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Syria CIVIL POLICE AND INTERNAL SECURITY APPARATUS
Since independence, Syria's police and internal security
apparatus have undergone repeated reorganization and personnel
changes, reflecting the security demands of each succeeding
regime. During the relative political stability of the 1970s and
1980s, police and security services were credited with having
grown and become professional, but in 1987 only the bare outlines
of their institutional makeup were known.
The largest intelligence-gathering and internal security
organization was the National Security Directorate, employing
about 25,000 personnel. Other security organizations were under
the supervision of the Ministry of Interior. These organizations
included a national police force, responsible for routine police
duties. It incorporated the 8,000-man Gendarmerie, which had
originally been organized by the French Mandate authorities to
police rural areas. During the 1960s, the civil police forces
were believed to have been used extensively to combat internal
security threats to the government, but during the 1970s and
1980s these forces assumed a more conventional civil police role;
this change in role coincided with increased professionalization
and the parallel development of an effective and pervasive
internal security apparatus. Nevertheless, the police continued
to receive training in such functions as crowd and riot control.
In 1987 the internal security apparatus consisted of myriad
organizations with overlapping missions to gather intelligence
concerning internal security and to engage in activities (largely
covert) to apprehend and neutralize opponents of the regime.
According to Amnesty International, there were several security
force networks in Syria. Each had its own branches, detention
cells, and interrogation centers, located throughout the country,
and each also had its own intelligence service. Each organization
was directly responsible to the president and his closest
advisers. The organizations operated independently with no clear
boundaries to their areas of jurisdiction and no coordination
among them. For example, although the civilian security police
dealt with internal security matters, the responsibilities of
Military Intelligence headed by General Ali Duba were not limited
to matters affecting the armed forces, but also included internal
security. In the mid-1980s, Western sources reported that the
power and pervasiveness of Syria's internal security apparatus
inspired fear among the Syrian population.
Data as of April 1987
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