Reports | 25 05 2020
By: Ali Melhem
The latest statistics on the victims of the ongoing armed conflict on Syrian territory indicate that the Assad regime is responsible for more than 75% of civilian casualties in all of Syria. This figure is three times higher than that caused by other groups and entities involved in the conflict. Daesh ranks second in terms of responsibility for the killing and slaughtering of civilians. What seems striking is the fact that all other armed factions—Al-Nusra Front [NF] included—the large number of attacks and strikes in which they are involved notwithstanding; have a measly share in the killing of civilians—much less of that of both Assad or Daesh. Their casualty count is much closer to that caused by the Western coalition forces during the past few months, in terms of civilian murders by their so-called “smart” bombs and targeted strikes. This, if anything, either indicates that both the Revolutionary Brigades and the NF are in possession of smart and targeted weaponry, similar to those of the coalition forces—something that, with the exception of the TAO anti-tank missiles recently handed to some of the Free Syrian Army [FSA] battalions, is known not to be the fact of the matter; or to indicate a highly qualified and laudable fighting spirit—one that seeks to spare civilians as much as possible, and avoids as much as possible to commit any violation to the international humanitarian law—on the part of the FSA factions. On the other hand, figures indicate that there are "blind" fighters alongside Assad and Daesh alike. This “blindness” does not limit itself to the physical side, manifesting itself through strikes on the ground; but rather escalates and extends to comprise a moral and ethical blindness. Even during the most violent and spirited of wars, there remains room for the least modicum of ethical considerations among the warring parties—an ethical considerations that is completely absent among the Assad militias, Iran, and Russia; ands which neither Daesh nor its own beasts from all races and creeds seem to possess.
This is not to say that the Revolutionary battalions and forces and, to some extent, the NF, have not committed severe and profound human and territorial rights violations. To look at the difference between the parties to the conflict is rather to give a significance that cannot be overlooked; that is, to determine who is less brutal?!
Blind brutality in Syria does not limit itself to the absence of any form of discrimination in committing acts of murder; it extends to a certain sophistication in the shape and type of such murder. Whereas the Assad regime forces were responsible for 97% of deaths caused by systematic torture in detention centers; Daesh yet again retains second place in this competition. The number of dead from torture or detention by rebel factions, does not exceed the figure of those who are martyred in a single dormitory in the [regime-operated] Palestine Security Branch within one month—or two, at most.
Blindness and obfuscation comprise a meta-moral dimension; that of how a war is fought by any belligerent party. It comprises the deeper significance of an established approach and practice by a belligerent party, and how it strives to negate its very existence. This blind policy in fighting a war serves as evidence of a deeper policy of governing; and of how the blind prevail over those under his control and subordinated to him. There is no one with full sight in the Assad or the ISIL States. Everyone is a mere “nothing;" there is no difference if one perishes with one’s body parts scattered in the market, or under torture in the third basement of the Palestine [Security] Branch or the Interior Bureau of [Daesh’s] Raqqa Province.
This moral blindness—whether covert or overt—not only affects the number of those murdered or injured under torture; it extends to become a political and solution-finding blindness, as well. The presence of these two blind parties—Assad and Daesh—helps render the Syria war an interminable dirty game. The farther we move towards a proposal to resolve it, or on a road to salvation; the [regime’s] Syrian Arab Army [explosive] barrels start, quite intelligently, raining atop the heads of shoppers in Douma—sparing the fighters and military members of the Army of Islam. The closer the Revolutionary opposition factions of a Syrian National stripe move towards forming any form—no matter how loose or unsteady—of living and social grouping in the liberated areas; one sees the 4x4 vehicles of the Caliphate Cubs [Daesh members] storm these areas, running over Syrians’ dreams of the crudest and most basic forms of civil existence, filling their towns with blindness and obscurantism instead—reverting them to a medieval existence, one that is based on stoning and slaughtering with knives.
Syria will never be able to be fully awoken and vigilant unless it rids itself of its blindness. Throwing both Assad and Daesh outside any Syrian formulas represents the one and only solution for this land that has drowned in the blood of its own sons—and whose sons drowned in the sea, and been displaced in a plethora of diasporas. Syria freed of its blind, is the Syria for which the rebels ought to be fighting—and for it alone.
* Opinion pieces do not necessarily express the views of Rozana Media.