Hidden in orphanages under Assad, where are they now? Goats and Soda

DAMASCUS, Syria — In the fall of 2018, Syrian security forces dragged a mother and her 2-year-old daughter, Hiba, from their home and detained them.

The mother, Sukayna Jebawi, says that they were taken hostage to pressure her husband’s brothers to surrender to government forces. The brothers were part of an uecedented uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad that erupted in 2011.

Nearly a month after the two were detained, Jebawi recalls, prison guards banged on their cell and ordered the detained mothers to hand over their children. “It was chaos,” she said. “Some women held onto their children, so the guards took them by force.”

The mother was released in March of 2019 — and the family began a search for the little girl.

Hiba is one of hundreds of Syrian children referred to as “security placement” kids — handed over to an orphanage while their mothers remained in detention.

No choice for the children – and the orphanage staff

She said one baby girl died soon after she was handed over to her institution.

Directors of two orphanages said most of these children were Syrian but perhaps a dozen or so were Russian and French — likely children of foreign soldiers fighting for ISIS to oust Assad.

But it is unclear what happened to many of the children.

It’s also unclear what happened to children whose mothers died or were killed in detention.

A grieving brother raises the issue

The story began to emerge because of Hassan Alabbasi, a Syrian-Canadian whose sister, Rania, was detained by Assad’s forces in 2013 along with her husband and six children. Amnesty International reported at the time that their relatives believed Rania and her family may have been targeted because they were providing assistance to families in need.

Alabbasi’s brother-in-law was among those confirmed dead from the thousands of images of corpses taken out of the country by a Syrian army whistleblower who fled the country. Rania, who was a dentist and chess champion, and the six children are unaccounted for.

The role of the orphanages became widely known after Alabbasi saw a picture of a girl who resembled one of Rania’s children in a Facebook post of the SOS Children’s Village, an international charity headquartered in Austria, which offers alternative care to children who cannot live with their biological families. It has branches around the world, including in Damascus.

Alabbasi went on social media demanding information about the child. Soon after, SOS Children’s Village released a statement acknowledging that intelligence agents secretly placed the children of female detainees in their Damascus branch. Other orphanage directors also went public, largely to defend their actions.

A belated effort to uncover the truth

He says the charity’s headquarters learned of what was happening in 2018 and ordered the branch to stop accepting such children.

Malvet says they are now combing through the branch’s archives to understand how many such children were hidden at the Damascus branch of SOS Children’s Village. In December, they found evidence of 35 children placed there by intelligence agencies. By early February, they’d found records for 139 children. “We will do everything to open the books and the records. We have nothing to hide and we want to contribute to tracing the children and families,” Malvet said.

Not every orphanage is combing through records.

It’s not clear what happened to the children of detained mothers who were handed over to the Life Melody Orphanage.

When we asked al-Ghabara about these specific allegations, she said she did not work as an administrator and wasn’t aware of how records were kept. Even so, she says she did authorize the adoptions of newborn babies who were found abandoned across Damascus. She says in the chaos of war, she wasn’t always able to follow the progress of those babies.

A glimmer of hope

Even as these revelations have triggered fury, they’ve also kindled anguished hope among families whose children went missing after being taken by the Assad regime during the war — an estimated 2,300 children, according to an estimate by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. That estimate is seen as credible by international organizations and the State Department.

The family members of these children include Hani al-Farra, whose pregnant wife and three children disappeared at a regime-run checkpoint in 2013 as they were leaving a rebel-held area. Al-Farra said his wife was about to give birth. She was trying to get to a hospital. Al-Farra believes his wife and children were taken to pressure him to give information about rebels in his area.

After years of fruitless searching for his wife and children, al-Farra said, “I began to wish they were dead.” He said that was better than detention under the Assad regime. But after hearing that some children of detained women were hidden in orphanages, he began hoping his own had survived.

We bumped into al-Farra at the office of Rana al-Baba, the director of the orphanage run by the Muslim Women’s Charitable Association. While we were intervieiwng al-Baba, he had walked in to show her pictures of his missing children on his battered phone.

“May they be found, brother,” al-Baba responded, and handed over a list she kept of the 80 children deposited by intelligence agents in her orphanage over the years. “I don’t think your children were here, but you should check, to reassure your heart,” al-Baba said. Al-Farra nodded sadly. They were not on the list.

The orphanage director al-Baba said she looked out for these “security placement” children. She says the orphanage caregivers made the older children memorize the phone number of their house mother — so if security forces took them back to their families, the children could try to let the orphanage know where they were. Al-Baba says some of the children — and their parents — did call to let the orphanage know they’d been reunited.

But there were limits to what al-Baba could do.

She recalled turning away a woman looking for her granddaughter — a 2-year-old called Hiba. Al-Baba says she was under strict instructions from intelligence agents not to reveal information about the “security placement” children and turned the woman away.

Days later, al-Baba says intelligence agents shifted Hiba to Dar al-Rahma, an orphanage nestled in a Damascus alleyway, so she couldn’t be found. The director there, Bara al-Ayoubi, says they also tried to do their best by the “security placement” children — including by securing visits for older children to see their detained mothers. By 2019, those visits were routine, according to one former female detainee whose child was placed in Dar al-Rahma. The former detainee, who declined to be named, owing to social stigma, says Dar al-Rahma became known as a good place for children of detained mothers.

When the Assad regime fell and rebels smashed open the prisons, freed mothers and fathers rushed to Dar al-Rahma, hoping to find their children. “On the morning of liberation day,” said al-Ayoubi, “the parents of 22 children came.” Her staff shared images of the reunions, including one father, tightly embracing his children. She said some parents later returned to thank the orphanage.

But not Hiba’s mother.

Weeks after the girl’s mother was released from prison, she says her brother finally found her daughter. They were reunited in mid-2019.

“Our reunion was sad and joyful at the same time,” Jebawi recalled. Her daughter called her “mama” — but she screamed whenever her mother tried to hug her, feed her or bathe her.

Hiba’s mother says the workers at the Dar al-Rahma orphanage still call her to check on her daughter. They invite them to visit. She has so far declined. “I don’t want to remember the past,” she said.

Al-Farra, whose wife and children went missing in 2013, also tried to move on.