureaus have been repeatedly arrested.

 Aasim added, “I was arrested more than once, intermittently. I had been held for two weeks in the PS branch in May 2020. I paid 17 million SYP (5,882 USD) to get out. In September 2020, I was arrested again by the Military Security (MS) branch. The MS agents requested 100 million SYP ( around 34,602 USD). However, after two months, they settled for 70 million SYP (24, 221 USD).”

 The security branches share control over the city of Aleppo. The state security branch takes over the western section, the AFI branch controls the eastern section, the MS branch takes the southern section, and the PS branch controls the northern section.

 According to the latest Syrian Network for Human Rights statistics, more than 148,000 people had been detained by the controlling forces in Syria from March 2011 until August 2020. In other words, more than 88 percent of detainees are held by the Syrian régime forces.'

Syrian detainees' families forced to pay huge bribes

 

 'Families of detainees in Syrian prisons are routinely forced to bribe officials to be allowed to visit them or to win their release, according to a report that reveals the vast scale of extortion in the detention system.

 The sums involved – rising as high as £2m in one jail - are likely to be helping senior members of the Assad régime avoid sanctions, a survey of more than 1,200 former prisoners and family members suggests.



 A report by the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) says guards, judges, members of the military and in some cases middlemen receive cuts as part of a corrupt network that feeds large amounts of cash into the country’s security apparatus.

 About a quarter of those surveyed said they had been asked for extortion money. Some paid a few thousand dollars or less, while others – particularly families living in exile – paid up to $30,000 (£22,000). Officials at one jail extorted about $2.7m in total, the report suggests.

 Diab Serrih, the report’s author and ADMSP co-founder, said the money ended up in the pockets of corrupt officials, warlords and what he called the “deep government ruling Syria behind the scenes”.

 “It’s an industry of detention,” he said. “The Syrian régime is built on security and intelligence branches. They pay poor salaries to encourage corruption and the bribes finance this infrastructure of detainment.”

 Serrih claimed the system was endorsed by figures within the régime, many of whom are subject to sanctions and unable to hold bank accounts abroad. The total amount in bribes is likely to be much higher than that revealed in the report.

 According to estimates by humanitarian watchdogs, between 100,000 and 250,000 people were arrested or forcibly disappeared before the uprising against Bashar al-Assad begun in 2011. That number had sharply escalated by the end of 2012.

 Tens of thousands of people are believed to have been tortured or killed in Syrian jails since the Arab spring began. Sednaya prison, a military facility on the outskirts of Damascus, has long been considered one of the most formidable institutions in Syria.

 Serrih was detained in 2006 after forming a youth opposition group and spent five years as a political prisoner before being released in 2011 as the régime cleared jails of opponents to make room for an influx of activists and protesters. He spent his childhood in the Sednaya area before moving to Damascus. After first fleeing to Turkey, he now lives in the Netherlands.

 The report says forced disappearance is a major strategy of the Syrian state, designed to control and intimidate people. “Arrest and monetary extortion of the population constitute a great source of funding of the state, and its repressive apparatus specifically,” it says.

 The report calls for the international community to pressure supporters of the régime, particularly Russia, into revealing the fate of the disappeared and to allow families to visit those still alive. It also demands that officials reveal where the dead were buried and allow DNA testing of remains so that victims can be returned to their families.

 Ahmad is one former prisoner who thought he would never see his family again. He was detained in nine different prisons in three years and his family paid $30,000 in bribes to get him out.

 “Like many families, mine kept paying $1,000 here and $1,000 there, hoping they were giving it to a person who could get them information,” he said. “Eventually they paid a large sum to a lawyer who told them that some of it will go to a judge and some to the security forces.”

 Abdullah was 19 and planning to desert the army, where he was serving his compulsory military service, when he was stopped at a checkpoint in October 2012. He was taken to prison, tortured and interrogated.

 “Every day, four or five people would die and be taken out of the cell,” he said. “They mostly starved to death. Guards would enter the cell and carry out summary beatings, leaving the prisoners in a state of mental terror.”

 In court he was convicted of stealing weapons and terrorism charges, and sentenced to 15 years in Sednaya. Food was given to prisoners sometimes, he said, but not if guards were in a bad mood. Talking and reading was forbidden, and torture was meted out to prisoners who were Sunnis but not those from Assad’s Alawite sect.

 “My parents hired a lawyer to cut my sentence to six years,” Abdullah said. “The lawyer paid $10,000 dollars in bribes. Me and my three brothers are still working to pay off the debt.”

 Many families have spent thousands of dollars trying to obtain news of their loved ones but received nothing in return.

 Nadia, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, said she last saw her husband when he travelled to Damascus in December 2012 to renew identity papers. “He was in a car with his father and seven others,” she said. “The last thing we heard was that they had reached Homs. All nine disappeared.”

 In 2016 a neighbour told Nadia that a nephew in the military could help release her husband and father-in-law in exchange for cash. To raise the money, she sold land and a house in Syria, borrowed money from relatives and even sold her jewellery.

