When he returned to Syria recently for the first time in 12 years, Kazem Togan asked the passport control agent to check whether he “had a name” — meaning that he was among the millions of citizens named on wanted lists under the ousted Assad dictatorship.
“You’re wanted by branch 235,” the man told him, smiling as he delivered the news. “The intelligence branch.”
Mr. Togan, a journalist who worked for opposition Syrian media when the old government was in power, said he was thrilled.
“Today, every Syrian asks as a matter of routine, ‘Was I wanted?’” he said. “Anyone who was detained by the Assad regime or wanted by the Assad regime, there is a measure of pride.”
For more than five decades, the dictator Bashar al-Assad and his father before him ruled Syria by terror. Anyone wanted by any of the regime’s numerous intelligence, military or security branches was named on lists that could be checked at airports, border crossings or police stations and risked disappearing into the prison system.
This was known in Syria as “having a name.”
Those who spent their entire lives terrified by the prospect of having a security file are now openly asking officials about their status under the former government and bragging about it openly in conversation or on social media. To have been wanted by a government that tortured or killed millions of its own citizens to hold on to power is a badge of honor — proof that you stood up against oppression.
Some of those formerly wanted cite a line from the 10th-century Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi: “If someone who is deficient criticizes me, it is a testimony that I am perfect.”
In addition to those people the government viewed as threats, such as anti-government protesters and armed rebels, Syrians could end up having a name for anything from making a political joke among friends to carrying foreign currency or even living abroad for too long.
Many of the wanted were men, in large part because many evaded mandatory military service and also were the ones who took up arms against the Assad regime. But women, too, and even children, were on the lists.
If they were caught, they could disappear into the old regime’s notorious prison system, where torture and executions were rife and from which many never emerged.
The danger of being wanted and caught drove millions of Syrians into exile outside the country or into hiding within it.
It also drove many anti-government activists and rebel fighters to adopt a nom de guerre throughout the civil war to shield both themselves and their families from ending up on the wanted lists.
Mr. Togan, 36, the opposition journalist, recorded his encounter in January with the passport control agent as he returned from Saudi Arabia, where he has been living. He then posted it on social media.
No reason was listed on his file for why he was wanted.
“Imagine if I had come to Syria before the fall of this criminal regime?” he said.
When the Syrian rebels who ousted Mr. al-Assad in December began to set up their own government, they inherited an entire bureaucracy and gained access to databases and intelligence files that were kept on millions of Syrians. The trove of documents could be used in the future to pursue justice and accountability for the crimes of the dictatorship.
An Interior Ministry official said in a recent interview with a Syrian television channel that more than eight million Syrians were wanted by the old regime.
“Of course, we have forgiven a lot of these, like the issue of being wanted for reserve military duty or conscription,” said the official, Khaled al-Abdullah. “This is a big chunk. We’ve set these aside.”
But the new government said it would not dismiss previous civil court judgments or criminal charges, he said.
Tamer Turkmane, 35, recently came home to Syria for the first time in years. When he crossed from Turkey, where he had been living, the agents did not check his past status.
But when he left the country through the border crossing with Lebanon, he said the passport control officer asked him: “‘What did you do that multiple regime branches were after you?’”
Mr. Turkmane said he had just laughed.
He had known that he was wanted because relatives who lived in Homs had been threatened by security officials in an attempt to pressure him to turn himself in or stop documenting human rights violations by the old regime. But he had not known the details about which specific branches of the government were after him.
At the beginning of the Syrian uprising against Mr. al-Assad’s rule, Mr. Turkmane had founded the Syrian Revolution Archive — a database of videos, photos and other information documenting the revolt turned civil war. He was sought by several different military and internal security branches.
“I was so proud,” he said.
He asked the passport officer to snap a quick photo of the screen showing his file to share on Instagram. Many of the comments on his post were congratulations.
At the immigration and passport ministry in the city of Aleppo on a recent day, the stairs outside the building were packed with lines of men and women trying to push forward and through the one open door to renew passports, replace lost national ID cards and check on their previous security status.
On the second floor, Ahmad Raheem, a 15-year employee in the archives department, said he spent his days at a computer, running checks on those coming in to get new documents.
A man who had been outside the country for 12 years handed over his Syrian ID card to Mr. Raheem. On the computer screen, he could see that the man had been wanted for evading military duty — a charge that just two months earlier would have landed him in a military prison or sent him to fight on a front line of the civil war.
“That’s it, sir. You don’t have anything,” Mr. Raheem told him, not mentioning the charge and handing him back his ID.
Afterward, Mr. Raheem explained that he did not offer up the information on who was previously wanted unless specifically asked because he does not want people to worry somehow that the new government was pursuing these regime-era charges.
Fuad Sayed Issa, the founder of Violet Organization, a Syria-based charity, was leaving the Damascus airport in February, heading back to Turkey, where he had been living during the civil war. He said the passport control agent paused as he scanned his passport on the computer.
“‘Am I wanted?’” Mr. Issa, 29, asked.
“‘Yes. You are wanted by several security branches,’” Mr. Issa recalled the agent telling him.
He was wanted by the criminal security branch and immigration control and for evading military service.
“For us, these things are funny,” said Mr. Issa, who was part of an early warning network of observers in rebel-held territory who would notify civilians of incoming airstrikes by Syrian and Russian warplanes during the civil war.
The Assad regime would go after us “as if we were terrorists,” he said.
