From a Bond villain lair within the rugged heights overlooking Damascus, the all-seeing eye of a infamous Syrian navy unit gazed down on a metropolis it bled dry. Lots of the bases of the elite Fourth Division previously run by toppled president Bashar al-Assad’s feared youthful brother Maher now lie looted.
However papers left strewn behind reveal how the person they referred to as “The Grasp” and his cronies wallowed in immense wealth whereas a few of their foot troopers struggled to feed their households and even begged on the streets.
Piles of paperwork seen by AFP expose an enormous financial empire that Maher al-Assad and his community of profiteers constructed by pillaging a rustic already impoverished by almost 14 years of civil conflict.
Western governments lengthy accused him and his entourage of turning Syria right into a narco state, flooding the Center East with captagon, an unlawful stimulant used each as a celebration drug within the Gulf and to push migrant staff via punishingly lengthy days within the gruelling warmth.
However far past that $10-billion commerce — whose huge scale was uncovered in a 2022 AFP investigation — papers present in its deserted posts present the Fourth Division had its fingers in lots of pies in Syria, an all-consuming “mafia” inside the pariah state.
+ It expropriated properties and farms
+ Seized meals, vehicles and electronics to promote on
+ Looted copper and steel from bombed-out buildings
+ Collected “charges” at roadblocks and checkpoints
+ Ran safety rackets, making companies pay for escorts of oil tankers, some from areas managed by jihadists
+ Managed the tobacco and steel trades
– Mountain eyrie –
The centre of this corrupt internet was Maher al-Assad’s non-public workplaces, hidden in an underground labyrinth of tunnels — some sufficiently big to drive a truck via — minimize right into a mountain above Damascus.
A masked guard took AFP via the tunnels with all of the brisk effectivity of a tour information — the sauna, the bed room, what gave the impression to be cells and numerous “emergency” exit routes.
However at its coronary heart, down a steep flight of 160 stairs, lay a collection of vaults with iron-clad doorways.
The guard mentioned he had counted 9 vaults behind one sealed-off room.
He mentioned safes had been “damaged open” by looters who entered the workplace simply hours after the Assad brothers fled Syria on December 8 when Damascus fell to an Islamist-led offensive, ending the household’s five-decade rule.
Maher, 57, didn’t know of his brother’s plans to flee to Russia and escaped individually, taking a helicopter to the Iraqi border, in response to a senior Iraqi safety official and two different sources. He then made his method to Russia, they mentioned, apparently by way of Iran.
The chaos of their fall is clear within the underground complicated. Safes and empty Rolex and Cartier watch containers nonetheless lie scattered about, although it isn’t identified if the vaults have been emptied earlier than the looters arrived.
“That is Maher al-Assad’s most important workplace,” the guard mentioned, “which has two flooring above the bottom but in addition tunnels containing locked rooms that may’t be opened.”
In a single hall, a shrink wrap machine — most likely used for bundling money — was deserted subsequent to an enormous secure.
– Hidden fortune –
There was by no means any scarcity of payments to wrap.
One doc retrieved from the papers that litter the Fourth Division’s Safety Bureau farther down the hill present that they had prepared money of $80 million, eight million euros and 41 billion Syrian kilos at their fingertips in June. That was a wonderfully regular money float, in response to papers going again to 2021.
“That is solely a small pattern of the wealth that Maher and his associates gathered from their shady enterprise offers,” mentioned Carnegie Center East Centre scholar Kheder Khaddour.
Their actual fortune might be hidden “overseas, possible in Arab and African international locations”, he mentioned.
“The Fourth Division was a money-making machine,” Khaddour added, preying on a land the place the UN says greater than 90 p.c of the inhabitants was dwelling on slightly greater than $2 a day.
– State inside a state –
Western sanctions to squeeze the Assads and their cronies did little to impede Maher and his males.
Theirs was an “unbiased state” inside the state, mentioned Omar Shaaban, a former Fourth Division colonel who has signed a cope with the brand new Syrian authorities.
“It had all of the means… It had all the things,” he mentioned.
