Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: Guilty but Free

Because Syria’s government had not signed onto the Rome Statute, which renders governments and their respective officials subject to the International Criminal Court, including its arrest warrants and verdicts, Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother, Mahar, who were then in absentia under Putin’s protection in Russia, were not subject to the ICC when a Syrian court found the two brothers guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes on August 11, 2026. The two men could evade the death sentences issued by their own country’s judiciary as long as they could be protected by the Russian president in Russia. Although an Israeli court had tried and convicted the Nazi Eichmann of crimes against humanity, so a precedent existed for national courts adjudicating that crime, the fact that Israel had to illegally kidnap Eichmann in Argentina and the al-Assad brothers could evade being held accountable for their horrendous crimes in Syria suggests that the right, proper, and effective court to hear cases on crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes, is international, such as the ICC. That court’s weakness, however, as in Syria, Russia, and Israel not being subject to that court’s jurisdiction, points to a hole in jurisprudence on crimes against humanity, assuming that the proper and necessary jurisdiction is rightly international rather than national. With the U.S. having recently announced a full-on attack on the ICC (and its prosecutors) at the behest of the indicted suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, it could be asked whether the ICC was in a position to “fill the hole” in the jurisprudence of crimes against humanity (and war crimes), or whether a coalition of the willing of national governments would have to start from scratch to construct a new international criminal court (and block diplomacy and trade with any country not willing to be bound by the new international jurisprudence). The judicial case against the al-Assad brothers (and their maternal cousin, who was in the courtroom and thus could be held accountable by the national court for having led the 2011 Daraa crackdown) demonstrates the value in shoring up international jurisprudence on crimes against humanity (and war crimes).

The full essay is at "Syria's Bashar al-Assad."

Protests in Belarus: Raw Violence Versus Moral Power

Once Syria’s Assad regime folded, Travis Timmerman, an American who had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage, was freed from a prison after seven months there. A border guard had thrown him into prison. That Timmerman is Christian may have had something to do with it. Austin Tice, an American journalist who had been missing since his abduction in Syria 12 years earlier, was still unaccounted for days after the fall of the Assad regime. Incredibly, Timmerman said of his prison experience, “I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom.”[1] Timmerman’s experience can be used to calibrate just how violently police handled Belarusians who protested the rigged election in 2020 in Belarus, and the quick, unexpected fall of Assad can remind us of the plight that could be in store for Lukashenko. For as soon as enough state “riot” police decide not to follow orders to beat, falsely imprison, and even torture non-violent protesters, what seems like a solid dictatorship could unravel surprisingly quickly. This is especially so because, like Assad, Lukashenko has used violence solely for the same of retaining power, rather than to further an ideology. This renders the violence committed on the orders of Assad and Lukashenko as more shameless than Mao, Stalin, and even Hitler, all of whom sought to radically reshape society in the broad sense, including the economic and political systems. The shameless systemic violence against non-violent individuals is especially ripe for a Gandhian approach of resistance wherein moral power is intentionally set against the raw power of violence.

The full essay is at "Protests in Belarus."

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1. Mohamad El Chamaa, Abbie Cheeseman, and John Hudson, “U.S. Citizen Found in Syria Says He Was Imprisoned for Months,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2024.

Religion and Politics: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Helped Syria’s Assad Regime

In the wake of yet another Syrian massacre of civilians, including families being shot at close-range in their own houses, the New York Times published a report in 2012 that claimed that Russian priests and theologians commiserated with diplomats from Damascus at the opening of an exhibition devoted to Syrian Christianity in a cathedral near the Kremlin. While it is understandable that the Kremlin would not want to lose its “longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East,” it is perhaps less palatable for Christian prelates and doctors of the Russian Orthodox Church to essentially look the other way on atrocities so the Syrian Christians, many of whom are Orthodox, won’t be pushed under the bus in a wave of Islamic fundamentalism that could be unleashed should Assad fall from power. The Syrian Christians were reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition to Assad for fear of being persecuted by the Sunnis should they gain power.

                                     Clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church                                  NYT

The full essay is at "Russian Patriarch Helped Assad."

Syria: From Protests to War

In the midst of all of the excitement and exuberance of a political protest, the protesters themselves in Syria were probably not thinking of the future of bloodshed that would ensue as Syria slid into full-blown civil war in 2011. As with most civil wars, civilians, even children, have not been immune from paying the price. On July 20, 2013, for example, government forces besieged the town of Saraqeb, striking it with rockets and tank fire, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.[1] The following day, Assad’s forces fired mortar rounds into a main market in the town of Ariha, killing at least 20 civilians.[2] Without doubt, the protesters during the Arab Spring in Syria could hardly have foreseen all the bloodshed. Had they known, it is not a sure thing that they would have or even should have gone ahead with the protests.
 
