Kenneth Roth, who was executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022, tells us that Syria " needs " the International Criminal Court, which holds its sessions at The Hague. His 'explanation' is more an insult and display of ignorance than an explanation. A few comments. First: Syria's justice system is not, as Roth proclaims, "a shambles". Assad's justice system was a shambles. The…
Assad, a monster, has won. He has a firm grasp on all major cities and ports: Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, Homs, Tartus. He has enough control of even the most restive regions, the Daraa and Sweida Governates, to ensure his survival. His lack of control near the Turkish border is a mere annoyance. No military force poses any threat to him, not least because no regional or international power has any…
These were all American defeats, but all different. And the defeat in Afghanistan is much more than an American defeat. In Vietnam, America and its Western friends were not alone, and they did not dominate technologically. They did not have air superiority over the North, a crucial rear area for the Vietnamese. The North had formidable missile defenses and useful fighter assets. In the South, US…
Liberal Syrians and others increasingly favour a certain analysis of why the Syrian revolution failed. The analysis masks the mistakes that really did contribute to that failure. This invites future disasters. I apologize for bringing this up; it is not my place to do so. But trying to prevent the next failure seems reason to speak out of turn. The 'official' liberal version, palatable to Western…
This attempts to counter some of the foolish comments made about Trump's withdrawal from Syria. The least foolish of these is that the battle against ISIS is not won. No it isn't, and Trump's claim that it is, is plainly false. But to harp on this is absurd. For one thing, there isn't the slightest possibility that keeping US troops in Syria would win the battle, or prevent an ISIS resurgence.…
The reaction to Syria's horrors did nothing to mitigate them. They will continue for decades. It may be useful to review just how throughly and deeply irredeemable is the failure. To say that there were war crimes and human rights violations is like saying Charles Manson misbehaved. Assad's crimes have been documented in heart-stopping detail, not least by the 'Caesar', who smuggled out prison…
The sufferings of Egyptians and Syrians will go on for decades. That will allow plenty of time for think tanks, graduate students, journalists, op-ed writers, scholars and security analysts to build or enhance their careers on the ‘lessons’ of these events. This essay offers the one lesson that none of these efforts will produce. It is that, if the Middle East has a future, it does not lie with…
An investigation by Elizabeth Tsurkov entitled "The Breaking of Syria's Rebellion" has elicited debate over what broke it. Did it break because the rebels were corrupted, authoritarian, feuding, oppressive, or did the rebels get that way because something else broke it - most likely Russian and Iranian intervention. It's not the sort of debate that can be definitively resolved. But there are…
Trump's policy on Syria is being criticized for inconsistency and inadequacy. No doubt. His shifting stance is also far superior to the consistently inadequate (or worse) policies of the oh-so-more-sophisticated EU leadership. Of course the main motive behind the criticisms is hatred of Trump. Yet on what might be thought the most morally significant foreign policy issue, Trump is clearly streets…
In “How Assad’s Enemies Gave Up on the Syrian Opposition”, Aron Lund follows many other analysts in his account of how the West 'gave up' on Syria’s rebels. The implication is that the West tried to back them against Assad, but at long last found this well-meaning effort both futile and ill-advised. The project produced a big mess! That's at least highly misleading. The following argues that West…
Recently there has been a fuss about a document entitled Critical Junctures in United States Policy toward Syria: An Assessment of the Counterfactuals . It says it is part of a 'research project': The project seeks to conduct a systematic review of critical policy junctures in the Syrian conflict, identify alternative policies that the US government plausibly could have adopted at these junctures,…
Spain invades Iraq 2003; gets attacked; leaves 2004. No more attacks. Spain goes into Syria in 2014; gets attacked. That looks like they bomb us because we bomb them. Yet many 'experts' and commentators indignantly reject this explanation. They say that ISIS' terrorism, like all radical Islamist terrorism, has nothing to do with Western conduct in the Middle East or against Muslims: that's…
The news cycle resembles one of those disturbing, dramatic medieval landscapes. This one is informed with some enigmatic message conveyed by the placement of its elements. At the center, but not dominating it, is Trump. Almost all of the painting concerns him. Groups animatedly argue about some utterance of his, or some failure to utter something, or some utterance that came too late, or didn't.…