 “We paid $5,000,” said Nadia. “Later, we were told that their release was imminent but that another $5,000 was needed. After the payment was made through a western Union transfer, they disappeared. It was a scam.

 “It felt like it was so close and all in my hands, and when it didn’t happen, I broke down.” '

Bread lines so long children skip school to wait in them

 

 'Every morning, Abu Mohammed and his two eldest sons wake up for dawn prayer in Damascus, then take turns heading to the bakery.

 They wait for at least three hours, barely making it to work or school on time, he said. Often, the boys miss their first few classes. Sometimes they miss the whole day.

 “One day I stood for seven hours,” he said in a telephone interview. “The next day it was eight, then six. I saw that my work was being hit. I need to work. I need to live.”

 Abu Mohammed, who declined to give his full name for fear of harassment by the security services, is among a rapidly growing number of Syrians languishing in seemingly endless lines.



 The bread crisis is perhaps the most visible and painful manifestation of Syria’s economic meltdown. It has seen the amount of subsidized bread most families can buy reduced by half or even more. Subsidized prices have doubled since October, despite official promises in the spring that price hikes for bread were a “red line” that would not be crossed.

 Abu Mohammed, a factory worker and father of five, said he needs three to four bags of bread a day. He buys two bags of coarse, low-quality bread from a government bakery, his full allotment under the subsidized system. He waits in line at private bakeries for other, higher-quality loaves. When desperate — and when he can find them — he pays 10 times the official price of about 50 cents to buy more low-quality loaves from what he calls “the crisis dealers” on the black market.

 Outside major cities, the deprivation may be even worse.

 “The poor man living in the village no longer has gas; he has wood. He’s out of bread; he makes his own,” said a resident of the coastal city Tartous, interviewed over Facebook.

 Syrians eat bread with nearly every meal in Syria. Torn chunks are pinched into mini-pockets, held between two fingers to scoop up strained yogurt and olives for breakfast. It hugs stuffed vegetables for lunch and is wrapped into late-night shawarma orders.

 Traditionally, it’s much larger, fluffier and thinner than pita found in the United States and is sold in a stacks of about seven inside transparent plastic bags. Recently, Syrians began to gripe that fewer pieces are being included in each bag.

 In an interview with the pro-government Al-Watan newspaper earlier this month, Agriculture Minister Hassan Qatna sought to deflect public discontent, saying, “Let’s go back to baking bread in our houses and instead of waiting on the government.”

 But as prices have doubled, quality deteriorated and lines have grown ridiculously long, citizens who would not have dared to complain before, fearing the autocratic government of President Bashar al-Assad, are venting their ire. This anger spiked after the newspaper of the ruling Baath Party reported earlier this month that 500 tons of wheat disappeared while being offloaded from a ship.



 During the past three years, Syria has imported an annual average of more than 1.1 million tons of wheat, according to the Syria Report, which monitors the country’s economy. Nearly all the imports were from Russia, a vital Assad ally, but the spread of the coronavirus pushed Russia to limit wheat exports earlier this year to protect its domestic supply. An official at the Syrian Grain Establishment said this month that Russian companies have withdrawn from six contracts with Syria, cutting total wheat imports nearly in half.

 At the same time, the deepening economic crisis — resulting from war, mismanagement, U.S. sanctions and the spillover effect of a financial meltdown in neighboring Lebanon — has gutted the value of the Syrian pound, making it prohibitively expensive to import wheat. The crisis has also disrupted the production and marketing of the crop.

 Wheat is historically the country’s largest crop, but Syria’s self-sufficiency, a decades-old cornerstone of Baath Party’s policies, was already being undermined by war and drought.

 Since 2011, the country has been riven by war after Syrians rose up against Assad. The three provinces richest in agricultural land — Aleppo, Raqqa and Hasakeh — have all suffered heavily from fighting among the Russian-backed Syrian army, anti-Assad rebels and the extremist Islamic State. Farm machinery has been destroyed and shipping routes turned unsafe, while costs of production have increased.

While ample rainfall and improving security helped double the size of the annual harvest last year, according to estimates of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, domestic production, at 2.2 million tons, remains almost half the pre-crisis average.



 To rally supporters, Assad’s government has blamed the United States for the crisis, in part pointing to the effect of U.S. economic sanctions. These have hindered Syria’s ability to import spare parts for machinery and pesticides and have also disrupted financial transactions, undercutting the value of the Syrian pound and aggravating the wider economic crisis. U.S. sanctions have hit fuel imports hard, leading to long lines of cars jamming roads outside gas stations, sometimes for more than 10 hours.


 The state news agency SANA has even blamed President Trump for wildfires that have scorched fields of grain, alleging he ordered U.S. Apache helicopters to burn a stretch of wheat crops in the northeast province of Hasakeh.

 The minister of education, Darem Tabbaa, appeared in a video this month in a field holding a large bouquet of wheat, urging students to plant the crop. “You are now seeing the importance of the wheat grain,” the minister said, “when you stand in line for the bakeries, when you wake up to eat breakfast, when you return home from school.”

