Global News Podcast - The secret police's grip on Syria under Assad

Episode Date: December 14, 2024

Revelations of how the secret police controlled society under Assad. Also: the mystery of huge drones spotted in the US, and how fidgeting can drive others mad - and what psychologists can do to help.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and in the early hours of Saturday 14 December these are our main stories. More secrets of the Assad regime have been emerging as Syrians across the country continue to celebrate the end of half a century of authoritarian rule. Francois Beirut has admitted he has a mountainous task ahead as he becomes the fourth prime minister to take office in France this year. The management consulting firm McKinsey has agreed a settlement of hundreds of millions of dollars with the US authorities over its role in the opioid crisis. Also in this podcast. These are large drones that are the size of bicycles, small cars.

When you get close to those drones, they notice those drones kind of turn off their lights and evade police helicopters. The mystery of the huge drone spotted in parts of the US but dismissed by the White House. We begin in Syria where secrets of the Assad regime have been emerging since its overthrow last weekend. For more than half a century the linchpin of the regime's stranglehold in the country was the General Intelligence Directorate, better known throughout the Arab world as the Muqabarat, the secret police. It's impossible to overstate its grip on

Syrian society. It spied on the Syrian people and others, got Syrians to spy on each other and imprisoned, tortured and often killed anyone who fell foul of the authorities. BBC Arabic's Faris Kalani visited the secretive heart of the Assad state's security apparatus. He told me what he found. It's the most important institution of the Assad regime, both father and the son. And the headquarters I visited is the most important one in Damascus to interfere in anything, whether it's in China or overseas. I mean, just a few days ago, what you've done would be impossible,

but you have now been inside the headquarters. What did you see? I don't like to personalise it, but I am one of the wanted by this service, the Mokhabarat in Syria, because of my role at the BBC, the way I cover the news in Syria. So literally I was thinking about this enough to find my file there and then I found millions of documents about everything everything about the situation in the country in each corner in the country what was going on even few days just few days before the militants reached Damascus the capital lots of files about the neighboring country mainly like Lebanon Jordan

spying in every every single politician in Lebanon for example put away what they were doing here in Syria they have files about every single politician in Lebanon, for example, put away what they were doing here in Syria. They have files about every single person in the country. So it's an office building with files on everyone. Is it also the kind of place where suspects were taken and mistreated? Not in the Moukhabarat one. It's what we used to call the security square. So there is nearby another building where they were arresting the people and interrogated them for sometimes four weeks, sometimes four months. It means that they use all the possible ways to torture them in a crazy way, in an unbelievable way.

And then put them in cells just two meter by one without any light, without anything. And lots of them died in these cells because of the torture and the hunger. They were starved to death in these cells. As you say, you've been inside, you've seen just how recently these files were being updated and yet the people who were doing that updating, the regime's officers, they've just melted away. I think we're talking about between 200 and 250,000 person who used to work in these departments. This is a huge number. We're talking just about Damascus, by the way. Yes, they melted away, but I think from what I hear, the information I managed to

collect, that a huge number of them are in their houses hiding. They cannot even leave to buy any food or anything. Those who managed to escape quickly, they did to their villages or towns, mainly to the coastal area where the Alawite sect live, which is Bashar Assad's sect, as you know. So others, if they managed to go to Lebanon the same night, it was possible still, they did. But the rest of them, they're still here here in the city but they cannot leave their houses. Faraz Kalani from BBC Arabic. Meanwhile mass celebrations continued into the night across Syria on Friday as people across the country marked the downfall of the former president Bashar al-Assad. People in Damascus gathered at the central Umayyad mosque for prayers before the jubilant rallies called by the Islamist rebels who led the armed uprising against the Assad regime. Our correspondent Barbara

Platt-Asher was out and about among the crowds. I'm in the central square here in Damascus. It's absolutely packed with people celebrating, waving rebel flags, now I think thinking they're the Syrian flags, singing and chanting young men of course but also young women, families, children, just savouring their freedom after decades of oppression by an authoritarian regime. And this is happening all over the country this kind of celebration. My name is Abdullah Fayyad, I'm 21 years old. And how do you feel about today? I feel very freedom, I And how do you feel about today? I feel very free.

I feel freedom. I feel free. I can express my feelings, my ideas. Everything I will think about, I will say it. Without any hesitation. Without any fear? Yes. And what about the future? It's a very uncertain time.