Sam Heller is quite correct . It is a myth that the FSA ever was or ever had a prospect of being an essential counter-terrorist force. He is also correct in saying others performed better. But you can drive a truck through what he infers from these undeniable truths. First, the FSA isn't an essential counter-terrorism force because no Syrian force is essential. That's because almost any Syrian…
We hear confident claims that Omar Khadr should have been treated as a child soldier, as if international law imposed some such obligation on the US. It doesn't. The UN convention on the rights of the child binds only its ratifiers. The US (not to mention the Taliban) never ratified the convention. Since child soldiers appear only as an 'optional protocol' to the convention, the US can hardly have…
It's sometimes said that Syria is complicated, or at least beset by incoherent alliances. It isn't that complicated if you accept that some of the allies passionately deny they're allied. Bullshit aside, there are three sides in Syria, each opposing the other two (so, yes, just a little complicated). They are: 1. The rebels, Turkey. 2. ISIS 3. Assad, Russia, Iran, the Syrian Kurds (those…
Should we worry about the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan Hassan warns that the Brotherhood is not moderate . His warning is based entirely on the pronouncements of one associated cleric, Yussuf al Al Qaradawi. This, frankly, is not only ill-founded but dangerous. Al Qaradawi, not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, said suicide bombing was "permissible for Palestinians". He restricted the practice to…
Racism runs like sewage underneath Western attitudes to Syria. It is not obvious, and not the sort we endlessly uncover and deplore. But it is key to an understanding of how the catastrophe could happen. What makes Syrian lives worth so much less than nothing? It is not Islamophobia or what, inaccurately, is labeled racism against Muslims. Islamophobia is widespread in the West, and it may shape…
Many abhor the Assad régime and say that 'something must be done'. This typically means 'by People like Us', Westerners who know how to behave morally - an odd restriction given the only world leader consistently to support the rebels against Assad is Erdogan, the president of Turkey. Western leaders (contrary to the left's 'anti-imperialist' faith) will never do anything against Assad. They don't…
Though it is nothing like the cause of Syria's misery, one culprit has played a major role in its perpetuation. It not only erodes the will of the West to do something. It also actually undermines the international order. That culprit is the human rights discourse that has built up since the end of the Second World War. The development of human rights discourse has consistently broadened the…
Charles Lister's recent Foreign Policy piece compounds the shoddy thinking behind his previous warnings about Jabhat al Nusra. He tells us without evidence that senior Al Qaeda figures 'almost certainly' travelled to Syria to meet with Jabhat al Nusra leaders. Maybe so. He also emphasizes that these senior figures are very close to Al Qaeda leader Al Zawahiri. Why, according to Lister, is this so…
Two claims about some purported ISIS-régime alliance refuse to die. One can be disposed of in short order. Yes, too-clever-by-half Syrian intelligence agencies supported various extremist Islamists in 2008-2011 or so. But this is hardly the same as supporting ISIS, which had no independent identity back then. It's not even as damning as, say, Israel's early support of Hamas. No one supposes Israel…
The 'German idealist' Immanuel Kant could be hard-headed. "Whoever wills the end, wills the unavoidably necessary means," he said. There are many non-Syrians who rant and rave against Assad. They demand that the world 'do something' about him. They 'support' the rebels, or some of the rebels. These people allegedly want Assad gone. But they do not will the unavoidably necessary means to remove…
Michael Ignatieff and Leon Wieseltier, in a passionately moralistic Washington Post piece , have revived interest in the idea of a no-fly zone in Syria. This proposal, once attractive, has become preposterous. Even before Russian intervention, the no-fly zone idea was dubious, if only because the Syrian army possesses many long-range weapons which would cover the entire zone from the ground. But…
On February 6th, 2016, a Washington Institute for Near East Policy piece brought into full light an aspect of the Syria conflict long shrouded in willed obscurity. Kurdish units - US armed, trained and financed - attacked FSA positions in Western Aleppo. The attackers were aided by Russian bombs and a simultaneous attack by the SAA, Assad's army. Some details and implications: The attacking units…