The contrast from taking time off work to join a protest march on a sunny day to finding one’s home destroyed and relatives dead in the rubble cannot be overstated. An ocean of time separates mouthing abstract democratic platitudes with friends and finding oneself in a world of hunger, fear and death. It is also difficult to relate the primped world of seasoned politics to the stygian hell of war. Yet politics and war are both about power and civic conflict. It can take surprisingly little for the civilized conflict in legislative chambers over power to break down into force and violence. The question is perhaps whether moving to democracy in an authoritarian state can be accomplished without giving violence the upper hand.

                                                                        After the Protests

                                                       A Syrian boy is being pulled out of the rubble of his house in Saraqeb.  Source: Getty

 

Put another way, protesting authoritarian rule on behalf of democratic principles is not something that should be taken lightly. In considering the full weight that such protests can have, the adults are making a decisive judgment for not only themselves, but also the children who would not be immune from the horrors of war. This is not to say that being willing to stand up for freedom is not worth it. Rather, it is to say that the implications ought not to be downplayed or even ignored in assessing at the outset whether launching protests to directly confront a ruthless dictator is the best means of ushering in democracy. People having a lot of power do not tend to give it up willingly, and they have the means to protect it by harming those people who would take it away.

See the video that complements this essay: http://youtu.be/NJm3ZaamhgA

 

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1. Barbara Surk, “Syrian Army Bombs Northern Rebel Town of Saraqeb, Children Among the Dead,” The Huffington Post, July 20, 2013. 2. Jamal Halaby and Zeina Karam, “Syria Violence: Assad Forces Kill At Least 20 Civilians in Ariah, Dozens of Rebels Near Damascus,” The Huffington Post, July 21, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton Bested by a Syrian General

“I don’t think Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all — nothing at all — for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the so-called “Friends of Syria” meeting, which took place at Paris in the E.U. on July 6, 2012. According to the New York Times, the alliance was being “shunned by Russia and China.” Holding Moscow and Beijing to account would be no easy feat, given the power of the two empires. Clinton said that every participant at the meeting would have “directly and urgently” make it clear to Russian and Chinese officials that their respective governments (and presumably economies) would pay a price forthwith should the support for Assad continue. Yet even as she made these remarks, Clinton must have known that the chances of that happening were practically nil, given the problems entailed in getting various governments to act in concert, not to mention be on the same page, even when there is general agreement.

The impotence of the diplomatic effort was made palpable by what was happening on the ground in Syria. As the meeting was in progress, General Tlass, a commander of the Syrian Republican Guard and a close friend of Assad, was on his way to Paris after having defected. “If people like him, and like the generals and colonels and others who have recently defected to Turkey are any indication, regime insiders and the military establishment are starting to vote with their feet,” Clinton told reporters. “We know that the Assad regime will fall. The question is how many more people have to die before that happens.” It is a sad commentary on the “national sovereignty” basis of international relations so favored by the Russian and Chinese governments that the question would have to be answered by events on the ground rather than by the governments then meeting in Paris.  It was as though two governments out of hundreds were being allowed to hold the world hostage, thereby enabling Assad. Unlike the world, which seemed mired in strategies out of a playbook of political realism, Gen. Tlass voted with his feet. In effect, Russia and China had won, having been given the presumed or artificial advantage wherein their respective vetoes were considered legitimate in forestalling even the "Friends" from voting with their collective feet on the ground.

Source:

Dan Bilefsky, Alan Cowell, and Neil Mac Farquhar, “General’sDefection Confirmed as Syria Opposition Meets,” The New York Times, July 6, 2012. 

Is Syria’s Sovereignty Absolute?

“Fundamentally, the argument over Syria reflects a deeper divide between those who would use the Security Council to confront nations over how their governments treat civilians, versus those who consider that it has no role whatsoever in settling domestic disputes.” On the one side, Sheik Hamad, the prime minister of Qatar, reported to the Security Council, “The government killing machine continues effectively unabated.”[1] The implication is that people running a government do not have legitimate authority to kill over 5,000 fellow citizens.

The full essay is at "Is Syria's Sovereignty Absolute?"

                                    

1. Neil MacFarquhar, “At U.N., Pressure Ison Russia For Refusal to Condemn Syria,” The New York Times, February 1, 2012. 

Diplomatic Pressure and Human Rights: The Case of Assad in Syria

It is perhaps telling that the world was more or less content, as of 2011, to rely on diplomatic pressure in the idyllic hope that it is sufficient to remove a tyrant from power, even if a tyrant were unleasing the weapons of war, including chemical weapons, on his own people I have Bashar Assad of Syria.

LA Times (2011)

The full essay is at "Diplomatic Pressure and Human Rights."