We don't know what's going to happen. How do you feel about that? I hope it's going to be better. I hope the economic system here will be better than before. I hope we can buy cars, my dream car. Yes, I hope everything will be fine. Every world, here Syria, peace and love. No war, no war. Peace, no war. Understood. Not gunfire. They're exploding firecrackers now. There are a number of fighters here, no longer shooting their guns in the air in celebration,

but you have people going up to them and posing with them and with their weapons, including small children. Can I ask your name, ma'am? Hanan Ghanou. Did you ever think this day would happen? No, no, never. Never came to our mind. It was a hope. But we were thinking that it's a hopeless case. How do you feel about the future? We are ready to collaborate with whoever is, with whatever is required just to rebuild our country

make it a democratic good country. Do you have any concerns like in terms of conservative Islamic government? Though I'm wearing the scarf and I am of course a Muslim but yeah we have fears that they might enforce some of these Islamist things. But whatever will come later will not be worse than what we have had. I am so excited for the new government and the new rules that will be established because I think they will give us our freedom and will give us new opportunities and will open us to the outside world.

Well I wonder because the new leader that you have is on a terrorist list. He's trying hard to get off it. I think people are paying attention to that. How do you feel about that? No, I don't have a problem with him because from his speech, from his acts so far, he didn't hurt anyone. He came to our city and he didn't hurt women, children, elders. So you're encouraged?

Yeah, yeah. Inshallah. Optimistic even? Yeah. Inshallah, I think the future will be much better than before. Barbara Platt, Arshah. With Syria in flux, there are fears that the Islamic State group could take advantage of the country's uncertain future with a resurgence that would also threaten neighbouring Iraq.

Between 2014 and 2019, IS, also known as Daesh, imposed Sharia law on a population of 12 million people in Iraq and Syria. On an unannounced visit to Iraq, the American Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said the US would do all it could to prevent a resurgence. No one knows the importance of that more than Iraq because of the presence of the ongoing presence of ISIS or Daesh in Syria. The United States, Iraq together had tremendous success in taking away the territorial caliphate that Daesh had

created years ago and now having put Daesh back in its box we can't let it out and we're determined to make sure that that doesn't happen. Thousands of former fighters and supporters of Islamic State are being held in camps in northern Syria, an area controlled by a Kurdish-led militia alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF. They're supported by the US but are currently under threat from Turkish-backed rebel groups. Anthony Lloyd is a journalist for The Times who's reported on those camps. We've got to remember that although IS was decisively defeated in 2009, largely by the Kurdish-led SDS, obviously backed by American Special Forces and Airpower, now since then,

the IAS has continued but as a far more dispersed organisation in the deserts of eastern Syria. However, there's significant evidence over the past year that the number of attacks involving ISIS have multiplied. And at various stages since being defeated, they have managed to mount quite big operations, not least the operations to try and free most of the male ISIS detainees from Hasakah prison, which failed, but it shows that they can regroup. There are still quite a few foreign fighters in those deserts. And yeah, you've got to remember that's 56,000 women and children from ISIS affiliated families in those camps and 9,000

ISIS male members in about 20 different prisons controlled by the Kurds. Now if they all got free or were set free or released somehow, that would be a dramatic coupler to Islamic State's force in the region. We've also seen since Assad's downfall a fairly sharp resurgence in ISIS-related attacks. You've seen attacks on the SDF in Hasakah, and you've seen, I think, the murders documented of 54 Assad soldiers who were taken prisoner by Islamic State and killed in the area east of Homs in the last few days. Islamic State, in previous guises, particularly in Iraq, have been absolutely put to the wall militarily, defeated, scattered, dispersed. They have a huge propensity for being able to bounce back if they're allowed to. And with all

the unknowns in Syria at the moment, it will be of real concern, not imagined concern, but real concern that Islamic State could regroup in a significant way. Anthony Lloyd. Mystery continues to swirl over nearly a month of drone sightings in the United States, sparking fear among residents and furious debate about what the flying objects are and if they're drones at all. US authorities have been unable to provide definitive answers over the sighting, saying only that the drones are not believed to pose a danger over the sighting, saying only that the drones are not believed to pose a danger to the public or national

security and suggest that they're actually manned aircraft. Originally sightings were in New Jersey but flying objects have since been spotted in New York City and the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. More from our correspondent, Neda Taufik, a resident of New Jersey herself. I asked her if she had witnessed anything unusual. Just last night coming home and being on the phone with family members and us kind of comparing how many drones we were seeing in the sky. I live in Union, New Jersey and me and my husband counted about three but my family members live in

