By Koen Kluessien -
Palmyra, once a hub of Greek, Roman and Persian cultures and an important center of the ancient world, has now become known for the bloodbath perpetrated by the Islamic State and the possible destruction of its historical artifacts. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Islamic State has already executed 217 men, women, and children of Palmyra since 16 May. Although it is important that these atrocities do not go unnoticed, this international attention for the events in Palmyra is exemplary for the media reporting and international politics since the rise of ISIS. Namely, Palmyra (or Tadmor in Arabic) is for many Syrians not only known for its historic landmarks, it is also symbol of the cruelty of the regime of the Assad family that has been oppressing the Syrians for decades. While the international community has been focusing on the bearded killers of the Islamic State who post their cruelties on Youtube, the West seems to have forgotten about the well-shaved President who is still massacring its people in the hidden confinement of Syrian prisons.
Recently, a video surfaced of Syrians in Palmyra taking the street and holding a peaceful protest in which they waved flags and danced to express their hope for change. This video was recorded four years ago. The protesters took to the streets to protest against the cruelties of their own president Bashar al-Assad. The city was home to an infamous prison initiated by his father President Hafez Assad and used for executions and complete massacres in the 80s and 90s. A 1996 Human Rights Watch study reported of a 1980 massacre in which a total of 500 prisoners were killed in one day. On paper the prison was closed when Hafez’s son, Bashar al-Assad, assumed power in 2001. However, the prison was soon re-opened to imprison the vast amount of dissidents. In 2001 Amnesty International reported the detainees were ‘completely isolated from the outside world’ in a place which seemed to ‘inflict the maximum suffering, humiliation and fear on prisoners’ through excruciating torture tactics.
The same demonstrators who took the streets against the oppression of Assad are now hiding in their basements awaiting another airstrike by the government or another massacre perpetrated by the Islamic State. In the meantime, the international community seems to have turned a blind eye to the waves of atrocities the Assad regime is still committing. In August 2012, President Obama stated that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would be a clear ‘red line’ for action by the United States. One year later, 1,500 Syrian men, women, and children were murdered in the infamous sarin gas attacks, perpetrated by the Assad regime. Accountability for this massacre came in the form of a UN directive for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons. Although the regime agreed to destroy the existing stockpiles, the use of chemical weapons has only increased. On April 16, 2015, the United Nations Security Council heard firsthand accounts of doctors from Idlib in northwestern Syria who had treated the most recent victims of Assad’s barrel bombs, many of which contained chlorine gas.
Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations stated she would take every step possible to hold the perpetrators accountable for this attack. If the UN would take action, this would be the first time since 2013 that Assad is punished for his use of chemical weapons. With the international community still hesitant to intervene in these crimes, Assad clearly does not see any reason to stop his attacks and the use of chemical weapons. According to Jett Goldsmith, investigative reporter for Bellingcat, there have been at least six more sarin or chlorine gas attacks from December 2012 to March 2015. While the method of gas attacks is becoming even more deadly, it seems hypocritical to have a US-led coalition intervention against the positions of the Islamic State while the Assad regime is still dropping barrel bombs on civilians.
Bashar al-Assad’s cruelties seem to go far beyond the atrocities his father committed. As an Amnesty International report on human rights violations in the Syrian city of Aleppo stated: ‘These violations amount to war crimes and in the case of those committed by the Syrian government are so systematic and widespread that they constitute crimes against humanity’. However, the international community is still holding on to its appeasement politics of ‘the enemy’s enemy is a friend’. This reasoning may be a result of the simplistic idea that the Islamisation of the conflict in Syria is growing. Ironically, the one-sided Western military operations are creating conditions that may push some Syrians into the hands of the same extremists the coalition is fighting. There are still many Syrians fighting the Assad regime with the same principles as when they started the protests during the Arab Spring. However, both the US-led coalition and the Western media have been ignoring their voices, creating a feeling of hopelessness that is favorable for extremists such as the Islamic State. As a man who calls himself Aby Ayman stated in an interview with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: ‘I can see the appeal of Isis. As much as I don’t like them, I can see that they are leading some Sunni communities towards a dignity that no government will give them.’
The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State is currently not choosing for a lesser evil, but for a different evil. Resulting in a desperate situation for the Syrian people. As a Syrian cynically stated in an interview with Business Insider, there is not much hope for help from the West: ‘Obama can cover the whole world in red lines. Who cares? We are dying here. And Ban Ki Moon? He is ‘worried’ all the time. Ban Ki Moon is worried, Obama is drawing red lines, everybody is talking and nobody is doing anything.’ If Western countries genuinely want to battle the extremist movements, they will have to listen more to the needs of the civilian population instead of their own pragmatic reasoning.