<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/category/analysis/argument/>
ARGUMENT
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/category/analysis/argument/>
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/category/analysis/argument/>
Assad’s Violence Started a Conflict That Will Burn for Decades
There’s no peace in Syria, only suffering.
BYOZ KATERJI
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/author/oz-katerji/>
|Foreign policy, MARCH 19, 2021, 3:02 PM
This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the first anti-government
protests that broke out in Damascus and Aleppo inMarch 2011
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12749674>. But this solemn
date marks only the start of the Syrian revolution, not the opening shot
of the Syrian civil war, which began only aftermonths
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/08/syria-deaths-arab-states-protest>of
a brutal crackdown that had already left thousands of people dead at the
hands of the regime’s security forces. That violence, initiated by
President Bashar al-Assad, began the largest human-made human
catastrophe since World War II, on a scale so unfathomable that the
United Nations officially abandoned trying to count the death toll
inJanuary 2014
<https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/01/12/261059900/the-u-n-has-stopped-counting-but-syrians-keep-dying>.
It’s a conflict that isn’t over—and that never had to happen.
The U.N.’s last attempt at an estimate was 400,000 dead, issued by
then-Special Envoy for SyriaStaffan de Mistura
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/2016/04/22/u-n-envoy-revises-syria-death-toll-to-400000/>in
2016. Even at that time, the number barely reflected the actual human
cost. It became impossible to count the death toll from the daily
bombardments, and even more impossible to set a figure for those who
later succumbed to their wounds, died from preventable diseases, or
starved to death as a result of barbaric sieges—or the hundreds of
thousands of Syrians who disappeared, summarily executed or tortured to
death in the Assad regime’sdeath camps
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/world/middleeast/syria-torture-prisons.html>.
The circle of suffering goes beyond the dead: rape victims, torture
victims, traumatized children, widows and widowers, displaced people.
It’s a list with no end.
The world doesn’t even seem interested in counting anymore. But the
least that outsiders can do is to speak of the start of the violence
accurately and name the perpetuators.
The Syrian civil war must be defined not by the defiance and courage of
those who took to the streets in 2011 but instead by theslogan
<https://twitter.com/samdagher/status/432868667395940352?s=20>Assad’s
personal militias used to drive fear into the hearts of the Syrian
people: “Assad or no one. Assad or we burn the country.” This is the
only promise the regime has ever kept. This is why it is wrong to mark
this date as the start of the Syrian civil war: Syrians did not choose
to become the victims of a violent military crackdown for one man’s lust
for power; it was a crime perpetrated against them.
The war didn’t begin when the marches started, and it hasn’t ended even
as much of the opposition has crumbled or been crushed. Syria lies in
smoldering ruins, with Assad sitting on top of most of regime-held
territory, but in reality parts of the country are now effectively
governed by Russian- and Iranian-backed militias. Far from “Assad or no
one,” the Syrian people now have Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Russian’s Vladimir Putin to add to that
list. This is not peace; it is a set of interlocking warlords who depend
on daily violence to keep their power intact.
Syria’s economy has collapsed to depths unprecedented even during the
height of the violence, with the value of the Syrian pound plummeting
daily. As of March 16, it was4,550 Syrian pounds
<https://twitter.com/Charles_Lister/status/1371800896313655296?s=20>to
the U.S. dollar. For context, itsprewar
<https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/65585/MED_WPCS_2019_18.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y>value
was roughly 50 Syrian pounds to the dollar; comparatively, the Syrian
pound was trading at roughly 600 to the dollar in2016
<https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/society/2016/5/9/syrian-pound-hits-lowest-value-since-start-of-war>.
But even before the recent spiral, the regime had done virtually nothing
in the way of reconstruction, with areas it captured years agostill
lying in ruins
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-homs-idUSKCN1AY16X>.
The regime’s allies in Iran and Russia will not fund reconstruction,
instead looking to the European Union and others to foot the bill for
their destruction of Syria’s infrastructure.The regime’s allies in Iran
and Russia will not fund reconstruction, instead looking to the European
Union and others to foot the bill for their destruction of Syria’s
infrastructure. The West will not open the coffers, nor will it drop
sanctions, without progress toward a political transition that the Assad
regime burned the country to avoid pursuing.
Even if the moral and ethical horror of renormalization of the Assad
regime could be negotiated or ignored, the regime, as allavailable
evidence
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syria-museum-assad-brother-people-starve>indicates
from its behavior, would only use additional funding to rebuild its
security state and continue to use aid as a weapon of war, something
that theU.N. has shamefully enabled
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/how-assad-regime-controls-un-aid-intended-for-syrias-children>from
its office in Damascus since day one.