Whereas the US greenback was formally banned below Assad — with Syrians not even allowed to utter the phrase — Shaaban mentioned many Fourth Division officers grew “rich and had safes full of cash”.
“In {dollars},” naturally, Shaaban added.
Maher’s cronies lived in sprawling villas, transport luxurious vehicles overseas whereas past their gates the nation was mired in poverty and despair.
Weeks after the Assads’ fall, determined folks have been nonetheless combing via Maher’s mansion constructed right into a hill in Damascus’ Yaafour neighbourhood subsequent to the stables the place his daughter rode her prize-winning horses.
“I need the gold. The place’s the gold?” a person requested AFP as he went via its ransacked rooms. However all that was left have been outdated images of Maher, his spouse and their three kids strewn on the ground.
– ‘The butcher’ –
Maher was a shadowy, menacing determine in Assad’s Syria, branded “the butcher” by the opposition. His Fourth Division was the ousted regime’s iron fist, linked to an extended record of atrocities.
However whereas his portrait was hung in all their bases, he was seldom seen in public.
Regardless of rights teams accusing him of ordering the 2011 bloodbath of protesters in Daraa — which helped ignite the civil conflict — and the United Nations linking him to the 2005 assassination of ex-Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri, he was “the invisible man”, one particular person near the previous ruling household instructed AFP.
“Few folks would let you know that they know him,” the supply mentioned.
But Maher might be beneficiant and good firm, in response to his sister-in-law Majd al-Jadaan, a longtime opponent of the regime.
“Nevertheless, when he will get indignant, he utterly loses management… That is what makes his persona terrifying,” she instructed Al-Arabiya TV.
“He is aware of methods to destroy — he is aware of methods to kill after which lie to look harmless,” Jadaan instructed French TV early within the civil conflict, saying he was as ruthless as his father, Hafez.
– Luxurious vehicles –
One different title retains cropping up alongside Maher’s when folks in Damascus curse the crimes of the Fourth Division.
Ghassan Belal was the pinnacle of its highly effective Safety Bureau. Like his boss, he collected luxurious vehicles and lived in a villa within the Yaafour district. Belal has additionally left Syria, in response to safety sources.
Inside his spacious workplaces within the bureau’s headquarters, you may piece collectively his lavish life-style invoice by invoice from the papers he left, together with the price of working his Cadillac.
Over the summer time, Belal shipped two vehicles, a Lexus and a Mercedes, to Dubai, the $29,000 customs and different bills charged to a bank card below one other title.
A handwritten be aware confirmed that regardless of being sanctioned for human rights abuses, he paid his Netflix subscription utilizing a “pal’s international bank card”.
One other record confirmed that largely home bills for his properties, together with his most important villa — which has since additionally been looted — amounted to $55,000 for simply 10 days in August.
That very same month, a Fourth Division soldier wrote to Belal begging for assist as a result of he was in “a horrible monetary scenario”. Belal gave him 500,000 Syrian kilos — $33. One other soldier who deserted his submit was caught begging on the road.
– The cash males –
Whereas hundreds of the papers have been burned because the regime fell, lots of the categorized paperwork survived the flames and have tales to inform.
Amongst distinguished names talked about as paying into Fourth Division funds are sanctioned businessmen Khaled Qaddour, Raif Quwatli and the Katerji brothers, who’ve been accused of producing a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and the Yemeni Houthis via the sale of Iranian oil to Syria and China.
Quwatli operated checkpoints and crossings the place items have been typically confiscated or “taxed”, a number of sources mentioned.
Qaddour — who was sanctioned by the USA for bankrolling Maher via captagon, cigarette and cell phone smuggling — denied having any dealings with him when he tried to have his EU sanctions lifted in 2018.
However the Safety Bureau’s income record confirmed he paid $6.5 million into its coffers in 2020 alone.
– ‘It was a mafia’ –
Khaddour mentioned the Safety Bureau dealt with many of the division’s monetary dealings and issued safety playing cards for folks it did enterprise with to ease their actions.
