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Subscribe to RSSBEIRUT -- Just the mention of the word would send shivers down the spine of Syrians: "mukhabarat," or secret police.
Abuses by President Bashar Assad's feared security units were among the reasons Syrians took to the streets in March 2011, leading to an uprising that has become a civil war.
But now some of the rebels fighting Assad say they have set up a mukhabarat of their own to "protect the revolution," monitor sensitive military sites and gather military information to help rebels plan attacks against government forces.
Amateur video posted on a social media website shows rebel forces in Syria taking over a military airport in Idlib, Syria. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
"We formally formed the unit in November. It provides all kind of information to (opposition) politicians and fighters. We are independent and just serve the revolution," said a rebel intelligence officer who goes under the name Haji.
Rebel commanders had put Reuters in touch with Haji, who is based in Syria, via Skype on condition he not be identified.
Haji said most of the rebel mukhabarat's members were army defectors and former intelligence officers, and that the information they gathered was distributed to all anti-Assad factions and rebel brigades without discrimination.
However, the organization appears to operate independently from the main opposition Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army, effectively answering to itself.
The new rebel body has operated secretly for months, Haji said, helping fighters carry out attacks on government targets.
Haji declined to disclose details of the rebel agency, but said it operated across Syria, including in Aleppo and Idlib in the north, Deir al-Zor in the east and the capital Damascus, adding: "We have our spies among the regime who are providing us with information that we need, including military information."
Syrians have long exchanged horror stories of the dungeons of the intelligence branches where dissidents were incarcerated, often tortured and sometimes killed. Opposition activists insist their own mukhabarat will be nothing like those Assad inherited from his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad.
"The word security should mean the security of the people," said an opposition activist using the name Abu Hisham in Aleppo.
'Nothing will be ignored'
In the Arab world's many past or present police states, Syria's mukhabarat has had a reputation as one of the most ruthless. It consists of at least five powerful agencies which spy on each other, tap phones of dissidents and vie for power.
Corruption, personal interests and a lack of communication among its branches might appear to offer avenues for rebels to infiltrate Assad's mukhabarat, but the security services are dominated by the Syrian leader's tight-knit Alawite minority.
The Alawites, who make up about 12 percent of Syria's 23 million people, have rallied behind Assad, fearing revenge by the mostly Sunni Muslim rebels if he is toppled.
Other minorities, which include Druze, Christians and Shiites, fear for their freedoms if the armed revolt brings Sunni Islamist hardliners to power.
Such fears deepened after documented abuses by some rebels accused of torturing and summarily executing their opponents, as well as of looting state and private property during nearly 22 months of conflict that has cost at least 60,000 lives.
Haji said his intelligence agents were documenting such violations so that the perpetrators could be held to account.
"We are watching everybody. We have gathered information about every violation that happened in the revolt," he said.
"Those we cannot punish now will be punished after toppling Assad. Nothing will be ignored. We have our members among all the working brigades. They are not known to be intelligence and they operate quietly."
His agents, Haji said, worked undercover as activists, citizen journalists or fighters.
While welcoming the formation of the rebel intelligence service, one insurgent commander voiced concern it might change its agenda to serve a group or a political party later on, just as Assad's mukhabarat had focused on protecting his rule.
"After toppling Assad all of this will be reshaped -- it is a temporary unit but there is fear that this unit will remain secretive the way it is now and starts executing unwanted agendas," said the commander, known as Obeida.
"We fear that later it will become political and serve a political agenda as if all our sacrifices never happened."
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sounds too me that if the rebels succeed in over throwing the ASSAD GOVT. there will be mass executions. just why the U.S. is supporting the SUNNi"S?
Sunni Islamic extremists/Islamists led by Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE and other Sunni Arab League nations are most ungrateful and biggest backstabbers.
Just examine what the US, British and allies have given them and what we all they got in return.
Also, they will all join hands against us. Benghazi incident is the latest.
NO ROLES IN SYRIA AND IRAN.
Let Sunnis and Shiites battle each other; kill each other; and it is not our business.
Because Obama was raised as a Sunni.
The trouble is, that most of, and the most violent extremism stems from Sunni Islamists. They are behind Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood. So the "rebels" as we now know are mostly foreign terrorists who have been killing and fighting American soldiers, and Turkey has their own bloody genocides that their 97% Sunni Islamic country has dealt upon others ?
I have to really wonder just what the hell Obamas motives are, because in Democracy, the majority rules, but with a radical Sunni Islamic majority, they will likely rule like absolute tyrants bringing death and severe oppression to all others. This is not bringing stability when we continuously upset the balances of power. Again, I question his true motives.
Heads will roll now.
