Syria & Middle East News Catch-all | Lebanon Finally Elects a PM

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www.thetimes.com

Secret Assad files show Stasi of Syria put children on trial

Analysis of intelligence documents reveals that family members spied on each other, teachers betrayed pupils — and ‘traitors’ were tortured and killed
www.thetimes.com www.thetimes.com

Secret Assad files show Stasi of Syria put children on trial​


Analysis of intelligence documents reveals that family members spied on each other, teachers betrayed pupils — and ‘traitors’ were tortured and killed​

 
“… Like the East German Stasi, the Assad regime recorded in unsparing, bureaucratic detail the lives of the people they suspected of being their enemies — including those who worked for them — in stamped, signed and catalogued documents stacked on endless rows of dusty shelves.

By tapping phones, hacking computers and sending agents to surveil suspects in person, the security services gathered an incredibly comprehensive, and often deeply boring, level of detail about the lives of the people they were watching.

Surveillance reports by informants included exhaustive accounts of the location of the garage where the mother of a suspect got her car fixed, the regularity with which another suspect visited his in-laws and the number of apartment buildings owned by a third.

…
No one was safe from the regime. Last spring, a handwritten entry in a book of people arrested by the political intelligence branch in Homs notes the detention of a 12-year-old boy, brought in “for tearing up a sheet of paper bearing a picture of the president”.

The interrogation report reads: “On [date] while [the accused] was in his classroom, a torn sheet of paper was found under his desk. The paper bore a picture of the president. [The boy] then threw it in the bin. Subsequently, his teacher was informed. He, in turn, informed the educational supervisor at the [school], who informed the police station.”

They then turned the case over to the political intelligence branch.

“The teacher [name] was brought in for interrogation, and confirmed that he was told about the torn paper by other students in the classroom. When he asked the [boy] about it, the [boy] claimed that he had torn up the paper without noticing the picture of the president. The teacher confirmed to us that the student is quiet with good manners and had never previously displayed negative behaviour. We ran a security check on his family background and it transpired that they were not involved in any activities related to the ongoing events in the country.”

The boy, the report notes, told interrogators: “He didn’t have bad intentions and didn’t intend to offend anyone”.

Nonetheless, four days after he was accused of tearing the sheet of paper, the 12-year-old suspect was sent to stand trial in front of the courts.

The report ends there.…”
 
So much hope in Syria right now.



I know that history doesn’t give Syria good odds of emerging from this with a vibrant democracy as a beacon of change in the Middle East (pretty much the opposite, in fact), but it is still hard not to feel the wondering joy of a people who have thrown off the yoke of a brutal dictatorship like the Assads have run there for the entire lives of most Syrians.
 


I fervently hope that Syria can have a genuine rebirth as a fledgling democracy and desperately fear a Khmer Rouge/Taliban outcome.
 

U.S. to Ease Aid Restrictions for Syria in Limited Show of Support for New Government​

The move reflects Washington’s wariness about U.S.-designated terror organization that leads the country​



“… The limited step approved by the administration over the weekend authorizes the Treasury Department to issue waivers to aid groups and companies providing essential services, such as water, electricity and other humanitarian supplies, officials said.

Available initially for six months, the waiver would free aid suppliers from having to seek case-by-case authorization but it comes with conditions to ensure Syria doesn’t misuse the supplies, the officials said.

The U.S. has already dropped a $10 million bounty on Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, the Islamist leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the Sunni Islamist group that began as an offshoot of al Qaeda and led the assault that toppled the Assad regime.

The U.S. is withholding a decision on lifting crippling sanctions imposed during Syria’s brutal 13-year civil war, seeking assurances Damascus won’t renege on promises to protect the rights of women and the country’s many religious and ethnic minorities. …”
 

Iran Pulls Most Forces From Syria, in Blow to Tehran’s Regional Ambitions​

Thousands of Iranian military personnel and militia allies fled after Assad’s fall, leaving behind weapons and equipment​



"Iranian forces have largely withdrawn from Syria following the Assad regime’s December collapse, according to U.S., European and Arab officials, in a significant blow to Tehran’s strategy for projecting power in the Middle East.

The Iranian withdrawal marks the demise of a yearslong effort in which Tehran used Syria as a hub in its broader regional strategy of partnering with regimes and allied militias to spread influence and wage proxy war against the U.S. and Israel. Iranian-backed armed groups in Syria have launched attacks on U.S. forces and aided in attacks on Israel. Members of Iran’s elite Quds Force have now fled to Iran and the militia groups have disbanded, a senior U.S. official said.

The Islamic Republic spent billions of dollars and sent thousands of military personnel and allied fighters to Syria after the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria was Iran’s main state ally in the Middle East and a critical land bridge to Hezbollah—the most powerful militia in Tehran’s self-labeled “axis of resistance” alliance. ..."
 
Operation Many Ways remains stunning. The released videos are amazing as are the technicals on the facility. Can't wait to read more about the infil.
 
nycfan said:
I fervently hope that Syria can have a genuine rebirth as a fledgling democracy and desperately fear a Khmer Rouge/Taliban outcome.
Click to expand...
Throughout history -- and I think is true even within subsets of history -- the latter outcomes vastly outnumber the former in situations like these. I don't know if Khmer Rouge is a possibility here (KR was so out of control and wildly lunatic that I'm not sure we will ever see something quite like it again, although the fucking idiot monarchs in Turkmenistan at least ape their style), but a peaceful democracy is a long shot.

Another possible outcome, and maybe the most likely "good" one, would be dissolution of Syria into at least two states, each of which might choose to join another country in the area.
 
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