Central Jersey, Somerset, and that's where we've really seen the majority of sightings the last few weeks. Last night, they counted more than 10 in the sky. My family members and friends who live in that part of New Jersey for a while now have been saying, how are more people not concerned about this? Well, turns out many people are concerned about this. I mean, the FBI says they've gotten 3,000 tips. The Coast Guard has said that they themselves observed a low altitude aircraft in the vicinity of one of their vessels near Island Beach State Park, so on the coast. So now we're seeing this kind of fever pitch of people reporting and why we're seeing so many lawmakers in New Jersey coming out

now and speaking openly about this. Yeah, you've personally seen them. So we know for sure something's going on. And yet the White House view seems to be that this isn't a story at all. Yeah, we're hearing, for example, from both the White House and the FBI that there's no evidence that these reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus. They say it, you know, legally it's not happening in restricted airspace. They're not even sure these are drones. But what we're hearing from, for example, the New Jersey representative, Josh Gottmeier, is, you know, people can see

for themselves these drones and that there is a responsibility from the federal government to brief the public more thoroughly, that they're just not sharing enough information and that even local law enforcement, because remember, they're kind of hamstrung by existing laws, they want local authorities to be able to shoot these drones down if they want. And what I thought was really interesting was the mayor of Belleville, Michael Melham. He said, you know, we're not getting the full answers we want in briefings, but because there is this strong line that there's no national security or public safety threat, he wonders if it is the US government's own assets, perhaps doing research, not wanting to share

information fully. Because it does seem unlikely that the US authorities don't know what's going on unless they just don't want to scare people. Yeah, I think we should really stress that these aren't, you know, hobbyists with drones in the sky. I mean, these are large drones that are the size of bicycles, small cars, you know, they have blinking red and green lights. And in fact, when you get close to those drones, what we've heard from officials is that they notice that those drones kind

of turn off their lights and evade police helicopters when approached. So, you know, even local officials are baffled by this. They know the federal government must know something more because you don't just have these large drones, some of them flying in patterns and have no idea what's happening. So that's why there is this clamor for more information to be given to the public because people's curiosity is really turning into concern. Neda Taufek, still to come. When somebody's fidgeting, what I find is I just can't tune it out. So I feel like my attention is drawn to it.

I almost want to look at it. I can't look away or if it just sort of stays in my periphery and I can't concentrate. How fidgeting can drive others mad and what psychologists are doing to treat their reaction. The new French Prime Minister, Francois Beirut, has said he faces a mountainous task ahead. He was speaking at a ceremony in Paris as he took over from his predecessor, whose government collapsed after only three months. Mr Beirut described the situation facing France as dire and referred to the need to tackle the government's budget deficit and debt. Hugh Schofield reports from the French capital. France's new prime minister,

François Beyroux, is a familiar face. At 73, he's represented a centrist strand in politics for four decades, serving as education minister in the 1990s and running unsuccessfully three times for the presidency. In some ways, he was a precursor of Emmanuel Macron with the same notion of transcending the old left-right divide and with his small modem party he's been a natural ally since the president took office. Today though his task looks more than daunting, a fact which he acknowledged in a short address as he took office. He was, he said, fully aware of the Himalayan scale of the challenge ahead, the debt, the deficit, the risk of society falling apart.

But it was still worth trying to find a path ahead, a path, he said, that could only come through national reconciliation. It is indeed a divided and disillusioned country that Mr. Beirut inherits, a parliament that's incapable of providing a firm government, and a people more and more inclined to switch off and blank the political mess entirely. His first task is to put together a government, which won't be simple, and then, just three weeks before year's end, try to get a budget together for 2025. The last one, now in the bin, was what brought down his predecessor.