Our support of the rebels is mostly verbal. The problem with revolutions is that they often replace one dictator with another. This is why a revolution against dictatorship is often an exercise in futility. It basically comes down to, "My dictatorship is better than your dictatorship." Even if the rebels succeed and begin executing people, it is not as though Assad has not been executing people, too. The victims will simply be from a different faction. One can hope it will be different, but one should not plan on its being different.
Let me see if I have the rebels mentality right.....
"I don't like your secret secret police who don't tell us what you are doing, and it isn't right, so I will go start my own secret organization that won't tell you or anybody else what is going on either,and isn't accountable to anyone else."
"It doesn't matter if you think it isn't right either, because I have that right, which you don't. I am not accountable to you, though you were accountable to me.If you don't like it, so what, I will make sure no one knows what I do because that is what secret organizations are for, to do what I think is right.No matter who thinks it isn't."
"Anyone who thinks what I am doing isn't right , has no right to disagree.Because only I have the right to know what is right.Just wait to see what will happen to all those who disagree with my rights, that they don't have. Got that?"
Now, if that is clear as mud, how is this going to help the actual people living in Syria?Can they in fact move forwards, having trust in the rebels to give them the support and backing in believing they will be given more freedom and ability to live their lives? Will they feel better being able to move about, say what they want, do what they want, knowing there might be folks who disagree with something they do or say?
Dang, this just doesn't sit right. Meanwhile, we have a President who just pressured a Pastor to withdraw from giving a benediction prayer at his upcoming inauguration because of one anti gay sentence he said ten years ago in a sermon. Claiming he didn't reflect the his administrations vision of the diversity of America's people. Now who has the secret police?What have you or I said that is being recorded, how long ago?
You better bet we have already gone way beyond what Syrian rebels are talking about doing folks, no matter how wrong they might be. We may not have the guns and fighting in the streets in our nation, but we can see the fight in another nation to control what people have access to, in their ability to know what is going on for those in power to decide for them. It is in every nation, don't kid ourselves.
Just because he had a Muslim father and Sunni step Father and went to a Muslim school and studied the Koran, that doesn't make Barack Hussein Obama a Muslim.
Teabillies are stupid.
Seems to me that the next logical progression if and when the rebels win is that the oppressed will soon become oppressors themselves.
the U.S. is supporting the people of syria stuggle to gain their rights (such as choosing the leader of "their" choice instead of a dictator electing himself while ruling with a iron fist restricting rights) and thier freedom. Why would the U.S. support a ruthless dictator killing tens of thousands thinking only of himself.
KGB , Arab spring style !
and we know how well that worked out !
lol... you kooks are too much.
You mean the absent Muslim father and the second husband who was never actually a step father? I went to a Baptist school for 3 times as long as Obama went to a public school in Indonesia (not a religious school, much to the dismay of rwnj's), and I am definitely no christian after that hideous experience. I repeat... you kooks are too much.
lwnj
Was Bush and many of his team members Sunni to station US forces without Bibles in Saudi Arabia to save House of Saud and their Mecca and Medina?
At least Obama has not done such great things till now.
A secular secret police replaced by an Islamic fundamentalist one, a lose-lose situation.
The concern I have is that an Islamist Fundamental Radical group like the Muslim Brotherhood,(Sunni) or even Hezbollah(Shi'ite) is waiting to take over. I don't think Al Qaida has the firepower to take over any nation-state and they don't want to be bound by geopoliticalboundaries. If the rebels are conjuring up their own secret police, they don't sound like a better alternative.
Sunni Syrian rebels supported by Sunni Islamist haters and killers are the worst alternative.
Mind you: they have not even come to power and they will start inventing enemies to hate and kill.
"But now some of the rebels fighting Assad say they have set up a mukhabarat of their own to "protect the revolution,""
Sunni Syrian rebels are supported by the seventh century desert mindset and most bigoted Sunni killer fronts like al Qaida, Muslim Bloodhounds, seventh century extremist Sunni Salaffis and other label ones.
If these Sunni Islamic gangsters of haters and killers win, it will be bad news for sane Muslims, Kurds, females, Christians and other minority sections.
Their rules will be no different from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Sunni Islamic rules.
I really wish Obama and Hillary would rethink this whole thing. The Assads kept the peace for 63 years with wars waging all around them, and all ethnic groups and religions were treated fairly including all sects of Islam, folk belief systems, Christians and Jews. The trouble only started when "foreign" Islamic extremists began making trouble to upset the peace in their bid for absolute power. Obama, Hillary......please think this one over some more; many of these "rebels" are not from there, and started all the trouble as well. What was Assad to do ? allow violent protests go unanswered ?
