Page 3 of
3 A
mistaken case for Syrian regime
change By Aisling
Byrne
Such abuses are inevitable in
low-intensity conflict. Leading critics [52] of
this US-France-UK-Gulf-led regime change project
have, from the outset, called for full
accountability and punishment for any security or
other official "however senior", found to have
committed any human-rights abuses.
Ibrahim
al-Amine writes that some in the regime have
conceded "that the security remedy was damaging in
many cases and regions [and] that the response to
the popular protests was mistaken ... it would
have been possible to contain the situation via
clear and firm practical measures - such as
arresting those responsible for torturing children
in Deraa". And it argues that the demand for
political pluralism and an end to the
all-encompassing repression is both vital and
urgent. [53]
But what may have began as
popular protests, initially focused on
local issues and incidents
(including the case of the torture of young boys
in Dera'a by security forces) were rapidly
hijacked by this wider strategic project for
regime change. Five years ago, I worked in
northern Syria with the United Nations managing a
large community development project.
After
evening community meetings, it wasn't uncommon to
find the mukhabarat (military intelligence)
waiting for us to vacate the room so they could
scan flipcharts posted on the walls. That almost
every aspect of people's daily lives was regulated
by a sclerotic dysfunctional Ba'ath party/security
bureaucracy, devoid of any ideology apart from the
inevitable corruption and nepotism that comes with
authoritarian power, was apparent in every feature
of people's lives.
Tuesday, December 20
was reportedly the "deadliest day of the
nine-month [Syrian] uprising "with the "organized
massacre" of a "mass defection" of army deserters
widely reported by the international press in
Idlib, northern Syria. Claiming that areas of
Syria were now "exposed to large-scale genocide",
the SNC lamented the "250 fallen heroes during a
48-hour period", citing figures provided by the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. [54] Quoting
the same source, the Guardian reported that the
Syrian army was:
... hunt[ing] down deserters after
troops ... killed close to 150 men who had fled
their base". A picture has emerged ... of a mass
defection ... that went badly wrong ... with
loyalist forces positioned to mow down large
numbers of defectors as they fled a military
base. Those who managed to escape were later
hunted down in hideouts in nearby mountains,
multiple sources have reported. The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights estimated that 100
deserters were besieged, then killed or wounded.
Regular troops allegedly also hunted down
residents who had given shelter to the
deserters. [55]
The Guardian's live
blog-quoted AVAAZ, the citizen political
advocacy/public relations group, which "claimed
269 people had been killed in the clashes", and
cited AVAAZ's precise breakdown of casualties:
"163 armed revolutionaries, 97 government troops
and 9 civilians". [56] They noted that AVAAZ
"provided nothing to corroborate the claim".
The Washington Post reported only that
they had spoken to "an activist with the rights
group AVAAZ [who] said he had spoken to local
activists and medical groups who put the death
toll in that area Tuesday at 269". [57]
A
day after initial reports of the massacre of
fleeing deserters, however, the story had changed.
On December 23, the Telegraph reported:
At first they were said to be army
deserters attempting to break into Turkey to
join the FSA [Free Syrian Army], but they are
now said to be unarmed civilians and activists
attempting to escape the army's attempts to
bring the province back under control. They were
surrounded by troops and tanks and gunned down
until there were no survivors, according to
reports. [58]
The New York Times had,
on December 21, reported that the "massacre",
citing the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, was
of "unarmed civilians and activists, with no armed
military defectors among them, the rights groups
said".
It quoted the head of the
Observatory who described it as "an organized
massacre" and said his account corroborated a Kfar
Owaid witness' account: "The security forces had
lists of names of those who organized massive
anti-regime protests ... the troops then opened
fire with tanks, rockets and heavy machine guns
[and], bombs filled with nails to increase the
number of casualties. [59]
The LA Times
quoted an activist it had spoken to via satellite
connection who, from his position "sheltering in
the woods" commented: "The word 'massacre' seems
like too small a word to describe what happened."