A drug lord instructed Lebanese investigators in 2021 that he held a Fourth Division safety card and that the Safety Bureau had agreed to guard one other seller’s drug cargo for $2 million, in response to an announcement seen by AFP.
The US Treasury and several other Syrian and Lebanese safety figures have additionally cited Belal and the bureau as key gamers within the captagon commerce.
AFP visited a captagon lab linked to the division in December in a villa within the Dimas space close to Lebanon’s border, its rooms filled with containers and barrels of the caffeine, ethanol and paracetamol wanted to make the drug.
Locals mentioned they weren’t allowed to strategy the villa, with shepherds banned from the encircling hills.
A former Fourth Division officer who labored for Belal, and who requested to not be named, mentioned the bureau loved “a lot immunity, nobody might contact a member with out Maher’s approval.”
“It was a mafia, and I knew I used to be working for a mafia,” he added.
– ‘They left folks in starvation’ –
The division’s unbridled greed haunted households for many years as a letter written by Adnan Deeb, a graveyard caretaker from Homs, exhibits.
His plea for the return of his household’s seized property was discovered amongst a whole lot of damp and soiled paperwork at an deserted checkpoint close to Damascus.
When AFP tracked Deeb down, he instructed how the Fourth Division confiscated his household’s villa, and people of a number of of their neighbours within the village of Kafraya 10 years in the past.
Regardless of not being allowed close to them, Deeb mentioned they nonetheless needed to pay taxes on the properties, which have been used as workplaces, warehouses and sure a jail.
“The Fourth Division Safety Bureau right here was a crimson line that nobody dared to return near,” the son of one of many homeowners instructed AFP.
They discovered a whole lot of vehicles, bikes and a whole lot of gallons of cooking oil within the properties after the regime fell.
“They left folks in starvation whereas all the things was obtainable for them,” he mentioned.
A lady with 25 relations — some dwelling in a tent — repeatedly requested the Fourth Division give her again her residence in a doc present in one other of the villas.
– Bashar received his minimize –
The Fourth Division managed no a part of the Syrian economic system greater than the metals market, with former colonel Shaaban saying “nobody was permitted to maneuver iron” with out its approval.
It additionally had “unique” management of copper, he mentioned.
When Assad’s forces took management of a Damascus suburb after a fierce battle with rebels, the Fourth Division swiftly despatched its males to tug the copper and iron from destroyed properties, one in all its officers recalled.
Fares Shehabi, former head of Syria’s Chamber of Trade mentioned a steel plant managed by one in all Maher al-Assad’s companions monopolised the market, with factories pressured to purchase completely from it.
Many “might now not function” below such strain, Shehabi mentioned.
Maher al-Assad and his “mates” managed an enormous share of Syria’s economic system, he mentioned. However the final beneficiary was at all times his brother Bashar, he argued. “It was one firm. The (presidential) palace was at all times the reference.”
The previous Fourth Division officer additionally insisted a share of earnings and seized gadgets at all times went to the president.
– Poisonous legacy –
Whereas little appears to be left of Fourth Division right now apart from its ransacked depots and headquarters, Syria professional Lars Hauch, of Battle Mediation Options (CMS), warned its legacy might but be extremely poisonous.
“The Fourth Division was a navy actor, a safety equipment, an intelligence entity, an financial drive, a political energy, and a transnational legal enterprise,” he mentioned.
“An establishment with a decades-long historical past, huge monetary capability and shut relations with elites doesn’t simply vanish,” he added.
“Whereas the top-level management fled the nation, the dedicated and largely Alawite core (from which the Assads come)… retreated to the coastal areas,” Hauch mentioned.
Syria’s new management has repeatedly sought to reassure minorities they won’t be harmed. However throughout the nation, violence in opposition to Alawites has surged.
Hauch mentioned caches of weapons might have been hidden away.
Add to that the division’s conflict chest of “billions of {dollars}”, and “you will have what you want for a sustained insurgency… if Syria’s transition fails to attain real inclusivity and transitional justice,” the analyst warned.