The situation is equally as bleak in the areas outside of regime
control. Idlib is the last standing opposition enclave in Syria, a de
facto Turkish protectorate. It is home to more than 3 million people,
the vast majority forcibly displaced from areas besieged and bombed with
unrelenting barbarity.
The population there lives at the mercy of either Turkish-backed
opposition forces, guilty ofhuman rights abuses
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/14/syria-turkey-backed-groups-seizing-property>andsummary
executions
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/female-kurdish-politician-among-nine-civilians-killed-by-pro-turkey-forces-in-syria-observers-say>,
who have also been recently conscripted by Turkey’s own autocrat Recep
Tayyip Erdogan into his foreign military incursions intoAzerbaijan
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55238803>andLibya
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/15/exclusive-2000-syrian-troops-deployed-to-libya-to-support-regime>,
or the fundamentalist former al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,
again guilty ofwidespread abuses
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/01/28/syria-arrests-torture-armed-group>.
READ MORE
A mass demonstration in support of the Syrian opposition marks the 10th
anniversary of the start of the Syrian civil war in Idlib, Syria, on
March 15.
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/2021/03/17/syria-war-assad-war-crimes-justice-reconciliation-victims-civilians-refugees/>
Ten Years on, Will There Ever Be Justice for Syria?
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/2021/03/17/syria-war-assad-war-crimes-justice-reconciliation-victims-civilians-refugees/>
As the war drags on, there are small glimmers of hope for those seeking
reconciliation.
VOICE<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/category/analysis/voice/>|
JANINE DI GIOVANNI
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/author/janine-di-giovanni/>
The people of Idlib are trapped on all sides, facing a closed Turkish
border on one end and the regime’s forces on the other. Despite a
Turkish-Russiancease-fire
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/russia-and-turkey-agree-ceasefire-in-syrias-idlib-province>largely
holding in the enclave, residential parts of the Idlib governorate are
still subjected to artillery strikes from a regime that has never
dropped its promise to recapture “every inch
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/24/civilians-idlib-syria-bashar-al-assad-total-victory>”
of Syria. Idlib today faces a precarious future as a besieged,
impoverished, and lawless Syrian Gaza Strip, living solely at the mercy
of warlords and international powers almost indifferent to or actively
enabling their plight.
What little influence the Western powers have on the ground in Syria is
confined to small pockets surrounding U.S. forces, such as the Tanf
border crossing with Jordan, and in northeastern Syria alongside their
allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), essentially a U.S.-backed
offshoot of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a separatist
movement with its ownhuman rights issues
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/03/syria-armed-group-recruiting-children-camps>that
finds itself in an uncomfortable partnership with both itsunreliable
U.S. ally <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-46639073>and
theAssad regime and Moscow
<https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/amid-us-uncertainty-in-syria-kurdish-ypg-eyes-bolstering-ties-with-russia/>.
The SDF also finds itself in the unfortunate position of managing the
indefinite detainment of Islamic State fighters, despite having no
infrastructure or political autonomy.
Syria today is a failed state, effectively Balkanized into competing
spheres of influence. It is teetering on the brink of famine, with a
staggering 90 percent of the population living below the poverty
line,according
<https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/press-release/syria-crisis-10-years-humanitarian-situation-worse-ever/>to
the International Committee of the Red Cross. Even with those shocking
figures, the regime and Russia continue to deliberately hamper
international aid efforts, the cruelty acting as a critical component of
the regime’s total grip on power.
While the future of Syria remains unwritten, the next 10 years look to
be at least as painful as the last. It is not only Syria’s territorial
map that has become locked in stalemate; the political and diplomatic
process is almost nonexistent. The war is not over, just in stasis, and
the suffering continues in a landscape so broken and chaotic that even
the highest authorities on the planet cannot meaningfully quantify the dead.
Suffering is the only certainty left in Syria.Assad has not won anything
<https://foreignpolicy-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/2019/07/11/assad-hasnt-won-anything-syria/>.
There are no victors in the country’s future, only victims and
perpetrators, and an international community that stood aside and
watched while millions of people were slaughtered and displaced.
When we mark the anniversary of those 2011 protests, we should remember
the memory of those who marched arm in arm carrying flowers and singing
songs of peace, not those who burned the country to stop them. That
dignity is the very least we can still offer.
*Oz Katerji*is a British-Lebanese freelance journalist focusing on
conflict, human rights & the Middle East.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#7415): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7415
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/81492266/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