 His remarks were met with online derision — critics baffled by his notion that wheat is no more than a household plant.

 Some reports in the government-aligned media and pro-government Facebook posts have suggested there is no bread crisis at all. These have been met with outrage. The Tartous resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity fearing retaliation, said he is especially enraged by ministers who “sit there ridiculing the people and think everything is a-okay.”

 The lines for bread have grown so large that one Damascus bakery erected a six-foot-high chain-link fence to contain the customers. A photo of men crammed into what looked a pen or cage went viral online, provoking anger from Syrians at home and abroad infuriated by the demeaning, jail-like conditions.

 The bakery took the fence down.'

Halfaya: Municipality To Compensate Only Loyalists

 

 'There is talk among residents of Halfaya, a city north of Hama, that owners of homes damaged by the war may receive compensation of SYP 6 million. It is unclear where the funding for the compensation may be sourced, or which body would be responsible for distributing the money.

 Halfaya is located north of Hama city, in a fertile agricultural area. It served as an industrial area for the northern Hama countryside before 2011 and was home to around 35,000 people. Rebel factions held Halfaya for several years before regime forces recaptured it in 2017. The city remained a military zone from 2017-2019, with a base for Russian forces established nearby.

 Only around 240 families now live in Halfaya after regime forces allowed them to return in December 2019. The city still suffers from poor public services. Drinking water is sold from large tanks, electricity networks are not running, and the roads need full maintenance.

 In recent days, a list has circulated among residents containing the names of 20 individuals, representing 20 families, who are said to be the only people entitled to compensation, to be used to refurbish their damaged homes. The 20 individuals were reportedly requested to visit the Halfaya City Council to complete their files with a new real estate registry record. The list was leaked from a private WhatsApp semi-official group in the city. It was reportedly prepared by a former commander in the regime’s National Defence Forces (NDF), who now serves as an official in the Halfaya City Council. All the names included on the list appear to be those of residents who are loyal to the regime, some of whom are involved in the military or security forces.

 The official responsible for drawing up the list told residents who had objected: "Compensation is not for the poor, but for the honourable," meaning those known to be loyal to the regime.

 That is, out of 240 families now living in Halfaya, only 20 families so far are considered by the security forces as loyal to the regime. This vetting helps serve a small network of local beneficiaries who have come to monopolise the few aid supplies and public services that have been provided to the city. This applies to the distribution of fuel, seeds, and fertiliser, and even household water tanks.

 The head of the Hama governorate’s military and security committee issued a decree on 11 August that banned the ploughing of Halfaya’s agricultural lands until the committee formed by Administrative Order No. 3077 finishes taking stock of the properties belonging to former Halfaya residents who have been displaced to opposition-held territories elsewhere.

 This was followed by the Military Security’s seizure of properties belonging to displaced residents who are wanted by security forces. The word “confiscated” was then written on their seized homes and shops. As for the properties of displaced residents who were not wanted by security, they were offered in October for investment in a public auction.'

Survivors of Syrian prisons share stories of death & torture

 

 'Three former Syrian prisoners have come forward with shocking accounts of torture and despicable living standards in the Assad régime’s prisons, detailing the struggles of detainees within.

 The released prisoners were hosted by the Syrian Revolution Coordination Union. One of them, Salaah Ashour, spent 25 years in the régime’s labyrinthine prisons. This also included Hasna Alhariri, and Maysoon Libad, who narrowly escaped capital punishment after being arrested for delivering medical supplies to the wounded. After her arrest, Maysoon was imprisoned and tortured before ultimately being sentenced to death.

 Hanaa Darwish, Secretary-General of the Syrian Revolution Coordination Union says they usually mark detention day on December 1st every year with programs featuring former prisoners, but this year they held it online for health and safety precautions.



 Salaah Ashour, who originally hails from Hama, northern Syria, says he didn’t see his face in a mirror once during the length of his imprisonment which stretched from 1980 to 2004, which was mostly spent in the infamous Tadmor prison.

 While the rest of the world knows Palmyra for its stunning Roman ruins, it’s Arabic name evokes chills in most Syrians, home to what has been described as the worst prison in the world. Before being destroyed by ISIS, the Tadmor prison was synonymous with horror, death, and grotesque torture.

 Originally built in the middle of a blistering desert 200 kilometres northeast of Damascus by the French in the 1930s, it would gain its sordid reputation under Hafez al-Assad’s iron rule. While he was in power, thousands of dissidents were abused, tortured and executed there.

 Ashour painfully narrates how his gaolers would mutilate his face with a straight-razor or blade, while singing October revolution songs to make sure he was still alive. He also describes how younger youths were regularly raped. At times, he says, their mothers, and sisters were raped to force rubber-stamped confessions out of them.

 As he continues to tell his tale, Ashour relates witnessing his jailers cut off a male prisoner’s genitals, and another prisoner’s ear; only to pressure them during interrogations.

