ISIS are allowing Assad to pose as rational and humane. This couldn't be further from the truth
With the murder of journalist Kenji Goto, ISIS have again demonstrated their carefully packaged and branded approach to terrorism. From logo to costumes, from the attention-grabbing trailing of their murders to their ‘please share’ death videos, they present perhaps the most compelling integration of marketing and political violence since the Nazis. They are the perfect terrorists from Central Casting.
But while ISIS flaunt their brutality, the greatest threat to Syrians, and consequently the greatest threat to regional stability and to European security, remains the Assad regime. In December, the Assad regime was responsible for three-quarters of all violent deaths recorded by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Amongst civilians the proportion was even higher: over 85 per cent of civilians killed in December were victims of the Assad regime.
The Assad regime is responsible for over 95 per cent of all civilian violent deaths recorded by the Violations Documentation Centre in Syria since March 2011. According to VDC figures, in the last year, over seven times as many civilians were confirmed killed by Assad air strikes as were killed by ISIS in the province of Raqqa, the ISIS stronghold.
Like ISIS, Assad also has a marketing strategy. Unlike ISIS, his strategy is not to flaunt his brutality, at least when dealing with the wider world beyond Syria. From before ISIS appeared, from the very start of peaceful protests against his dictatorship in 2011, he has claimed that all of his opponents are terrorists and has sought to portray himself as the opposite: a civilised leader in a Western businessman’s suit and tie. The contrast between his costume and those of ISIS is perfect.
For years there have been allegations from former insiders that the Assad regime deliberately brought about the rise of ISIS: from Nawaf Fares, former Syrian ambassador to Iraq; from Mohammed Habash, former member of the Syrian parliament; from Bassam Barabandi, former Syrian diplomat; from a former member of Syria’s Military Intelligence Directorate.
The regime had a known history of facilitating their earlier incarnation, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and there is objective evidence that the regime avoided conflict with ISIS as they took over territory from the Free Syrian Army and associated rebel groups. Despite this, Assad’s marketing of himself as a force to counter terrorism has had an unreasonable degree of success.
It’s sadly no longer surprising when Patrick Cockburn in the Independent pitches the topsy-turvy notion that keeping Assad might help counter terrorism; nor when we see it coming from Leslie Gelb writing for the Daily Beast website – he has pushed this line before. The disturbing thing is that Gelb now claims anonymous sources in the Obama administration are telling him that Obama also buys this line.
Seeing this echoed in a New York Times editorial makes it even more unsettling, as the New York Times editorial board has for some time been a prime target of Obama administration PR efforts. For more on reactions to this, see Akbar Shahid Ahmed’s report, Springtime for Assad.
Assad may have hoped that his recent interview with Foreign Affairs magazine would be the perfect culmination of his pitch as Syria’s man of reason, a secular leader the West can do business with; but Jonathan Tepperman, the journalist who conducted the interview, begs to differ. He writes:
… he was disconcertingly good at presenting himself as a reasonable, rational actor. His critique of America’s Middle East policy, for example, is one shared by many lefties in the West: The U.S. role, he told me, should be “to help peace in the region, to fight terrorism, to promote secularism, to support this area economically” and “not to launch wars. Launching war doesn’t make you a great power.”
But behind the cheery aphorisms and the barely-there mustache is a man so unyielding and deeply deceptive – or delusional – that it’s impossible to imagine him ever negotiating an equitable end to Syria’s civil war.
…Either Syria’s president is an extremely competent fabulist – in which case he’s merely a sociopath – or he actually believes his lies, in which case he’s something much more dangerous (like a delusional psychopath).
An end to Syria’s war requires an end to Assad, and an end to ISIS requires the same. Obama’s current ISIS-only strategy in Syria fails on both counts. The least the US-led coalition against ISIS should do is to make protection of civilians the priority: stop air attacks by Assad, the enabler of ISIS, and give the parts of Syria outside of Assad and ISIS control some chance of peace and stability.
Kellie Strom blogs at Air Force Amazons and tweets here
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17 Responses to “Assad is still the biggest threat to ordinary Syrians”
Guest
Oh yes, when *he* slaughtered people it was fine, eh?
Kris
I never said so. I just don`t buy this crap the situation will improve after a regime change. It is only going to lead to more bloodshed until finally some Islamic group has seized total control and all other groups have been killed or expelled.
Kellie
Confirmed violent deaths in Libya last year were 2,825 people killed including combatants as well as civilians. http://www.libyabodycount.org/ Why don’t you compare that to figures for Syria last year? Of course Libya is a smaller country – Syria’s pre-war population was about 3.5 times the size of Libya’s. So go ahead and multiply that Libya number by 3.5 and compare it to Syria. By any measure Syria is much worse.
There are various sources for Syria numbers. Likely the most reliable are the UN reports, the most recent of which only goes up to April 2014. It gave a minimum count of 61,816 killed in the 12 months from May 2013 to April 2014.
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/SY/HRDAGUpdatedReportAug2014.pdf
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gives a figure of over 76,000 killed for all of 2014. Some prefer not to cite SOHR as they are not as transparent as some other groups.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30648181
The most accessible data is that provided by the Violations Documentation Center in Syria. They are one of the sources used by the UN. They list a total of 31,241 confirmed violent deaths for 2014: 26,721 listed under Martyrs, 4,520 listed under Regime. However the UN reports so far have shown that VDC Syria is missing nearly half of all violent deaths, if not more.
http://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/
Dave Stewart
“Every Muslim is responsible for the creation of this monster ISIS”
Are you serious? Every Muslim? What about a 5 year girl in Birmingham? Would she be responsible for ISIS?
Are all Christians responsible for the KKK? Were all Germans (at the time) responsible for the Nazis? Were all Russians (and a host of other nationalities) responsible for the excess of the Soviet Union? Were all Cambodians responsible for the Khmer Rouge?
Let me answer that for you, no, no they weren’t.
Jacob R.
What “democracy”? Iraq after Saddam was a democracy? Or do you see what is happening in Libya since they overthrew Gaddafi? Ya, I bet you think al-Nusra and the other “moderate rebels” are fighting for “democracy” against Assad.