Up First from NPR - Syria's Missing Children

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

In Syria during the 14-year civil war, many children were detained with their mothers. Then, security forces separated them. Thousands of these children have never been found.Since the fall of the Assad regime, parents of disappeared children have continued to search for answers. In this episode of The Sunday Story, NPR correspondent Diaa Hadid investigates: what happened to the disappeared children of Syria?This episode includes mentions of rape and torture.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Ayesha Rasco and this is a Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. Over the winter, NPR's Diya Hadid was reporting in Syria. Rebel fighters had just overthrown the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. In her weeks of reporting, Diya discovered something shocking. It wasn't just men and women who were imprisoned by the Assad regime. Children were also taken, and many remain unaccounted for. Today on The Sunday Story, what happened to the disappeared children of Syria?

Diyah Hadid brings us the story from her reporting in Damascus after the break. Stay with us. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

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This message comes from Reveal. More to the story. Every Wednesday, Peabody award-winning journalist Al Letson sits down with the people at the heart of a changing world for candid conversations that help people understand what's happening around them. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. This is a Sunday story from Up First.

NPR's Diya Hadi joins me now to talk about her reporting from Damascus. Diya, I know you were sent to Syria in the chaotic weeks following the Assad's regime's fall. How did you come across this story about missing children? Aisha, as I was seeing what was happening in Damascus, I couldn't stop thinking about the children. I'd covered conflicts like this for so long, and I knew there'd likely be a large number of kids in orphanages whose parents had been detained or even disappeared during the Civil War. And I kept thinking, what was happening to them now?

And let me tell you, this was hard for me. I have two young kids, so stories about vulnerable children really hit home. And I try not to take too many long trips away from them. So for this assignment, I felt like I needed their permission. So I told them, I'm going to Syria so I can meet little ones who don't have a mama. So is that okay to give your mama to some other kids for a little while? And my girls agreed. That's very sweet of your girls. So I began calling groups that care for vulnerable children like UNICEF, the Red Cross, other big organizations that run programs in Syria.

And one group I reached was SOS Children's Villages. That's an international aid group headquartered in Austria. It has branches all around the world, including in war zones. And a spokesperson for them told me they were coming to terms with a revelation that was shaking the organization. Their Damascus branch had secretly taken in children whose mothers had been detained by intelligence agents. And this revelation was triggering a lot of anger in Syrian society. Well, I mean, and rightfully so. How did you investigate these allegations? Well, after getting this to me and producer Mirna Rashid, we went to other orphanages across Damascus and we asked,

did intelligence agents force you to secretly take in children? And what happened to those children? And what did you find out? Well, it was really hard to get answers at first. Orphanages did not want to speak to us. The situation felt so uncertain. The Assad regime had just fallen at the time and people online were accusing them of collaborating with the former regime. But as we investigated, we finally met an official at the Ministry of Social Affairs who also wanted to know the answers. You see, the ministry had been overtaken by rebels who formed an interim government and Syrian families were asking them for help to find their children. So this official helped us by calling up

orphanage directors and telling them that they had to talk to us. He requested anonymity through this process because he wasn't meant to be speaking to the media, let alone helping us. Did you manage to speak to any parents whose children were taken away? Yeah, we spoke to one orphanage director who wanted us to hear from the detained women themselves. So she connected us to a couple of mothers. One of those women was Sukaina Jbawi. We reached her at her home in a village in the southern Syrian province of Daraa.

That's where the uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad first erupted. She was keen to chat. So Ayesha, this is what Shbaoui told me. She says that in the fall of 2018, Syrian security forces turned up one day and they dragged her and her daughter Heba from their home. Heba was just two. Shbaoui believes they were taken hostage to pressure her husband's brothers to surrender to government forces. That was a pretty common tactic at the time because the brothers had joined the uprising

against the regime. Jbaoui and Heba were driven to holding cells run by the Air Force Intelligence Directorate. That was one of the most feared and violent arms of the Syrian regime. Guards pushed her and Heba into a cold, dark cell with about six other women and their children. Nearly all the women's cells also held children, but the conditions there were not conducive to staying alive. Jbewi says they were only allowed to use the bathroom three times a day, not enough for

little kids, so the mothers procured a bucket for the children to use as a toilet and they emptied it out whenever they could. There was never enough food. An egg once a week, 15 olives twice a week, plain yogurt every four days, sometimes jam, boiled rice one day, boiled lentils the next, boiled potatoes after that. Shbaoui says she gave Heba her share so she'd stay alive. But still, her daughter was losing weight. She became infested with lice. And she says 20 days after she arrived, prison guards banged on their cell doors and told the women, get your children ready. It was chaos. The women were asking why do they want the children? And even now, years later, Shbewy cries as she remembers this. One woman who'd been