Meanwhile, the Syrian government reported that on
December 19 and 20, it had killed "tens" of
members of "armed terrorist gangs" in both Homs
and Idlib, and had arrested many wanted
individuals. [60]
The truth of these two
"deadly" days will probably never be known - the
figures cited above (between 10-163 armed
insurgents, 9-111 unarmed civilians and 0-97
government forces) differ so significantly in both
numbers reported killed and who they were, that
the "truth" is impossible to establish.
In
relation to an earlier purported "massacre" in
Homs, a Stratfor investigation found "no signs of
a massacre", concluding that "opposition forces
have an interest in portraying an impending
massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that
propelled a foreign military intervention in
Libya". [61]
Nevertheless, the "massacre"
of December 19-20 in Idlib was reported as fact,
and was etched into the narrative of Assad's
"killing machine".
Both the recent UN
Human Rights Commissioner's report and a recent
data blog report [62] on reported deaths in
"Syria's bloody uprising" by the Guardian
(published December 13) - two examples of attempts
to establish the truth about numbers killed in the
Syrian conflict - rely almost exclusively on
opposition-provided data: interviews with 233
alleged "army defectors" in the case of the UN
report, and on reports from the Syrian Human
Rights Observatory, the LCCs and al-Jazeera in the
case of the Guardian's data blog.
The
Guardian reports a total of 1,414.5 people (sic)
killed - including 144 Syrian security personnel -
between January and November 21, 2011. Based
solely on press reports, the report contains a
number of basic inaccuracies (eg sources not
matching numbers killed with places cited in
original sources): their total includes 23 Syrians
killed by the Israeli army in June on the Golan
Heights; 25 people reported "wounded" are included
in total figures for those killed, as are many
people reported shot.
The report makes no
reference to any killings of armed insurgents
during the entire 10-month period - all victims
are "protesters", "civilians" or "people" - apart
from the 144 security personnel.
Seventy
percent of the report's data sources are from the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the LCCs and
"activists"; 38% of press reports are from
al-Jazeera, 3% from Amnesty International and 1.5%
from official Syrian sources.
In response
to the UN Commissioner's report, Syria's
ambassador to the UN commented: "How could
defectors give positive testimonies on the Syrian
government? Of course they will give negative
testimonies against the Syrian government. They
are defectors."
In the effort to inflate
figures of casualties, the public
relations-activist group AVAAZ has consistently
outstripped even the UN. AVAAZ has publicly stated
it is involved in "smuggling activists ... out of
the country", running "secret safe houses to
shelter ... top activists from regime thugs" and
that one "AVAAZ citizen journalist" "discover[ed]
a mass grave". [63]
It states proudly that
the BBC and CNN have said that AVAAZ data amounts
to some 30% of their news coverage of Syria. The
Guardian reported AVAAZ's latest claim to have
"evidence" of killings of some 6,200 people
(including security forces and including 400
children), claiming 617 of whom died under torture
[64] - their justification to have verified each
single death with confirmation by three people,
"including a relative and a cleric who handled the
body" is improbable in the extreme.
The
killing of one brigadier-general and his children
in April last year in Homs illustrates how near
impossible it is, particularly during sectarian
conflict, to verify even one killing - in this
case, a man and his children:
The general, believed to be Abdu
Tallawi, was killed with his children and nephew
while passing through an agitated neighborhood.
There are two accounts of what happened to him
and his family, and they differ about the
victim's sect.
Regime loyalists say that
he was killed by takfiris - hardline
Islamists who accuse other Muslims of apostasy -
because he belonged to the Alawite sect. The
protesters insist that he is a member of the
Tallawi family from Homs and that he was killed
by security forces to accuse the opposition and
destroy their reputation. Some even claim that
he was shot because he refused to fire at
protesters.
The third account is ignored
due to the extreme polarization of opinions in
the city [Homs]. The brigadier-general was
killed because he was in a military vehicle,
even though he had his kids with him. Whoever
killed him was not concerned with his sect but
with directing a blow to the regime, thus
provoking an even harsher crackdown, which, in
turn, would drag the protest movement into a
cycle of violence with the state. [65]
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