Iranian Militias, Syrian Regime Tussle over ‘Sayyida Zainab’

Iranian militias and regime forces vie for power in the Sayyida Zainab region. (Reuters)
Iranian militias and regime forces vie for power in the Sayyida Zainab region. (Reuters)
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Iranian Militias, Syrian Regime Tussle over ‘Sayyida Zainab’

Iranian militias and regime forces vie for power in the Sayyida Zainab region. (Reuters)
Iranian militias and regime forces vie for power in the Sayyida Zainab region. (Reuters)

The conflict over the Sayyida Zainab region and the surrounding areas south of the capital Damascus is persisting between Iranian militias and Syrian security forces and the 4th Armored Division.

The dispute erupted over the closure of a main road that leaders to the region, while only one route was kept open to the area.

Conflicting reports have emerged over which side took such a step in a region that is controlled by Iran and its militias.

The Sayyida Zainab region is only accessible through two main roads. The first is the “Mafraq al-Mustaqbal” that lies on the Damascus International Airport highway. The second road starts from Damascus’ al-Qazaz neighborhood, passing through the towns of Babbila and Hujeira and reaches Sayyida Zainab.

The Hujeira road was recently blocked by a large sand barrier and unidentified gunmen have been deployed in the area to thoroughly inspect the identification cards of passersby.

The Babbila-Hujeira-Sayyida Zainab route was opened in 2018 after the Syrian government recaptured the area through a Russian-mediated “reconciliation” agreement. Soon after, an intelligence agency checkpoint was set up at Hujeira’s northern entrance.

The checkpoint is still there today, just a few dozen meters from the new sand barrier.

Moreover, other sand barriers have been set up at byroads leading to Sayyida Zainab. Only two or three of those roads have been left open and they all lead to Iranian headquarters.

Several posters of President Bashar Assad, and others of him with his brother Maher, leader of the 4th Armored Division, and others of him with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, have noticeably gone up on the region.

A local source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Hujeira residents were surprised with the sand barrier and with how people traveling in their vehicles were barred from reaching their homes. They said that cars were only given access to the region through the Mafraq al-Mustaqbal road.

“No one knows why and who set up the barrier,” they said.

Some spoke of disputes when Iran’s Shiite militants attacked members of the Armored Division, prompting the latter to block the road. Others said that the militias were the ones who set up the barrier in order to consolidate their control over the region.

Another source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the members of the security and Armored Division were “very upset with Iran’s swallowing up of the region.”

Iran has set up a large complex over vast territories in northern Hujeira that it says serves recreational, sports and cultural purposes. It also set up a large barracks to its south and continues to purchase houses in the area, revealed the source.

The rival factions clash and “the people pay the price by going through pains to reach their work, schools and securing their basic needs.”

People driving up the Mafraq al-Mustaqbal road told Asharq Al-Awsat that the checkpoint there was usually held by Shiite militias.

Now, there are three checkpoints: One jointly held by the militias, general intelligence and Armored Division, another held by the “military security” agency and a third held by the general security directorate.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported in early May on a struggle for power raging since mid-March between the Iranian militias and Armored Division in regions south of Damascus.

The disputes had erupted after the militias blocked main roads and byroads connecting Sayyida Zainab to Babbila and Hujeira. The militias also deployed their gunmen along the blocked roads without offering any explanation for their actions.

Sayyida Zainab was seen as an Iranian stronghold even before the eruption of the Syrian conflict in 2011. The region was visited by Shiites from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan

When the conflict broke out, Iran took it upon itself to “defend” the area and used that as an excuse to attract gunmen from around the globe to Syria. Now, some 50 local and foreign militias boasting some 60,000 gunmen loyal to Iran are deployed in Syria.
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After Decades in Assad Jails, Political Prisoner Wants Justice

For many years, Ragheed Tatari's family assumed he had died in Syria's hellish prison system. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
For many years, Ragheed Tatari's family assumed he had died in Syria's hellish prison system. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
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After Decades in Assad Jails, Political Prisoner Wants Justice

For many years, Ragheed Tatari's family assumed he had died in Syria's hellish prison system. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP
For many years, Ragheed Tatari's family assumed he had died in Syria's hellish prison system. LOUAI BESHARA / AFP

Syrian fighter pilot Ragheed Tatari was 26 when he was arrested. Now 70, the country's longest-serving political prisoner is finally free after Bashar al-Assad's fall, seeking justice and accountability.

