This was a good read in my opinion. In this one, you will know how the syrian intel agencies made friends, family members inform on each other as well as grade schools reporting the behavior of students as young as 12 to the secret service. Don't make the length scares you.
The TL;DR for this part
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Secret intelligence documents uncovered by The Sunday Times reveal the extent of Bashar al-Assad's surveillance state in Syria, where even family members spied on each other. The regime maintained a vast network of informants, using torture and executions to silence dissent. Documents show how security services infiltrated protest and rebel groups, recording detailed personal information and using paranoia to control people, including children. Reports highlight the surveillance of suspected enemies, internal espionage among informants, and coercion to denounce friends and relatives. One such case involved a female rebel leader having an affair with a regime soldier who was also an informant, aiding the regime’s infiltration efforts.
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Secret intelligence documents uncovered by The Sunday Times in Syria have revealed the terrifying extent of Bashar al-Assad’s Stasi-like surveillance state, where family members spied on each other and the slightest suspicion could result in ordinary people — including children — being swept into a network of prisons notorious for torture and executions, with victims buried in mass graves.
Thousands of files, written in neat biro or typed in formal Arabic, detail the way the regime has infiltrated protest and rebel groups since the revolution began in 2011. They reveal details about the vast network of informants that reported to the regime, and how the intelligence services forced the people they arrested to give up names of alleged collaborators — who would in turn be detained.
They also show the ever-paranoid, often incompetent way that Syria’s feared security services operated: constantly suspecting their own spies of being double agents, recording the way that informants from different intelligence services spied on each other, interrogating children accused of disloyalty to the regime and dutifully taking notes on suspects’ love affairs.
Over two days we analysed documents related to the way the regime coerced and cajoled people into denouncing friends, relatives and neighbours. We uncovered arrest records and caches of internal communications related to the management and investigation of informants who came under suspicion.
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.
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.
In 2013, Homs was a divided city, separated into rebel-controlled and regime-controlled areas that were locked in deadly battle. Some opposition-held areas were under siege, and the only way of entering them was through secret tunnels — the locations known only to the rebels.
Yet after setting agents to tail a woman from one of the rebel areas, an officer in a local intelligence unit made a series of startling discoveries, which he noted in a formal memo to his superiors.
Not only was the suspect a leader of a “terrorist” group (the regime’s terminology for anyone who supported the opposition), but so were her husband and brothers.
This female “terrorist leader” was having an affair with a regime soldier who manned a checkpoint at the edge of the besieged area.
And this soldier was an informant for the intelligence services.
“[He] currently works as a representative at your branch,” the report notes. “He spends most of his time at the [neighbourhood] checkpoint and sometimes inspects vehicles himself. He enters [neighbourhood] with [female rebel leader] without being stopped by any of the terrorists there. Please review.”
The regime had found a weak spot that would allow one of their agents to move unimpeded behind enemy lines and gather information from the family that was instrumental in controlling the area.
Three years after the memo was written, the neighbourhood fell to the regime.
The TL;DR for this part
"
Secret intelligence documents uncovered by The Sunday Times reveal the extent of Bashar al-Assad's surveillance state in Syria, where even family members spied on each other. The regime maintained a vast network of informants, using torture and executions to silence dissent. Documents show how security services infiltrated protest and rebel groups, recording detailed personal information and using paranoia to control people, including children. Reports highlight the surveillance of suspected enemies, internal espionage among informants, and coercion to denounce friends and relatives. One such case involved a female rebel leader having an affair with a regime soldier who was also an informant, aiding the regime’s infiltration efforts.
"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secret intelligence documents uncovered by The Sunday Times in Syria have revealed the terrifying extent of Bashar al-Assad’s Stasi-like surveillance state, where family members spied on each other and the slightest suspicion could result in ordinary people — including children — being swept into a network of prisons notorious for torture and executions, with victims buried in mass graves.
Thousands of files, written in neat biro or typed in formal Arabic, detail the way the regime has infiltrated protest and rebel groups since the revolution began in 2011. They reveal details about the vast network of informants that reported to the regime, and how the intelligence services forced the people they arrested to give up names of alleged collaborators — who would in turn be detained.
They also show the ever-paranoid, often incompetent way that Syria’s feared security services operated: constantly suspecting their own spies of being double agents, recording the way that informants from different intelligence services spied on each other, interrogating children accused of disloyalty to the regime and dutifully taking notes on suspects’ love affairs.
Over two days we analysed documents related to the way the regime coerced and cajoled people into denouncing friends, relatives and neighbours. We uncovered arrest records and caches of internal communications related to the management and investigation of informants who came under suspicion.
How the security services operated
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.
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.
In 2013, Homs was a divided city, separated into rebel-controlled and regime-controlled areas that were locked in deadly battle. Some opposition-held areas were under siege, and the only way of entering them was through secret tunnels — the locations known only to the rebels.
Yet after setting agents to tail a woman from one of the rebel areas, an officer in a local intelligence unit made a series of startling discoveries, which he noted in a formal memo to his superiors.
Not only was the suspect a leader of a “terrorist” group (the regime’s terminology for anyone who supported the opposition), but so were her husband and brothers.
This female “terrorist leader” was having an affair with a regime soldier who manned a checkpoint at the edge of the besieged area.
And this soldier was an informant for the intelligence services.
“[He] currently works as a representative at your branch,” the report notes. “He spends most of his time at the [neighbourhood] checkpoint and sometimes inspects vehicles himself. He enters [neighbourhood] with [female rebel leader] without being stopped by any of the terrorists there. Please review.”
The regime had found a weak spot that would allow one of their agents to move unimpeded behind enemy lines and gather information from the family that was instrumental in controlling the area.
Three years after the memo was written, the neighbourhood fell to the regime.
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