detained for a while told them, say goodbye to your children now because they're going to take them away. Don't make a fuss or they'll put you in solitary. But some women wouldn't let go, so the guards came in and took their children by force. Shbewe drew Heba into her lap. She put her arms around her and hugged her. She said, you're going to a better place and when this ends, you'll be with me and I'll hug you. Shbewe hoped that was true. She prayed, oh God, protect her with your watchful eye that never sleeps. As the months went on, Shibawi watched more mothers come into the cell, and she watched

them have their children snatched away, including newborn babies. She says pregnant women detained alongside her were taken to hospital when they went into labour. After birth, the women were returned to their lock-up with their babies. They were allowed to nurse them for a few weeks, and then the guards took the babies away. It was a fage bear we feared as well, because when she was arrested with Heba, her two-year-old, she was also a few weeks pregnant. But after almost eight months of detainment and weeks before she was due to give birth, she was finally sentenced and she was shifted to a notorious prison called Adra.

She still doesn't know what her crime was, but in prison she was told she'd be released soon and she was given one phone call. So she called her sister and asked if somebody could pick her up and she told her sister Heather isn't with me. I don't know where she is. Zbierwy returned to her village heavily pregnant. Her husband by that point had abandoned her and married another woman. This happened a lot to women who'd been detained. When they were freed, they weren't greeted as heroes. They often faced immense stigma over the possibility that they'd been sexually assaulted while confined.

Shbaoui jokes that it would have been better if her husband had died in a Syrian prison so she could tell their kids that he was a martyr. It was Shbaoui's brother who began the search for Hibar. He heard that she might be in an orphanage, and so he went banging on their doors across Damascus. And after three months of running around, the intelligence agency that had detained Shbewy finally returned Heba to him. Shbewy was in their village waiting. She'd just given birth and was recovering. And then they arrived.

She says when she saw her daughter, their reunion was bittersweet. Shfaoui says she came to her girl and asked her, Do you remember me? And Heber replied, Mama. She says, I hugged her in my arms and I saw her. But as the days wore on, Hebar grew distant. She screamed when Shbaoui tried to bathe her, feed her, dress her. It was like she blamed her mother for their separation. But Sukena Shbaoui at, was one of the lucky ones.

Her daughter came back. So Diya, I just want to interrupt you here. Do you have a sense of the scale of this? How many children were being taken away from their mothers like Hibba? I'm not sure we'll ever be able to get an accurate count, but a respected monitoring group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, they estimate some 3,700 children remain missing after they were detained during the war by Assad regime forces. And based on our own investigation, we were able to confirm that at least 300 children were

taken away from their mothers while they were being held by the Directorate, including one baby girl who died while she was in the care of an orphanage. That was just in Damascus. We weren't able to reach orphanages in other parts of Syria at the time when we did our reporting. And in Damascus, children were handed over to four orphanages and care centers. Intelligence agents ordered them to keep the children's existence a secret. The practice became so common that orphanage workers even had a name for these kids,

security placement children. Security placement children. It, security placement children. It sounds so bureaucratic. Yeah. And just like they were handed over by intelligence agents, days, weeks, months, even years later, intelligence agents took the children back. Orphanage directors presumed the children were given back

to their mothers once they were released from detention. And that did happen, like Heber Zhvowy, who was returned to her mother, Skainah Zhvowy. But these children aren't orphans as, you know, as I understand it, as, you know, these are children who still have mothers and in many cases also fathers who are still alive. First Ayesha, it's important to understand that an orphan in Muslim majority countries like Syria is not a child who's lost their parents. It's a child who's lost their father. And often children are handed over to orphanages because the mother can no longer support them

financially. Or because if she'd like to remarry, her new husband may not want to raise what conservative society sees as somebody else's kid. Okay, so it sounds like Syrian orphanages were always pretty full of children, sometimes abandoned by their own parents. But then there was this shift. During the Civil War, they started taking in children whose parents had not given them up, but the parents had been forcefully detained by intelligence agents. Yeah. Dia, how did people first come to know that these orphanages were taking in children this way?

Yeah, the fates of these children of detained mothers first bubbled to the surface through the activism of one man, Hassan Al-Abbasi. Al-Abbasi is a Canadian Syrian engineer who lives in Canada, and he's been searching for his sister, Rania Al-Abbasi is a Canadian Syrian engineer who lives in Canada and has been searching for his sister Rania Al-Abbasi. She was taken by Assad forces on March 11, 2013, alongside her husband and their six children from Dima, the eldest at 14, to Leyan, who was two years old at the time. Rania's relatives believe that her decision to give food to families displaced by fighting at the time made her a target. Aranya very quickly became one of the most prominent women held by the Assad regime.

