New York Times: Thousands of Children Forcibly Disappeared in Syria

ARK News.. An American newspaper has revealed that thousands of children were forcibly disappeared in Syria under the ousted Assad regime, with hundreds separated from their families and transferred to orphanages.

In a lengthy investigation, The New York Times reported that Syrian security agencies under Bashar al-Assad forcibly disappeared thousands of children, as part of a wider campaign that saw more than 100,000 people vanish into the regime’s secret prisons since the outbreak of the revolution.

The report noted that hundreds of children were separated from their families and secretly placed in orphanages, including six facilities run by the international NGO SOS Children’s Villages, where many were given false identities to prevent relatives from finding them.

The newspaper reviewed dozens of classified documents and extensive databases compiled by Syrian Air Force Intelligence, revealing the scale and complexity of the operation, including directives from senior intelligence officials ordering the separation of children from their families and their concealment.

According to the documents, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor and the Governor of Rural Damascus were tasked with securing placements for children in orphanages, with intelligence approval required for every step. They were ordered to keep the children hidden and to withhold all identifying information.

Following the regime’s fall, the new Syrian government formed a commission to investigate the enforced disappearance of children. Several orphanage officials and former ministers have been questioned, though many senior officials remain unidentified or are outside the country.

To date, the commission has identified 314 children of detainees who ended up in orphanages, but the fate of many others remains unknown—particularly as some facilities were destroyed or records falsified.

The investigation suggests that this practice was part of a broader regime policy to punish detainees’ families, exert pressure on them, and sever ties between children and relatives associated with the opposition. Some boys were reportedly recruited into armed service once they reached adulthood.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, at least 3,700 children remain forcibly disappeared since March 2011, after being detained by Assad’s regime. Despite the opening of prisons following Syria’s liberation, the fate of many of these children is still unknown.

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