\n<\/p>\n
When he returned to Syria recently for the first time in 12 years, Kazem Togan asked the passport control agent to check whether he \u201chad a name\u201d \u2014 meaning that he was among the millions of citizens named on wanted lists under the ousted Assad dictatorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re wanted by branch 235,\u201d the man told him, smiling as he delivered the news. \u201cThe intelligence branch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Togan, a journalist who worked for opposition Syrian media when the old government was in power, said he was thrilled.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, every Syrian asks as a matter of routine, \u2018Was I wanted?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnyone who was detained by the Assad regime or wanted by the Assad regime, there is a measure of pride.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
This was known in Syria as \u201chaving a name.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 proof that you stood up against oppression.<\/p>\n
Some of those formerly wanted cite a line from the 10th-century Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi: \u201cIf someone who is deficient criticizes me, it is a testimony that I am perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
If they were caught, they could disappear into the old regime\u2019s notorious prison system, where torture and executions were rife and from which many never emerged.<\/p>\n
The danger of being wanted and caught drove millions of Syrians into exile outside the country or into hiding within it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> it on social media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n No reason was listed on his file for why he was wanted.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine if I had come to Syria before the fall of this criminal regime?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n