The Syrian Shabiha and Their State
Syrian regime thugs, more commonly know as shabiha mirror the structure and goals of the Assad regime which relies on raw force to accumulate personal wealth and ensure its own survival at all costs. In this article, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, dissects the functioning, motivations, funding and ideology of the shabiha, from their appearance in the 1970s until their reemmergence during the revolution. Saleh shows their central role in maintaining a regime in power that has long lost touch with peoples interests, morality and reality.
Its origins are obscure. Is it perhaps derived from ashbaah (ghosts), because the shabiha operate outside the law, living in the shadows, both figuratively and literally, materializing and vanishing with bewildering speed? Is it taken from the shabah, the once popular Mercedes model, which senior members of the shabiha were said to favour for their operations and to set themselves apart? Or perhaps it is related to the idea of extending and widening privileges and powers, as when an individual broadens his shabh, or shadow, by standing tall and holding his arms out. In this analogy, the privileges or shadow would refer to official compensation or reward for undertaking some task or other, while the act of stretching and widening would be the task itself, as performed by the shabiha.
http://all4syria.info/web/Archive/38128
Read and weep.