 In an interview with al-Jazeera, he was asked about what drove the Syrian régime’s security apparatus to such horrors, and how they justified such torture. “Their thuggish mentality,” he answers, which is inflicted on Syrians without distinguishing political leaning, or ethnic, sectarian or religious affiliation.

 “Imagine being beaten and tortured for twenty-one long years, denied the sight of your family. During the winter, the prison is made colder. In summers, they turn the heating on. You feel like exploding from the heat. All this happening years after the end of interrogations and investigations,” adds Ashour.

 Ashour emphasizes that this “thug mentality” must be countered by wisdom and rationality on the part of revolutionary forces, pointing out that the régime’s victims managed to coexist and even cooperate inside the prisons, facilitating a cultured, civilized spirit of working together.

 He also relates how a prisoner’s torture also includes the suffering of his family the entire time he’s incarcerated, with no news of him from within the prison. Tragically, his mother and father both passed away from a stroke after receiving conflicting stories about his fate.



 Alhariri is from Basr al-Harir, which sits in the countryside of Daraa, southwest Syria. She recounts multiple accounts of torture she witnessed while imprisoned first in 2011, and again in 2012.

 The mother to four martyrs who died in the course of the revolution, says she witnessed traumatizing, gruesome scenes during her second imprisonment with her daughter, which lasted for three years. During the course of her incarceration, she was transferred between a number of prisons and detention facilities spanning Deraa and Damascus.

 In her first days as a prisoner at a military prison run by the 102nd Brigade, she witnessed jailers burying youth who died after succumbing to torture in interrogation chambers.

 Alhariri adds that when she was transferred to Deraa, she stayed in an overcrowded room with 30 other prisoners. Every night, her jailers would choose one or more female prisoners, after which they would be taken for what they thought was interrogation. They would return in a deplorable physical and mental state, and refuse to talk about what was done to them.

 “I witnessed with my eyes as they gouged a prisoner's eyes out with a screwdriver, and drilled his neck and chest with a power drill. Then an interrogator asked one of the soldiers, “Is he dead?!”, and he was answered in the affirmative. So he replied, throw him into the Hamam [Turkish bath]. Before they took his corpse away, they wrote, “Traitor to the Nation” on his chest,” relates Alhariri.

 After her horrific time in Deraa, she was transferred to Damascus on a bus carrying 40 inmates, 6 of whom were women. The trip was a part of hell, describes Alhariri, with the inside of the bus coated in mesh and metal chains. By the time they arrived at their new detainment facility in Damascus, the inside of the bus felt like a raging inferno.

 “They were literally kicking us out of the bus, and hitting every single prisoner, even though most of them were already injured from torture. I was shocked by the square we had arrived in. It was carpeted with naked corpses of male and female prisoners”, Alhariri recounts.

 When asked what questions did the interrogators ask of her, Alhariri says they were primarily interested in getting her to confess to receiving instructions from Israel, and receiving funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Kuwait.

 She would refuse this, telling them she was from Deraa, and that Syrians had come out in self-defense after their homes, wealth and honour were the targets of attacks.

 Her jailers separated her from the 6 other women and threw her into solitary confinement for 8 days before transferring her to the female prison cell, which Alhariri describes as a new scene from “hell”.

 She recalls they placed her in a room with “nearly 75 women… closer to a sanitarium for the insane, and the female prisoners had lost their minds. There was a jailer called Mohamed Alia who stripped every female prisoner that entered the prison and raped her. Among the girls, there were so many that were pregnant, after being subject to these violations.”



 Maysoon Libad, now an activist from Deraa, presents another gruesome testimony the deplorable circumstances of Assad régime prisoners. In it, she relates how they were made to sign blank confession statements to make the torture stop.

 Libad was active in the medical sector, and performed first aid to the injured during Deraa’s protests. That was, until she was arrested after being followed during one of her visits to Damascus in 2012. She would go on to spend a year and a half in prison.

 After her arrest, she summarily moved to Branch 215, one of 20 security branches operated by the Assad régime’s feared military intelligence.

 In it, she spent two months in solitary confinement. During that time, she was regularly subject to brutal torture, including left hanging from bound hands for long periods of time, being whipped, and being pushed into a fetal position, and then forced into a tire. When they were done with her, they would throw her in the trunk of a car.

 The activist was the victim of agonizing beatings in Deraa by members of Branch 215. After being thrown in a room with 15 other female inmates for a month, where she claims she met captives from Lebanon who had no idea that Hafez al-Assad had died.

 Shortly after, she was transferred to Adra Prison, northeast of Damascus. It was there that she met a Jordanian fellow prisoner with Palestinian roots. She also met a Libyan, who claimed to be a member of the late Muammar al-Qaddafi’s retinue, as well as one woman serving a life sentence after being arrested with her husband, who was killed in an interrogation that culminated in a verdict finding them guilty of an attempted assassination of the late Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

“I met one female prisoner who was the victim of rape, and there was another women from the Alawite sect who had a stroke and they let her be without providing any assistance. The conditions of the prison were the worst, between the deplorable state of hygiene, measly food, and torture,” she recounts.

