The notorious fourth division in syria that sucked the war torn country dry

The notorious fourth division in syria that sucked the war torn country dry

Papers left strewn in the bases of the Syrian military unit deserted after the fall of the Assad regime reveal how the elites of the division wallowed in immense wealth; documents expose the vast empire of an Assad brother built by pillaging a country impoverished by nearly 14 years of civil war.

From a structure resembling a Bond villain lair in the rugged heights overlooking Damascus, the all-seeing eye of a Syrian military unit gazed down on a city it bled dry.

Many of the bases of the elite Fourth Division formerly run by ousted President Bashar al-Assad’s feared younger brother Maher al-Assad now lie looted.

But papers left strewn behind reveal how the man they called “The Master” and his cronies wallowed in immense wealth while some of their foot soldiers struggled to feed their families and even begged on the streets.

Piles of documents expose a vast economic empire that Mr. Maher and his network of profiteers built by pillaging a country already impoverished by nearly 14 years of civil war.

Western governments long accused him and his entourage of turning Syria into a narco state, flooding West Asia with captagon, an illegal stimulant used both as a party drug and to push migrant workers through punishingly long days in the gruelling heat.

But far beyond that $10-billion trade papers found in its abandoned posts show the Fourth Division had its fingers in many pies in Syria, an all-consuming “mafia”. It expropriated homes and farms, seized food, cars and electronics to sell on, and ran protection rackets — making firms pay for escorts of oil tankers, some from areas controlled by jihadists.

The centre of this corrupt web was Mr. Maher’s private offices, hidden in an underground labyrinth of tunnels — some big enough to drive a truck through — cut into a mountain above Damascus.

A masked guard took AFP through the tunnels with all the brisk efficiency of a tour guide — the sauna, the bedroom, what appeared to be cells and various “emergency” exit routes.

But at its heart, down a steep flight of 160 stairs, lay a series of vaults with iron-clad doors. The guard said he had counted nine vaults behind one sealed-off room.

He said safes had been “broken open” by looters who entered the office just hours after the Assad brothers fled Syria on December 8 when Damascus fell to an Islamist-led offensive, ending the family’s five-decade rule.

Mr. Maher, 57, did not know of his brother’s plans to flee to Russia and escaped separately, taking a helicopter to the Iraqi border, according to a senior Iraqi security official and two other sources. He then made his way to Russia, they said, apparently via Iran.

The chaos of their fall is apparent in the underground complex. Safes and empty Rolex and Cartier watch boxes still lie scattered about, though it is not known if the vaults were emptied before the looters arrived.

Unimpeded network

“This is Maher al-Assad’s main office,” the guard said, “which has two floors above the ground but also tunnels containing locked rooms that cannot be opened.”

Western sanctions to squeeze the Assads and their cronies did little to impede the Fourth Divison.

One document retrieved from the papers that litter the Fourth Division’s Security Bureau farther down the hill show they had ready cash of $80 million, eight million euros, and 41 billion Syrian pounds at their fingertips in June. That was a perfectly normal cash float, according to papers going back to 2021.

“This is only a small sample of the wealth that Maher and his associates gathered from their shady business deals,” said Carnegie Middle East Centre scholar Kheder Khaddour.

Their real fortune is probably hidden “abroad, likely in Arab and African countries”, he said.

“The Fourth Division was a money-making machine,” he added, preying on a land where the UN says more than 90% of the population was living on a little more than $2 a day.

Mr. Maher was a shadowy, menacing figure in Syria, branded “the butcher” by the opposition. His Fourth Division was the ousted regime’s iron fist, linked to a long list of atrocities.

Despite rights groups accusing him of ordering the 2011 massacre of protesters in Daraa — which ultimately led to the civil war — and the UN linking him to the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, he was “the invisible man”, one person close to the former ruling family said.

Mr. Maher and his “friends” controlled a big share of Syria’s economy, said Fares Shehabi, former head of Syria’s Chamber of Industry. But the ultimate beneficiary was always his brother. “It was one company. The (presidential) palace was always the reference,” he said.

The former Fourth Division officer also insisted a share of profits always went to the President.

While little seems to be left of Fourth Division today other than its ransacked depots and headquarters, Syria expert Lars Hauch, of Conflict Mediation Solutions (CMS), warned its legacy could yet be highly toxic.

“The Fourth Division was a military actor, a security apparatus, an intelligence entity, an economic force, a political power, and a transnational criminal enterprise,” he said.

“An institution with a decades-long history, enormous financial capacity and close relations with elites doesn’t just vanish,” he added.

“While the top-level leadership fled the country, the committed and mostly Alawite core (from which the Assads come)... retreated to the coastal regions,” Mr. Hauch said.

Hauch said caches of weapons may have been hidden away.

Add to that the division’s war chest of “billions of dollars”, and “you have what you need for a sustained insurgency... if Syria’s transition fails to achieve genuine inclusivity and transitional justice,” the analyst warned.