Syria's opposition form their own secret police

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BEIRUT - Just the mention of the word would send shivers down the spine of Syrians: "mukhabarat", or secret police. Abuses by President Bashar al-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 opposition 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 opposition plan attacks against government forces.

"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 opposition intelligence officer who goes under the name Haji.

Opposition 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 opposition mukhabarat's members were army defectors and former intelligence officers, and that the information they gathered was distributed to all anti-Assad factions and opposition 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. Haji was careful to distinguish between its methods and those of the secret police under Assad, saying he was aware of the feared reputation of the government's internal spy services.

"Our work is organized, we have an internal law and we are committed to international laws and human rights," he said, speaking briefly over Skype.

The new opposition body has operated secretly for months, Haji said, helping fighters carry out attacks on government targets. He did not specifically claim credit for a bomb attack on a security headquarters in Damascus in July that killed five of Assad's top security officials, including his defense minister and his brother-in-law, who was an intelligence chief.

"We have our spies among the regime who are providing us with information that we need, including military information."

The most ruthless

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.

In the Arab world's many past or present police states, Syria's mukhabarat has long had a reputation as one of the most ruthless. It consists of at least five powerful agencies who spy on each other, tap phones of dissidents and vie for power.

Created under French Mandate rule of Syria from 1923-43, the secret police became ever more powerful under Hafez al-Assad, who ruled with an iron fist from 1971 until his death in 2000.

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 Shi'ites, fear for their freedoms if the armed revolt brings Sunni Islamist hardliners to power.