 Libad, who now studies political science in Jordan, concludes her gruesome tale, “They forced me to sign 20 blank papers, then they filled it with prepared accusations and presented it to a court of law.” '

Biden Admin Can Rectify America’s Failure In Syria

 

 Mohammed Alaa Ghanem:

 'It has been almost a decade since the Syrian people rose up against the Assad regime, demanding their freedom. While the world was hesitant to support the protestors, malign powers gladly stepped in to help Assad, creating an unmitigated disaster that has devastated Syria and sent shockwaves around the world. Half of the population, around 13 million people, has been displaced, and more than a quarter of all Syrians have fled the country. Over 50% of the country’s critical infrastructure has been destroyed, over 80% of the population lives below the poverty line, and an entire generation of children knows nothing but war, dilapidated tents, and the squalor of camps. Still, the crisis has yet to be addressed in any clear and meaningful way by the most important actor on the world stage, the United States.

 The Biden Administration’s primary goal in Syria must be a genuine political transition as envisioned in the Geneva Communiqué and UN Security Council Resolution 2254 (2015). As long as Assad remains in power the conflict will never end, it will just evolve, and the millions of refugees will have no hope of safe return. While the goal of political transition and the many steps needed to reach it will be a heavy lift, the Biden Administration has several advantages over its predecessors. For one thing, after years of mismanaging the economy and neglecting the country to fund the military, Assad has created a financial meltdown. This crisis is causing unrest within the regime’s political base and even Assad’s own family. Another important advantage is that when President Biden takes office, the US will have ten years of experience and institutional memory in Syria to draw on. To tap into that, however, will require that America have an honest reckoning with its past mistakes in Syria and learn from them. Here are three key lessons that the Biden Administration should take to heart:

 Leverage is critical. The regime and its backers have broken every multilateral agreement they have made. After years of bad faith talks it is clear that the US must enter future negotiations with sufficient leverage to induce Assad, Russia, and Iran to take them seriously. This means keeping US Special Forces in the northeast, resuming support to the Syrian opposition, working closely with Turkey to shore up the fragile ceasefire in Idlib, and maintaining a political and economic pressure campaign in coordination with US allies.

 Deterrence works. To be effective, American diplomacy in Syria must be backed by the credible use of force. Early on many US officials argued that any strike against Assad would spiral into a broader conflict. This risk aversion hindered decision-making during the Obama Administration, resulting most notoriously in the failure to enforce President Obama’s chemical weapons “red line.” In hindsight, it is clear that this was a mistake because, with the credible threat of retaliation gone, the Assad regime and its backers escalated their attacks to unprecedented heights and Syrian civilians paid the price. By contrast, when the regime launched chemical attacks in April 2017 and April 2018, President Trump ordered retaliatory missile strikes. Not only did these strikes not spark wider conflict, they effectively ended Assad’s use of proscribed chemical weapons. These and other military actions since 2016 reinforce the fact that the US can use targeted force in Syria to protect America’s allies and uphold its red lines without getting sucked into deeper entanglements.

 What happens in Syria never stays in Syria. Syria sits at the crossroad of civilizations and its decade of tragedy has reverberated around the world. Refugees have overwhelmed Syria’s neighbors and caused instability in Europe. Propagandists have used Syrian refugees to fuel rising right-wing nationalist movements, to justify regressive anti-immigration policies in the US and Europe, and to encourage Britain’s exit from the EU. After using Syria as a testing and training ground for new weapons, militias, and tactics—and emboldened by the lack of repercussions—Russia and Iran have taken their enhanced military capabilities on the road, fueling new conflicts from Ukraine to Yemen. Since the consequences of the Syrian conflict are global, US policy must evaluate Syria within the wider foreign policy context. This is particularly true in terms of the Iran deal. When the Biden Administration seeks to reenter the deal, it must be clear-eyed about how the deal will impact Iran’s regional expansionism and have a plan to address its baneful consequences.

 The Biden Administration must consolidate and expand the leverage that it will inherit from Jeffrey and Rayburn. This means enforcing the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which singled out the most malign actors within the regime, and further expanding targeted sanctions. Similarly, the Biden Administration should go beyond just maintaining unilateral US pressure on the regime and its enablers by getting its allies to commit to these same measures. This could take the form of a signaling summit in 2021 where participants make a collective commitment to withholding reconstruction funds and refusing diplomatic normalization with the regime until there is a genuine political transition.

 As far as negotiations, the diplomatic process today has devolved into farcical ‘Constitutional Committee’ talks dominated by Russia. These talks, which most Syrians view as irrelevant, have been stagnant for over a year and have been exploited by Russia and the regime to delay progress while they consolidate military gains. It is time for the US to take back the reins. After restoring its support to the Syrian opposition, the Biden Administration should launch new, reinvigorated transition talks in cooperation with the UN and its allies.