That's partly because of Al-Abbasi's activism, and partly because Aranya was a national chess champion in Syria. The US State Department still advocates for her release. And Hassan al-Abbasi keeps trying to find clues to his sister's fate and of her family. Sometimes he uploads old home videos of Rania's daughters to sad music just to remind people that they're maybe still out there. Then last year, after the Assad regime fell, Al-Abbasi made a remarkable claim that aired on a popular Syrian opposition television station that he was told by an anonymous friend that Rania's children were being hidden in an orphanage.

Al-Abbasi says he sent friends to ask around the orphanages immediately and he began to cast doubt on the Damascus branch of the SOS Children's Villages. Al-Abbasi's claim was picked up by other Syrians on social media who began accusing the orphanages of human trafficking. As this unfolded, SOS Children's Villagers issued a statement. They acknowledged that their Damascus branch had taken in security placement children over a period of four years until the charity's headquarters found out and ordered their Damascus branch to stop.

The regional director, Tom Malvitt, who's a Swedish national, told me they're trying to rectify the situation now, as much as they can. We will do everything to open the books and the records and we want to contribute to raising children and families. SOS Children's Villages has trawled its records to find 139 children who'd been placed there. But they can only confirm that 21 Syrian children were reunited with their families as of this April. Malvitt says he believes the staff were operating under extreme conditions. They were trying to do their best by the children who were appearing at their doorstep. And after Malvitt's statement, multiple orphanage directors spoke up to defend the work they

continued to do in Syria. These orphanages, however imperfect, have played a vital role in Syria, particularly through the civil war. They remain one of the only places that vulnerable kids can receive care. From our interviews with orphanage directors, patterns emerged as to how these placements happened. Agents delivered the children in white vans to the orphanage. Agents delivered the children in white vans to the orphanage. They came with a paper listing the child's first name and a demand to keep the child's existence totally secret. And one institution appears to have obeyed that order to the letter.

When we come back, DIA visits a crowded orphanage that took in the children of detained mothers. Stay with us. This is Ira Glass, the host of This American Life. So much is changing so rapidly right now with President Trump in office. It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what.

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Take a deep breath and give politics another chance with the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with NPR's Diya Hadid and her story about the missing children of Syria. The Life Melody Complex or Tajammar Lahna Al Hayat, is a gated complex. It's perched on a hill overlooking Damascus. Syrians appear angriest at this orphanage more than any other.

That's because it was once sponsored by Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syria's former ruler. She used to visit the institution, cameras at the ready to show her with orphans. She was photographed alongside a long-time board member, Nada Al-Khabra. We met Al-Khabra on a winter's day. She walked us through the orphanage. She wanted to show us how well they care for the children. There's about 400 boys and girls here, from babies to women in their early 20s who have nowhere else to go.

We met toddlers who were warmly dressed watching cartoons. In other rooms, babies napped two or three to a cot. There just wasn't enough room for all the babies that had been abandoned here. As we walked, Al-Habira proudly told us she's familiar with all the children in the orphanage. She laughed and said she even arranges the circumcisions of all the baby boys.

Muslim boys are expected to be circumcised. She paid for the weddings of the older kids. She was really proud of that. She pulled up one video on her phone of one of those weddings. But Al-Habra says she only found out that intelligence agents were delivering children to the orphanage after the Assad regime was toppled. She says that's because she didn't spend any time in the administrative building where children were handed over. She was with the children in the main building, the orphanage, and she says she didn't notice some of the children suddenly arriving or leaving.

But Life Melody Complex actually did keep records of the security placement children who were transferred into their care. Copies of those records were handed over to the new interim government. An official showed NPR a list of 45 children who were placed there by intelligence agents. That official told us there was a stack of pages, an inch thick, filled with other names of other security placement children who were cycled there over the years. But the official didn't show us that stack of papers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from members of the former Assad regime. They said, my life is worth the price of a bullet.

During this investigation, I visited every single orphanage I could find in Damascus to figure out if there were patterns to these children being hidden away. One of them was Al Mubarrar Nisa'iyah, which is on a busy Damascus road. Here the director kept detailed records of the 50 children who were deposited by intelligence agents. Salam alaikum. Salam alaikum. by intelligence agents. Salam alaikum. Alikumsalam. Inside, Director Ana Albabah is chatting to some colleagues when I met her in December.

Compared to what we heard at the Life Melody orphanage, Albabah was sharply aware of the transfer of security placement kids into her orphanage's care. Over bracing Turkish coffee, she tells us the first time an agent came knocking with a baby boy to hand over, she didn't believe it. She tells me, I even asked for the man's ID. I said, how do I know you haven't kidnapped these children? Al-Baba tells me, this man looks at her and says,

you're asking me for my ID? Do you understand who I am? And Al-Baba says, it began to sink in. Saying no to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate would be a death sentence. She says, they would have put us through their human mincer. They would have made us hamburgers or kebabs. Al-Baba says when the children arrived, they were sick, thin, dirty, infested with head lice, like they'd just come out of prison and they were distraught.