Hughes Schofield in Paris. The management consulting firm McKinsey has agreed to a $650 million deal with the US Justice Department to settle criminal charges that it deliberately encouraged America's opioid epidemic. McKinsey, which said that it regretted its role as an advisor on boosting sales to firms including the maker of the addictive painkiller Oxycontin, Michelle Fleury reports from New York. McKinsey will enter into a five-year deferred prosecution agreement resolving charges of conspiring to misbrand a drug and obstruction of justice. In addition, former McKinsey senior partner Martin Elling is set to plead

guilty to obstruction for destroying records related to the case. Prosecutors say McKinsey gave Purdue advice on how to turbocharge sales of its drug Oxycontin. Today's agreement comes after McKinsey previously settled nearly $1 billion in lawsuits over its work with Purdue and other drug makers. Purdue Pharma itself pleaded guilty in 2020 to criminal charges related to its role in fuelling America's opioid crisis. Michelle Fleury. Rwanda is bidding to bring the drama and glamour of Grand Prix racing to Africa for the first

time since 1993. The Rwandan president Paul Kagame put his official seal on the bid as Formula One's governing body, the FIA, held its annual General Assembly in Kigali. These African Formula One fans welcomed the move. The bid by Rwanda to host Grand Prix is quite welcome. Rwanda is now a beacon of hope and an example on leadership to other African countries. So for this opportunity, I can't believe this will happen on my eyes and I can't wait for it. The truth is that we can't wait to see this happen in front of our eyes. Andrew Benson is the BBC's Formula One

correspondent. It's not been a secret in Formula One that there have been talks about this. It's some way from happening. And if it does happen, it's not going to be probably before 2028 at the absolute earliest. They're building a track near a new airport just outside Kigali. And the airport hasn't been finished yet. It's due to be finished in 2026 and the track then needs to be built beyond that. Why does Rwanda want a Grand Prix and what's in it for Formula One? Well, I guess it's like any country that wants a Grand Prix that doesn't have the sort of history that say Britain or Germany or Belgium has. New countries, you know, whether it be China or Azerbaijan or the Middle East or now Rwanda, it's all about promoting the country. So it's about putting a positive

face on your country to the rest of the world. Not everyone in favour though, I mean even accusations of sports washing here. Well anything that's designed to dress up a country, make it look in its best light to the rest of the world is gonna have that kind of accusation, isn't it? Obviously that's an accusation that's leveled particularly against places like Saudi Arabia where human rights concerns have been raised. So I guess it's a part of a wider policy that they have to heighten their engagement with the rest of the world. How important is it for Africa that Formula One comes back for the first time since the early 90s. This track has been designed, I'm told, with involvement from local businesses, local authorities.

So the idea is it's not just a bunch of Europeans turning up and doing their thing and imposing it on Africa. It's supposed to be something that is authentic and befitting of the country. I can't speak to what Paul Kagame thinks he was going to get out of this, but for Formula One, from an image point of this, but Formula 1, from an image point of view, from the sporting side, there's a Grand Prix on every continent at the moment, apart from Antarctica and Africa. Obviously, there's never going to be one on Antarctica, but they're very keen to have one in Africa.

There was a Grand Prix in South Africa for many years during the apartheid era up until 1993. There was an attempt actually to revive that race at the same track, Kailami near Johannesburg a couple of years ago but the deal fell apart. This is the next project that Formula One are working on. It's not been the only one. Morocco has been mentioned as well. So there's no given about this Rwanda project. I would say it's a possibility, no more than that at the moment. Andrew Benson, Pushpa 2 The Rule is an Indian movie that has earned more than that at the moment. Andrew Benson. Pushpa 2 The Rule is an Indian movie that has earned more than $100 million worldwide

in its first week. A big success in the box office then, but the film has been mired in tragedy. Earlier this month, a crush at its premiere in the city of Hyderabad led to the death of a woman and her young son being critically injured. Shortly after the incident, the lead star, Alu Arjun, put an apology video up on X. In it, he said he was heartbroken by the tragic incident and that his heartfelt condolences went out to the grieving family.

But the family filed a complaint against the actor, which led to his subsequent arrest. Our South Asia regional editor and Barasan Etta Rajan told me more. This movie has been talked about for months and months. The first part was a mega success in 2021, not only in India, but also movies around the world, wherever the Indian population was living. In fact, when I was in Nepal a few years ago, people are playing the songs from this movie during a party. So this movie became a cult movie and people are waiting for the second part, the sequel to that one. So in the city of Hyderabad, the premiere was happening and according to police, he made a surprise appearance

at the cinema hall just to give a pleasant surprise to the fans. And the police accused his security detail of trying to push people because there are so many people trying to have a glimpse of the hero. He's a very big star in the Telugu film industry and that's what probably, you know, that's when the crash happened. A woman, a 39 year old woman died and her son was seriously injured. So that triggered a controversy and there was a complaint by the family of the victim and the police have already arrested the owner of the theatre and some of the theatre management

people. So there was a case filed against him, Alwarjohn, and then all of a sudden today the police went and took him into custody and Alwarjohn, and then all of a sudden today the police went and took him into custody and he was produced in court. And then the court initially gave him a judicial remand for two weeks, but then his lawyers moved the High Court where he was granted interim bail. But what is he accused of doing? I mean, okay, he's the movie star, he turned up, things went wrong, but it doesn't, I'm just not clear on what the suggested crime is.