Tatari, arrested in 1981 and sentenced to life behind bars, was among scores of prisoners who walked free when longtime ruler Assad was overthrown on December 8 in an offensive led by opposition factions.

He has made it out alive after 43 years in jail, but tens of thousands of Syrian families are still searching for their loved ones who disappeared long ago in Syria's hellish prison system.

"I came close to death under torture," Tatari told AFP in his small Damascus apartment.

Since a military field court gave him a life sentence for "collaborating with foreign countries" -- an accusation he denies -- Tatari was moved from one prison to another, first under late president Hafez al-Assad and then his son Bashar who succeeded him in 2000.

Showing old pictures of him in his pilot uniform, Tatari said he was not seeking revenge, but stressed that "everyone must be held accountable for their crimes".

"We do not want anyone to be imprisoned" without due process, said Tatari.

More than two million Syrians were jailed under the Assad dynasty's rule, half of them after anti-government protests in 2011 escalated into civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

The Britain-based monitor says around 200,000 died in custody.

Diab Serriya, co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, said that Tatari was "the longest-serving political prisoner in Syria and the Middle East".

Rights group Amnesty International has called the notorious Saydnaya prison outside Damascus a "human slaughterhouse".

Tatari had been detained there, but he said his 15 years in the Palmyra prison in the Syrian desert were the most difficult.

'Wished for death'

The Palmyra facility operated "without any discipline, any laws and any humanity", Tatari said.

Detainees were "not afraid of torture -- we wished for death", he added.

"Everything that has been said about torture in Palmyra... is an understatement."

"A guard could kill a prisoner if he was displeased with him," Tatari said, adding that inmates were forced under torture to say phrases like "Hafez al-Assad is your god", although he refused to do so.

In 1980, Palmyra witnessed a massacre of hundreds of mostly Islamist detainees, gunned down by helicopters or executed in their cells after a failed assassination attempt on Hafez al-Assad.

Tatari said he was completely disconnected from the outside world there, only learning of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union through a prisoner who had returned from a hospital visit.

In Sweida prison in the south, where Tatari was transferred after the 2011 revolt began, some inmates had phones that they would keep hidden from the guards.

"The cell phone gets you out of prison, it makes you feel alive," he said, recalling how he used to conceal his device in a hole dug in his cell.

But after his phone was discovered, he was transferred to a prison in Tartus -- his final detention facility before gaining freedom.

Dreams of escape

Tatari was one of several military officers who were opposed to Syria's intervention in Lebanon in 1976, and to the violent repression in the early 1980s of the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria's main opposition force at the time.

"Many of us were against involving the army in political operations," he said.

After two of his fellow pilots defected and fled to Jordan in 1980, he escaped to Egypt and then on to Jordan.

But he returned when security forces began harassing his family and was arrested on arrival.

His wife was pregnant at the time with their first and only son.

For years, the family assumed Tatari was dead, before receiving a proof of life in 1997 after paying bribes, a common practice under the Assads' rule.

It was then that Tatari was finally able to meet his son, then aged 16, under the watchful eye of guards during the family's first authorized prison visit that year.

"I was afraid... I ended the meeting after 15 minutes," Tatari said.

His wife has since died and their son left Syria, having received threats at the start of the protest movement, which had spiraled into war and eventually led to Assad's overthrow.

During his time behind bars, Tatari said he "used to escape prison with my thoughts, daydreams and drawing".

"The regime getting toppled overnight was beyond my dreams... No one expected it to happen so quickly."