Al-Baba says in her orphanage for the first week, they isolated the kids with a caregiver. They called them house mothers. And the house mother would offer the kid new clothes. A pink pajama or a blue one? Do you want a toy? What do you want to eat today? Fries? She says they wanted the kids to see they were cared for.

But Al-Baba says she was not at peace with the arrangement. And there were limits to what she could do. She says she had to turn away relatives who came to her orphanage looking for their missing children. She had to obey. We end our interview with Al-Baba. She tells me she hopes she was worthy of the burden that God made her carry. She had to obey. We end our interview with Al-Baba. She tells me she hopes she was worthy of the burden that God made her carry. It's at this moment I look out the window and see a man lingering outside.

He's clutching his mobile phone and looks nervous. I ask Al-Baba, does he work here? Al-Baba peers out the window, no, and she invites him into the office. He walks in and tells Al-Baba that his children weren't missing in 2013 with his wife. She'd been detained by forces loyal to Syria's former ruler Bashar al-Assad as she was trying to get to hospital because she was nine months pregnant. He says for a long time he believed his wife and kids had been killed to punish him because

he'd refused to provide information about rebels operating in his area. He pulls out his phone to show her pictures of his kids. There's Mohammed, seven. Islam, she's five. Yousef, three. His name is Hany, and in December, 11 years after they disappeared, he saw the social media buzz about children hidden in orphanages and he began hoping just maybe his children were alive, maybe they'd been hidden in an orphanage, maybe this orphanage. Albaava says she's sure his children weren't placed here, but just in case she asks for his wife's name. The children typically came listed under their mother's names.

Al-Baba shakes her head sadly. Not here. Sir, I wish they were. I would have given them to you. But she tells him, you mustn't give up hope, sir. I'm not a hero. I'm not a hero. I'm not a hero. Thank God. Thank God. And God knows who will bring you together. God willing. God willing. God willing. God willing. God willing. God willing. He deserves it. God willing. God willing.

God willing. God willing. God willing. God willing. God willing. God willing. We took Hani Al Farah's details and we met him a few days later in his tiny apartment in a working class suburb of Damascus. It's up a few flights of narrow stairs. And Al Faraz holding his youngest son from his second marriage. We sit in a room that feels like a cubby hole.

During the years that he tried to find his wife and children, he angered the Assad regime soldiers who manned the checkpoint in his area. They detained him and ultimately shifted him to a lockup where he was tortured for hours, every day, for three months. He says he was strung up from a ceiling, beaten and starved. He says he was strung up from a ceiling, beaten and starved. After that, he began to hope that his wife and children were dead, rather than experience the depravities of detention under the Assad regime.

And that includes well-documented cases of rape of women, men and children. Al-Farrah says his friends urged him to move on, marry a good woman, make a new family. One of his friends set him up with his sister and they fell in love. He calls her his everything, his mother, his father, his friend. He now has three sons with his new wife. The youngest is baby Muhammad, about a year old. He squirms on Al-Far'a's lap and tunnels off to examine a drainpipe.

No, my love, this is Yaki. Yaki, my love, Yaki, my love. But even as he cuddles his youngest son, the hope of finding his older children and first wife won't leave him. He says he even asks his current wife, what will you do if I find my first wife won't leave him. He says he even asks his current wife, what will you do if I find my first wife? He tells us, my new wife lost her brother during the war and she understands the pain I'm feeling. And she told me, if you find your first wife, I'll put her

in this eye before that eye. It's an Arab saying that means I'll honor her. this eye before that eye. It's an Arab saying that means I'll honor her. And his sons, especially the oldest, know that something isn't right. His oldest son is eight now. He's aware of the world around him. He keeps asking about his older half siblings, particularly his sister Islam. She was five when she disappeared. In a photo, Al-Farrah keeps on his phone. She's sitting in a garden. Her sandy hair touches her tanned shoulders. Al-Farrah is crying.

He takes a deep breath and says, "'Praise be to God, and continues. My sons ask me, why don't you get her? Why don't you find her? And I tell them, I swear, I'm trying. Thank you so much, Dia, for this reporting and for shining a light and being a voice for the missing during this time of so much uncertainty. Thank you for listening. That's NPR International correspondent, Dia Hadid. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Justine Yan.

It was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Vincent Nhi. Maggie Luthor mastered the episode. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo and our senior supervising producer Liana Simstrom. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. Up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. You may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to NPR. This is the latest in a series of threats to media organizations across the country.

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