Syria.. Where did the senior officers of the Assad regime disappear?

On the morning of December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad's plane was not the only one to leave Syrian territory, fleeing the military opposition factions that took control of Damascus, announcing the fall of the regime after 5 decades of tyranny. It was followed by thousands of senior officials and security officers whose names were linked to war crimes and gross human rights violations.

Despite the announcement by the Military Operations Department of security campaigns to pursue the remnants of the regime, after nearly two months since the fall of the regime, there has been no official announcement of the arrest of prominent officers, except for news about some officials, such as Major General Muhammad Kanjo Hassan, the former official in charge of field courts in Sednaya prison, who issued death sentences against detainees, but without official confirmation.

While it has been confirmed that Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow via the Russian Hmeimim base, the question remains about the hiding places of thousands of former officers and officials, the potential security threat they may pose to the new Syrian administration, and the challenges it may face in pursuing them and holding them accountable for past crimes.

Popular incubator areas

With the beginning of the advance of the Military Operations Administration towards Hama in early December, following its control over the city of Aleppo and the rest of the Idlib and Hama countrysides, the Syrian coastal areas and the western Homs countryside witnessed large waves of displacement. These areas constitute the popular incubator for the largest proportion of the regime’s officers and elements.

These rugged mountainous areas, especially those near Qardaha (the birthplace of Bashar al-Assad), are a temporary refuge for senior officers and militia leaders. Sources told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that these areas have become a safe haven for regime forces, officers and figures known to the people of the region.

On January 2, 2025, the Lebanese judiciary released Rifaat al-Assad’s granddaughter, Shams Duraid al-Assad, and her mother, Rasha Khazim, after they were arrested a week earlier at Beirut International Airport, following their use of forged passports and their attempt to travel abroad with them.

For its part, Reuters quoted a Lebanese security official on December 28, 2024, saying that they “found the Syrian officers and soldiers in a truck in the northern coastal city of Byblos after it was searched by local officials,” while neither Lebanese nor Syrian officials commented on what was reported. The official indicated that the Syrian soldiers of various ranks entered through the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon.

On the 16th of the same month, Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi announced that the Lebanese authorities are pursuing any Syrian official who enters Lebanon illegally, conducting inspections and investigations at border crossings, and carrying out security raids in various areas to verify the accuracy of information about the entry of Syrian officers or officials.

For its part, Interpol urged the authorities to arrest the director of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence, Jamil al-Hassan, and hand him over to the United States, according to what Reuters reported from Lebanese sources. On December 27, Lebanon handed over to the interim government of Damascus 70 soldiers and officers after they entered its territory illegally through smuggling routes.

Areas controlled by the "SDF"

The Clash Report account, which specializes in monitoring military movements, revealed that no less than 2,500 soldiers from the Assad regime forces have joined the ranks of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which control areas east of the Euphrates.

The account added, via the X platform, that intelligence and military officers in the former regime established an office in Hasakah to organize attacks and provocations against the new Syrian government.

The account quoted its sources as saying that some elements of the former regime are fighting against the new Syrian government forces on the Tishreen front, which has witnessed ongoing clashes since the fall of the regime between the SDF forces and factions in the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.

The media office of the SDF issued a statement on December 13, denying the news that was circulated about Maher al-Assad fleeing to Iraq with the help of the SDF by passing through its territory.

Despite the Syrian Democratic Forces’ control over areas east of the Euphrates, the ousted regime maintained control over some security squares in the cities of Hasakah and Qamishli, as these two points constituted a safe place for large numbers of officers and personnel who fled from areas controlled by the regime on the western bank of the Euphrates River.

Commenting on the escape of the regime’s officers, former Chief of Staff of the Free Syrian Army, Brigadier General Ahmed Berri, explains that when the real battle began and the forces of the deposed regime had no ground support from Iran or Hezbollah, nor Russian air support, these officers and personnel had no choice but to flee in all possible directions. Some of them chose coastal areas, some fled to Lebanon or Iran, and some headed towards the Russian Hmeimim base.

Regarding the officers who fled to areas controlled by the SDF, Berri - in his interview with Al Jazeera Net - indicated that these cannot pose a threat to the new Syrian administration because their numbers are not large on the one hand, and because the Syrian Democratic Forces have their own technologies and programs, so they cannot integrate with them on the other hand.

Other destinations

Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, Farhoud explains that there are a number of possibilities through which these officers could confuse the new leadership in Damascus, namely:

• First: That countries hostile to the new administration support them, reorganize them, and finance them so that they can gather the youth they trust to attack the new administration in the form of gangs, not in the form of an army.
• Second: That they seek protection in the areas of the Alawite sect, which is the most important incubator for the officers of the old army, and fight with the sons of this sect in defense of themselves and it against the new administration. The goal here is not to restore the old regime, but rather to achieve gains on the personal level and on the sect level, as happened in the famous Jableh incident a few days ago.
• Third: That some officers, along with a number of their trusted members, practice looting and plundering for purely financial purposes, especially in light of the state of chaos within the country, and with their awareness that their fate is execution at the hands of the new courts of the political administration for their involvement in the genocide of the Syrian people during the days of the old regime.

In the same context, Brigadier General Ahmed Berri confirms that the possibility of them organizing themselves into one formation and threatening the new Syrian administration is very unlikely, and the matter may be limited to ambushes or individual operations only.

For his part, Brigadier General Abdul Basit Al-Wais, a member of the political body of the National Coalition, explains that the officers who stole and looted all that they could of Syria’s wealth will work to establish gangs and “mafias” whose goal is to spread chaos and destruction in the future, for two reasons: to take revenge on the Syrian people in general after they saw the expressions of joy on the faces of all Syrians on the one hand, and to prove to the world and countries that as soon as they left Syria, extremism, chaos, insecurity, and fighting between minorities and the majority spread.

Accordingly, Al-Wais, in his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, notes the necessity for the new Syrian administration to be in a state of alert and caution to pursue these remnants, by mobilizing the energies of all the sons of the revolution, including elites, intellectuals, and revolutionary leaders, and attracting all dissidents, both civilians and military, and throwing them into the joints of the state.

Source: Al Jazeera