 In terms of the Iran deal, the Biden Administration should renegotiate the terms to address Iran’s aggression across the Middle East. President-elect Biden recently wrote that the US would lift sanctions and “rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations,” but what incentive would Iran have to negotiate further if it’d already received what it wanted? Since the original negotiations, the US has, among other measures, levied new sanctions against Iranian financial institutions, creating greater leverage to push for better terms. The new administration should not squander this new leverage by lifting all sanctions without addressing the other regional threats posed by Iran, including its most lethal weapon: its vast and growing network of proxy militias. Iran is the primary underwriter of Assad’s war, and any sanctions relief to Iran that is not highly targeted will end up going to arm and train militias in Syria, as much of the 8 billion dollars in assets unfrozen by the Obama administration inevitably did. The US must not repeat the mistake of sacrificing the rest of the region on the altar of this singular end by giving Iran an unconditional windfall to destabilize the region. Instead the administration must take concrete steps inside and outside of the deal to deter Iranian expansionism and malign regional behavior.

 To create fertile ground for a successful national political transition, the US must also rethink its policies towards the political and armed opposition and the Kurdish-dominated SDF. A credible political opposition is needed so that Syrian civilians are effectively represented in negotiations, but with Etilaf, the main opposition body, dependent on Turkey, and the High Negotiations Commission beholden to Saudi Arabia, opposition figures have been turned into proxies for regional powers. The Biden Administration should reinvest in Syria’s political opposition, helping them to regain the independence needed to credibly engage in negotiations and reestablish legitimacy on the ground.

 With regards to the armed opposition, the US erred in abandoning vetted moderate forces in favor of the YPG and narrowing its scope in Syria to just defeating ISIS. The Kurdish YPG is the group behind the “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF), which it created as a rebranding exercise to present itself as a more palatable partner. Although it was a reliable ally against ISIS, this group has fallen far short of the democratic fighting force that America envisioned. In 2017, then former Obama official (and current future Secretary of State) Antony Blinken wrote an op-ed about arming the Kurds in which he said the US “should insist that [the YPG] commit to not use any weapons against Turkey, to cede liberated Raqqa to local forces, to respect Syria’s territorial integrity and to dissociate itself from the P.K.K.” This advice was ignored, and to date the US has made no effort to hold its Syrian Kurdish allies accountable. The YPG has maintained its ties with the PKK (a designated terrorist organization), failed to diversify its ranks, refused to devolve control to local authorities, cozied up to the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran, and committed serious human rights abuses against Kurdish and Arab civilians.

 At odds with Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan, other Syrian Kurds, local Arab communities, and Syrian opposition groups, the YPG is a destabilizing force that lacks local legitimacy and long-term governing capabilities. Unless it plans to maintain America’s troop presence in Syria indefinitely, the Biden Administration must address this untenable situation and condition support on measurable reforms. It should also reinstate support to vetted moderate opposition forces, particularly in the south. Since the Trump Administration cut all support to these partners and Assad was allowed to recapture Daraa in 2018, conditions in the area have grown worse, not better. Government forces have murdered hundreds of “reconciled” opposition fighters and people live in fear of detentions, assassinations, and the low-level insurgency that regularly boils over into violence. A credible armed opposition is needed to provide security and stability to Arab-majority liberated areas and prevent the reemergence of ISIS.

 Syrian civilians and civil society must also be central in the US strategy because a strong civil society is needed for long-term stability and local resilience. The incoming administration should restore Syria stabilization funding and expand this support to liberated areas in the northwest where civil society organizations and local governing institutions have withered after years of neglect. Similarly, the US must extend humanitarian support to the extremely vulnerable communities in Rukban in the south, and Idlib in the northwest, working with our ally Turkey to stabilize the population there. Millions of displaced Syrians remain in Idlib, hundreds of thousands of them are in IDP camps that threaten to become regional coronavirus super spreader centers without US-led international action.

 Finally, the Biden Administration must lead by example with regards to the Syrian refugee crisis. It can do so by restarting admission of Syrian refugees and significantly increasing the cap above prior levels. This move will be a reaffirmation of American values and a clear stand against the ugly nativist fear mongering that caricatured these war victims as terrorists. Additionally, the administration should allow Syrians who have been living in the US under the uncertainty of the TPS program to apply for green cards, as was done last year for Liberians. Displaced Syrians who have lived in the US for years have become valued members in their communities and they cannot return to Bashar al-Assad’s Syria without risking torture and death.

 The state of affairs in Syria today is grim and shifting the momentum will require a significant commitment from the US, but it is both possible and necessary.'

The goal of the régime’s policy of forced displacement

 'For the Syrian régime and its Iranian and Russian allies the forced displacement of millions of Syrians since 2011 is not a mere consequence of the conflict, but a systematic policy to achieve strategic goals set out by Bashar Assad himself.