Yeah, the police, they say, they have charged him under culpable homicide because of how the circumstances leading to this crash. But of course, you know, many people would question, you know, such things happen in India every now and then. For example, I was in India in July when there was a spiritual guru was having a huge gathering in Uttar Pradesh state and then more than 120 people died in that crash. So these things do happen and people are questioning why this particular actor was targeted. Several movie stars have come out in support of Mr. Arjun and in fact he, I mean his side, they had, they felt

very disappointed when the incident happened. A few days later as we heard from him, he was expressing his condolences and they were deeply shocked by what happened. So now it has become a political game with political parties blaming each other of why the local authorities were trying to arrest him. And Barasan Etterajian. Now, are you a fidget? Are you the kind of person who can't sit still, who twiddles their thumbs and plays with their hair or picks their nails or taps their fingers on a desk? Relatively harmless behaviour, you'd have thought. But did you know that it's the kind of behaviour that makes some

people, if not mad, extremely angry and disgusted. Their reaction is known as misokinesia or misophonia and can be very debilitating. Dr Jane Gregory is a clinical psychologist at Oxford University here in the UK. She's been studying and treating both misokinesia and misophilia and suffers from both conditions herself. She told Julian Marshall how it affects her. So for me when somebody's fidgeting, what I find is I just can't tune it out. So I feel like my attention is drawn to it. I almost want to look at it, I can't look away or it just sort of stays in my periphery

and I can't concentrate on what I'm doing and over time that just gets more and more annoying. And is that hatred of the movement kinesia or hatred of the sound that fidgeting makes misophonian? For me, the sound is definitely worse than the movement, but if there's a movement attached to the sound that will compound the reaction. But even if I can't hear the movement it will still distract me. It just won't cause as strong of a reaction. So how do you contain this reaction?

One of the things that I do is try to remind myself that they're not doing it deliberately. Sometimes when you're in the moment and feeling frustrated and angry about what's going on. It feels like the person's doing it deliberately or that they don't care that it's bothering you and actually it's just habit or they might just be nervous or just getting a bit of energy out or something. So for me, it's about trying to remember that there's nothing malicious going on. Will Barron So a bit of empathy to start with. Evie So yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, just remembering that it's definitely not about me. They're not doing it to hurt me directly and that it's just my brain sort of overreacting to these kind of movements and sounds. And this is what you teach people who come to you for treatment, is it? That's one of the things definitely, yeah, sort of to try and connect a little bit with the other person and relate to why they might be making the sound or doing the movement, but also just reminding yourself that you're not crazy for reacting this way, that it makes sense as a way of humans have survived over the years is to sort of notice subtle signs

of things that could be a sign of change, like a rustle in the grass or something like that that could be a snake. It kind of comes from the same place. So that's what's going on in the brain. It's sort of primordial thoughts of being threatened. Yeah, that's it. It's treating it like it's a potential sign of danger. And so your brain gets hypervigilant and keeps paying attention to it in case it could turn into something dangerous or harmful. And of course we know that these things aren't dangerous or harmful.

And so then that's the other thing is trying to teach your brain that it's not actually anything harmful. It's just something that is annoying and irritating but it's not actually going to cause you any harm. How widespread are these debilitating reactions to fidgeting? It's surprisingly common. About one-third of people have more intense reaction or can't tune out fidgeting, but it's a much smaller proportion of people that have this really intense emotional anger reaction

where it affects them on a day-to-day basis. It's much less people have that strong reaction. I asked you about showing empathy for fidgets, but what about you? Are people sympathetic towards you for the way you react? I think a lot of people don't understand and for a long time, nobody knew what was going on and certainly when I was a kid, no one knew what it was. And so I think people just confused more than anything and I know a lot of people with Miscarotia and Miscarotia have been criticised or told they're too sensitive or that they just need to ignore it and not

realising that it is just something that their brain is doing and they're not really in control of it either. So I think people haven't really had much empathy from other people. Dr Jane Gregory. And that's all from us for now but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X at Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Chris Kazouris and the producer was Alison Davis. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz and until next time, goodbye.