Thirst for Revenge Syrian Rebels Have Lost Their Innocence
By Christoph Reuter
11/20/2012
The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has perpetrated brutal attacks
on both rebel fighters and civilians alike. Lately, though, the spotlight of
world attention has been on alleged atrocities committed by those attempting
to overthrow Assad. Moral standards may be shifting as the civil war drags
on.
The rebels didn't hesitate long after capturing a checkpoint near Sarakib,
southwest of Aleppo, on Nov. 1. They rounded up the surviving soldiers and
militia members fighting on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad's
regime, made them lie on the ground and shot them to death. At least eight
men -- or 11, according to other sources -- were killed.
The "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights," a small human rights group based
in Great Britain that is trying to keep track of the dead on both sides,
called the act a "massacre." But the victims weren't the only Assad
supporters to be murdered by rebels.
When the Syrian opposition established a new coalition last week, Amnesty
International sent an appeal to its political leadership urging them to
prevent more possible war crimes like the killings in Sarakib. There is also
disagreement over the issue within rebel groups. "Revenge is the religion of
cowards," said opposition members from the city of Masyaf, in an indictment
of their brutal comrades from Sarakib. "That's not why we began the
revolution. This behavior is disgusting."
The perpetrators, though, would seem unlikely to agree, as the manner in
which the world learned of the apparent executions shows: The rebels filmed
themselves and subsequently posted the video on YouTube. The comments on the
video include both sharp criticism and approval.
The Sarakib murders highlight paradoxical developments underway as the war
drags on. On the one hand, rebel units belonging to the Free Syrian Army
(FSA) are becoming increasingly organized. At the same time, new,
unmonitored rebel groups are giving free rein to their hatred in desolate,
sparsely populated parts of the country. While committees of lawyers are
beginning to routinely monitor the FSA-run prisons, other rebels are simply
shooting their prisoners on the side of the road. Incidents of growing
brutality exist alongside equally numerous attempts by the rebels to avoid
becoming like the Assad regime they are fighting.
Thrown from the Roof
The circumstances are rarely as clear as with the Sarakib massacre. What
began as a peaceful uprising against the dictatorship in Syria has turned
into an extremely brutal war, in which only a handful of foreign journalists
are able to observe what is actually happening. Nevertheless, the web is
filled with thousands of videos and mobile phone photos, often gruesome, and
almost always blurred and shaky. They can be used to support any assumption
and any cliché, because no one can verify what exactly the videos show.
Even when serviceable recordings exist, it is often difficult to clarify the
events depicted. In mid-August, for example, a shaky video surfaced on the
web that showed a group of people cheering as bodies were thrown from the
roof of a multistory building. The video was made in al-Bab, a small town in
Aleppo Province.
It is a horrific document, one Russian broadcaster Russia Today used it to
demonstrate why Moscow must support the Assad regime. It seemed to clearly
show rebels killing government employees. As Russia Today portrayed the
incident, the bodies that were being thrown from the roof of the post office
building were those of innocent postal workers.
The building was indeed the postal service headquarters, the tallest
structure in the small city. But the bodies being thrown from the roof were
in fact those of several snipers who had terrorized residents for weeks from
their perch high above the town. This, at least, was the outcome of an
on-site investigation conducted by Human Rights Watch.
Shifting Moral Standards
Only at the end of the fighting for al-Bab did rebels manage to surround the
snipers, kill them and throw their bodies from the roof. It was still
barbaric, but it wasn't what the Russian television producers were trying to
lead their viewers to believe.
The monstrosity of the regime, it would seem, has shifted moral standards.
Assad's units often massacre the residents of entire blocks, as they did in
late August in the Damascus suburb of Daraya, where hundreds of bodies were
recovered. Some of Assad's men have now taken to cutting off their victims'
ears as trophies. Many Syrians have thus begun to find it normal and
understandable for rebels to take an eye-for-an-eye approach, abusing
members of the brutal Shabiha militias, in particular, and killing those who
have already killed others.
This helps explain why many rebels were unable to comprehend the overseas
outrage triggered by a video similar to the one from Sarakib that appeared
on the web on July 31. It shows rebels shooting and killing at least four
men belonging to the Berri clan in Aleppo, a mafia family which had
assembled a pro-Assad militia. Immediately prior to the assault on his
fortress-like estate, clan leader Saino Berri had broken a previously
negotiated cease-fire with the FSA by killing 15 rebels.
Killing the Berri fighters "was certainly a mistake," General Abdel Jabbar
Al Okaidi, one of the FSA commanders in Aleppo, later admitted in an
interview. "We shot the gangsters who had previously murdered dozens of
people. But how does that compare to the bombardments and the thousands of
dead?"
No Longer News
Western reporting on the fighting in Syria has lost its symmetry. Because
both sides are shooting at each other, the feeling that each party to the
violence must be assessed in the same way has become widespread. In a report
published on the situation in the country in September, for example, Amnesty
International sharply criticized the large-scale air strikes and the
shelling of villages and cities with tanks and mortars perpetrated by the
Assad regime. But then, in a single paragraph, the report accused rebels of
using poor-precision weapons in residential areas and thus endangering
civilians. The report gave rise to the following headline on the website
tagesschau.de: "Amnesty Levels Serious Charges against Both Sides."
Moreover, the fighting in Syria has already been going on for so long that
the regime's brutality is simply no longer seen as news. For months, the
army and the air force have been bombing 60 to 200 towns and villages a day,
and hundreds of civilians die every week. Last week, more than 40 people
were reportedly executed by firing squads in the suburbs of Damascus alone.
But with each passing day and each person killed, the risk of a storm of
revenge grows. Only after the regime has been overthrown will it become
clear who gains the upper hand among the rebels: those who demand reprisals
for their dead, or those who, at a demonstration following the Daraya
massacre, held up a sign with the message: "No revenge! Stay on course! We
will put everyone on trial!"
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
------------[ Sent via the dehai-wn mailing list by dehai.org]--------------
Received on Tue Nov 20 2012 - 18:01:44 EST