 Although the main target of this criminal policy of the Syrian régime seems to be the majority Sunni Muslims, who made up some 74% of pre-war population according to the International Religious Freedom Report 2006, and are seen as the main threat to the régime, yet in the implementation of this policy the régime targeted people of various backgrounds and affiliations, including Christians, Ismailis and other minorities. One person described the nature of the policy in these terms: “Demographic change that the Assad régime is undertaking seems not to be based on religion, but on the basis of political affiliation and loyalty to the ruler in order to build its own supportive society, his 'useful Syria'.” Considering the systematic nature of this policy and the scale of displacement committed to achieve it, there is a gap in the analysis informing the international policy-oriented discourse of this systematic effort to affect a permanent demographic shift.

 In 2016, Assad explicitly and publicly stated the goals of this strategy when he spoke of “useful Syria”, an area of the country both geographically and demographically crucial to the continuation of his rule. To achieve this utopia of a loyal population concentrated in areas seen as strategically important, the Syrian régime unleashed a campaign of forced displacement and replacement which continues in various forms to this day.

 The methods of forced displacement range from mass detention, torture and terrorising of people who raised their demands for reform to siege, starvation, indiscriminate attacks, including chemical attacks, on civilian population and infrastructure, to systematic repression and marginalization of entire areas seen as disloyal. In this effort, legislation was passed and measures taken to allow for confiscation of lands and property of the displaced people, to obstruct their return and to make it easier for foreign militia members and their families to obtain Syrian citizenship.

 The policy continues being applied to this date, as documented in the most recent Human Rights Watch Report which details attacks on Idlib, which were part of the policy of forced displacement: “One result of the Idlib offensive was mass displacement. According to the UN, nearly 1.4 million people across Idlib fled their homes during the period covered in this report, out of an estimated population of 3 million people. Many said they fled because of repeated attacks in populated areas, or feared ill treatment if Syrian régime forces were to retake the area. The repeated Syrian-Russian alliance attacks on civilian infrastructure in populated areas in which there was no apparent military objective suggests that these unlawful attacks were deliberate. The intent may have been to deprive local residents of the means to sustain themselves, to force the civilian population to flee and make it easier for Syrian ground forces to take territory, or simply to instill terror in the civilian population as a way to achieve victory. The Syrian-Russian alliance apparently intended to fulfil these aims with little regard for international law,” states the HRW report.

 To make the removal of the people seen as a threat to the régime from the targeted areas permanent, their forced displacement is always followed by a campaign of populating now empty areas with members of foreign militias and religious groups seen as loyal to the régime, mainly Shiites linked to Iran’s presence and Alawites, a majority of whom are loyal to Bashar Al Assad. Such policies closely resemble the policies of ethnic cleansing seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina and elsewhere, which aimed to affect a new reality by permanently removing the previous demographic majority and replacing it, at least partially, with population seen as loyal.'

What the case of Suleiman al-Assad tells us

 

 'Over the past few days, several news sources have reported the release of Suleiman al-Assad from Syrian prison. While the assertion that Suleiman, the distant cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, served even a day of his so-called ‘20-year sentence’ is questionable, understanding the context surrounding this particular incident is important for those wishing to make sense of the often-intractable terrain of Syrian politics.

 In August 2015, Suleiman shot and killed a decorated Syrian Air Force colonel, Hassan al-Shaikh, in central Latakia in a bout of road rage. At a time in which up to one third of military-aged Alawite men – the sect to which the president belongs – had died fighting on the frontlines for the government, Suleiman, according to al-Shaikh’s brother, had obscenely denigrated the Syrian military before firing off a barrage of bullets that killed the officer, also an Alawite, at a traffic light. The debasing of the army – viewed by the community as the only buffer between them and an increasingly vengeful and sectarian armed opposition – by a member of the ruling class, elicited a sharp response.

 Protests calling for Suleiman's execution erupted the next day in the city’s predominantly working class Alawite neighbourhood of Al-Zira’a. Other demands made by the demonstrators included an end to the impunity of the shabiha – a patchwork of predominantly Alawite armed gangs and smugglers linked to the régime that have terrorised Syrian society for decades – and to a security apparatus that applies equally to its citizenry. Sensing growing anger and restlessness among his main constituency, the president issued an arrest warrant in an apparent attempt to mollify them. However, weeks after state news reported that Suleiman had been detained, he managed to gun down two of his critics, including the host of Sham Radio, the pro-régime station that broadcast the interview with al-Sheikh’s brother and the governor of Latakia. Ironically, the governor was quoted as saying “no one is above the law.”

 Yet this wasn’t the first time that Bashar had allegedly ordered his cousin’s arrest. In 2014, after Suleiman received news of the death of his father, Hilal – a commander of a local branch of the country’s chief pro-régime militia, the National Defense Forces, or NDF – he reportedly went on a killing spree. Seeking retaliation for his father’s death at the hands of Sunni rebels, Suleiman assembled a convoy of shabiha and stormed Sunni neighbourhoods in downtown Latakia, shooting indiscriminately into the air and hurling grenades at residential balconies. In spite of killing dozens and running the risk of igniting a sectarian powder keg in the city’s most volatile areas, he was released a few days later.

