In this chapter, I will describe some techniques that the Assad regime used to minimize the possibilities of any coup that could take him out of power and guaranteed that the Assad’s family govern Syria in a semi-Royal way for decades.
Multiplying the security services agencies

Hafez Al Assad had many security services agencies. He inherited some from past regimes, and created others. The main 4 security directorates are:

·         The General Intelligence Directorate (Amn Addawlah) was formed few months after Hafiz Al Assad came to power. ·         The military intelligence service of Syria (Al-Mukhabarat al-'Askariyya) was established in 1969. Hafez Al Assad was the minister of Defense at the time. Its roots go back to the French mandate period (1923–1943)Each of the above directorates has a branch in every one of the 14 Syrian provinces, except for several platoons in big cities. It is expected that there is a sort of distribution of roles between these directorates, but this is not the situation. Each of these services was given unrestricted power to oversee and report everything that was happening. For instance, the role of “Palestine division” was not really overseeing “activities of Palestinian groups in Syria and Lebanon “. It has been known as the most brutal division that tortured thousands of Syrians who were not necessarily connected to Palestine nor to Lebanon.In my opinion, the aim of creating multiple divisions was to make these services observers of not only the activities of any potential threaten of the regime’s power, but rather to oversee each other as well.Every general or director of these directorates could be a victim of reports written by a small spy in another directorate. With this technique, the Assad regime could minimize the possibility of any potential coup or rebellion. It created horrifying directorates which terrorized the citizens. However, terrorists were themselves terrorized by the ghosts of their counterparts and colleagues.
The above-described directorates were the secret police. There was the regular police directorate which was responsible for the regular issues and enjoyed much less power than the secret police. Other secret police divisions were added in Bashar Al Assad’s era like the Anti-terrorism division or Anti-drugs division. Again, they were just a replication of the main directorates with different names and same function. 


This is the other tactic which modern security services developed to complete their control over the nations. It is one step further. It implies not waiting until the opposition arise before facing it. Rather, the security services predict this raise and breakthrough any “potential” movement in the very early stages. In each potential rebellion there should be insider agents, and, in some cases, these agents even play the main role in starting the rebellion itself. This is a very advanced tactic but very smart as well. During the Syrian revolution’s years, thousands of such double-agents were discovered. Some of them were the main triggers and leaders of the rebellion.

In some advanced stage of this process, the services started to create some factions and movements in parallel with the natural ones and give them power or legitimacy. I mentioned some examples and will mention others throughout the book. Important here: These “Trojan horses” don’t necessarily need to be aware of this game. They play their role naturally. The services gave them possibilities in many ways. They trigger the media to create some Aurora and noise around them. It prevents their competitor to appear by assassinating them, arresting or using any other tools. The modern strategy is: There should be always opposition and we can’t prevent that. Let’s then create some opposition to keep it other control, while minimizing the influence of any other opposition which we have less control over it.
This is a common method which is applied by almost all international intelligence agencies. Throughout this book I mentioned many examples of this technique, applied by United States, the Syrian regime, Iraqi regime and others…


 Hizbollah–Syrian Intelligence Affairs: A Marriage of Convenience, a study by Carl Anthony WegeCollege of Coastal Georgia http://www.faqs.org/espionage/Sp-Te/Syria-Intelligence-and-Security.html