"Kept the peace for 63 years"? What sort of non-fact-based universe do you live in? Pre-Assad Syria was among the Arab states which invaded the embryonic state of Israel in 1948. Cross-border artillery harassment of Israeli villages was frequent in the 1950s and 1960s, occasionally leading to "battle days" where significant exchanges of artillery and tank fire took place across the frontier. I'll grant that Syria was more victim than culprit in 1967, but the combine Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack in 1973 can be categorized as nothing less than aggression.
True enough that after the Yom Kippur War the Golan Heights front has remained quiescent, but that merely meant that the Israeli-Syrian conflict shifted west to Lebanon, usually through proxies save for 1982.
Assad kept internal peace through internal terrorism. Remember 20,000 dead when Assad senior bombed the city of Hama in 1982? I'm not making a case that whatever the nation ends up with when Assad falls will be any better...merely that the Assad regime cannot be considered to have been anything but a bunch of paranoid, terroristic thugs.
Unfortunately, you are mistaken in this assumption. Syria has often sponsored terrorism and allowed terrorist training camps on their soil. Assad has not been a good leader. Unfortunately, I must concur that the alternatives may end up being even worse.
That was my contention, Under... Nothing about the Assad family dynasty justifies an assertion that they "kept the peace". The Assad family have been sponsors of terrorism; have practiced terrorism on their own civilian populace to maintain power, and have been aggressive actors against their neighbors. My previous post mentioned their military actions against Israel, but we mustn't forget their intervention in Jordan in 1970 on behalf of the PLO, nor their intervention in and occupation of Lebanon from 1975 and continuing for three decades.
I must agree that there exists no justification for US troops to intervene on the ground in Syria, save for one issue: Assad's chemical weapons. If they are used against civilians or if intelligence suggests that those munitions are being moved or smuggled out of their storage arsenals, then the US and allies must act quickly to secure that arsenal. If Assad goes down without using chemical ordnance, there's no justification for US troops. Let's hope it plays out that way.
So, either you're for democracy or your not, and if you're for it, you can't expect it to spring fully formed out of struggle over night. The progression towards democracy is usually a dirty, messy and bloody business, and it doesn't always end up looking exactly the way you'd prefer.
to rocky rhode a correction in a DEMOCRACY EVERYONE HAS A SAY, and in a REPUBLIC THE MAJORITY RULES!
Syrian - rebel - secrete - police . . . now thatis almost too scary to contemplate.
Yet if they win (and it is likely), I am sure we will be right there with US dollars for the new rulers.
Sigh.
@mpa, I agree.
Over there everything is based on hate and lack of trust. Unfortunately the US is getting more that way all the time it seems
I'm forming my own secret police...inside my cubicle...I may try and tap my own phone to see who I am calling....
some folks actually think its better under Assad rule than to let the people of syria win their freedom and their rights to elect the leader of their choosing. I say that those who do support a dictator commiting genocide in order to stay in power, that they are wrong and on the wrong side of history of supporting a mass murdering dictator who uses stalin's logic "kill and/or imprison all those that oppose or don't support his corrupted rule, no matter how young."
We must remember that this conflict was born out of arab spring, which is knocking dictators in that region to the curb, so that the "people" will have freedom and a say who will be their leader, only then could the movement develop into a just society.
From one oppressor to another. Same as it ever was in the Middle East.
Secret Police? Just wait and soon the local D.P.W. will find Assad hiding out in a sewer pipe somewhere.
Typical Mid Eastern "underground" exit strategy.
Well...now it's not a secret, is it?
When they replace the old regime the only difference will be who is being tortured and killed. If the two sides look in a mirror they would see each other. The way of death these people have chosen will not end until none are left alive.
Bad Idea.
Well, we have the CIA, NSA, and FBI - why not? Take our guns away and we have a Dictatorship!
Gary
This is not a story about gun control. Not every story is dedicated to your single interest.
Gary, do you own a assault rifle and hate children?
If you don't, there's other roaming the streets in the U.S. that do.
What if one of those kids killed in school were your kid I'm sure you would have a different view on the subject.
BTW- a mentally deranged person with a history of mental illness wanting to kill masses of people before killing himself can easily get a military type weapon at a gun show with no background check, do you support this type of person obtaining a weapon without any kind of background check on the freak?
Someone (probabaly one of Assads ex generals) will consolidate this secret police force and offer their services to the winner.
Survivors are survivors...
That's what the forerunners to the Iranean Revolutionary Guards said back in 1979 when they were toppling the government which was in power at that time-------and just look at them now and what they have done to some of their own people, not to mention some of their activities outside of Iran!!!