 Suleiman had apparently inherited a legacy of gangsterism from his father, the hallmarks of which are a combination of rape, ransom, and arbitrary repression.



 However, this tashbeeh, as it is referred to colloquially by Syrians, has been a feature of the Assad régime since its inception. Bashar’s father, Hafez, in an attempt to crystalise his rule, generated a broad support base built around co-opting a range of actors, including criminal syndicates. In exchange for their loyalty, the shabiha were given access to lucrative smuggling routes that allowed them to penetrate the illicit economy – and do so with near total impunity.

 This exploded in the 1980s, when the Syrian occupation of Lebanon consolidated the securement of these lines across their porous borders and fostered a booming market for smuggling. Hafez’s ancestral village, al-Qardaha, effectively transformed into a regional hub for black market activities. As clientelist networks flourished, this gave rise to a new class of shabiha directly commanded by the president’s relatives.

 During this period, Fawwaz al-Assad, Hafez’s nephew, became the first notorious shabih of his kind. His unrestricted access to the port of Latakia proved especially fruitful and he and his entourage quickly developed a reputation for treating the city as their own personal fiefdom, setting a precedent for recruitment among disenfranchised Alawite youth seeking to amass fortunes at any cost.

 Under their reign, the coastal public sphere, particularly within urban Latakia, devolved into a semi-anarchic state in which they could arbitrarily beat up restaurant owners, shoot at bus drivers, and kidnap, rape, and kill young women with ease. The two tiers of shabiha, those connected to high-ranking officers, and those affiliated directly with the Assad family, operated above the law.

 For Syrians residing on the coast, home to most of Syria’s Alawite community, the fear of the dreaded and omnipresent security apparatus, or mukhabarat, was compounded by the thought that these thugs could execute them in cold blood, as Suleiman did, without hesitation – and without so much as even a pretext. Their contempt for life is such that practically every Syrian on the coast, regardless of their confessional background, can recite a story that recounts their barbarism. Prior to the conflict, the Alawites, contrary to what is commonly believed, were the main recipients of their criminality.

 When the uprising began in 2011, the shabiha were covertly mobilised by the régime to repress protests, particularly in cities with mixed populations. The subcontracting of repression to these armed clusters, dressed in civilian clothing, enabled the government to exercise plausible deniability while executing a host of atrocities and attributing them to “gangs and terrorists.” Deployed first to the coast, these régime-aligned thugs targeted businesses, sprayed sectarian threats on churches, and chanted genocidal slogans against religious minorities while posing as protesters. In conjunction with the régime’s release from prison of radical Islamists, the objective was to fracture and derail the uprising by persuading Syrians that Assad is their only hope of survival amidst growing instability and intercommunal antagonism.



 It depicted itself as the guarantor of minority security while engineering the facts on the ground critical to validating the false binary at the heart of its propaganda: either accept us and our henchmen – i.e. “the state” – or test the dispositions of the ‘jihadist’ revolt.

 The shabiha quickly metastasised into death squads that specialised in targeting Sunni Muslims in rebellious areas where the régime’s narrative was often contradicted by the violence committed – in broad daylight – by its security forces. Their atrocities accelerated as many were organised into local security committees and ultimately absorbed into the NDF in 2012. Since then, they have grown exponentially due to the militiafication of the Syrian army, resulting in an emboldened class of warlords who operate with increasing autonomy. They have exploited the conflict to loot, pillage, and engage in sectarian score-settling in Sunni areas and, to a lesser extent, have capitalised on the tenuous authority of the régime to target impoverished Alawite districts in Latakia. This has led to an unprecedented sense of lawlessness in ‘loyalist’ territories.

 Though accounts surrounding Suleiman’s detention vary, one particularly striking story circulated in 2016. According to the article, Suleiman was incarcerated in a prison compound in Tartous, where he and his entourage were labelled “the torturers” because of their role in abusing political prisoners. Another version of the same story even alleges that he is thought to have angrily held prison guards hostage while in jail. Though these anecdotes may sound far fetched, nine years of conflict have taught us that no detail, however seemingly absurd, can be intuitively ruled out when it comes to the Syrian theater.

 This is especially true of the dysfunctional substructure of the régime, the dynamics of which are defined by exceptionally surreal levels of brutality, corruption, and inequality. A mere juxtaposition between the pictures depicting Suleiman’s massive weight gain during his ‘incarceration’, and the images of the emaciated and mutilated corpses of political detainees at the hands of the mukhabarat, is the unequivocal evidence of this.

 Above all, Suleiman’s case is a microcosm: a glaring reminder that Syria under the Assads is a police state run by an assortment of gangsters and warlords who operate outside of the law. Its people are held hostage by an authoritarian mafia underpinned by the criminality of one extended family and its various networks and surrogates. Underneath the layers of dichotomies that inform popular opinion surrounding the country and the conflict – Sunni vs Alawite, oppositionists vs loyalists, the army vs the rebels – there are in essence two main Syrias: one for the Assad clan and its proxies, and one for everyone else.'