World needs new red lines in Syria
Atrocities committed by the Al Assad regime on its own people constitute crimes against humanity
Bashar Al Assad’s regime is accused of carrying out a suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held suburb of Douma, east of Damascus. Al Assad, the President of Syria, has once again violated a string of United Nations Security Council resolutions and warnings regarding his use of chemical weapons. The international response has thus far been familiar: Words such as “monster”, “vicious” and “unacceptable” are being recycled in news statements and interviews. Another round of strikes on Syrian regime facilities appears to be on the table, with Russia warning of “grave repercussions” in the case of a United States military response. United States President Donald Trump warned on Wednesday morning that missile strikes “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart’!” and that Russia “shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”
After the last time Al Assad used chemical weapons, almost exactly a year ago, US strikes on a Syrian airfield did little to deter him. An effective US response this time should take into account the overall brutality with which the Syrian president has conducted this war — including the use of chemical weapons but also other atrocities that the world has up until now shrugged off.
The signal that the international community for years has given Al Assad is that conventional military tactics that may constitute war crimes are acceptable, while chemical weapons use is (sometimes) not. With some calling this a “defining moment” for Trump, it is critical for him and his aides to refrain from an emotional, one-off strike that would do nothing to change Al Assad’s behaviour, and instead work to prevent any further war crimes and crimes against humanity.
As both the Barack Obama and Trump administrations have previously demonstrated, the core US interest in Syria has been the defeat of Daesh. Second on the list of US national security concerns is, as Trump’s new National Security Adviser John Bolton recently articulated, to “prevent people from violating treaties that try to restrict the use or the spread of weapons of mass destruction”.
However, given the unfathomable suffering that has beset the Syrian people at the hands of this brutal regime, the unwillingness of the international community to threaten action unless Daesh or chemical weapons are involved (and even then, only selectively) is doing much more harm than good. In all the current discussions about next steps, one element is noticeably and consistently absent: Syria’s civilians, who, for the past several years, have lived in a terrifying hell on Earth, often unable to leave their houses. In December, the Syrian Network for Human Rights estimated that the regime had dropped nearly 70,000 barrel bombs since July 2012 — and sometimes forced people to watch as children slowly starved to death.
An unsustainable strain on economies
Al Assad knows he will not be punished for the myriad war crimes and crimes against humanity that his regime has committed. It is therefore time to redraw the “red line” to cover war crimes and crimes against humanity even when they involve “only” conventional weapons, including the targeting of medical facilities and ambulances (265 of which had been struck as of 2016). For as long as the US continues to narrowly define its national security interests as the defeat of Daesh and the prevention of the use of chemical weapons, Syrians will continue to suffer unspeakable horrors under the international community’s watch. Syrian refugees will continue to spill into neighbouring countries, causing unsustainable strain on their economies and social fabric, and the US and its partners will continue to spend billions of dollars to address the spillover effects.
Changing what behaviour the US will tolerate from Al Assad need not conflict with Trump’s goal of removing US troops from Syria, following the physical destruction of the Daesh ‘caliphate’. Trump, like former US president Obama before him, is correct to avoid another costly ground operation in the Middle East, particularly one that would surely involve a direct confrontation with Russia. But any strike that Trump is prepared to order on chemical-weapons-related targets could, and should, be expanded to include units, personnel or facilities involved in identifiable war crimes or crimes against humanity. Going after medical targets is, as the US Ambassador to UN, Nikki Haley, made clear at the UN Security Council, deliberately meant to maximise the number of dead civilians. Trump could direct the Pentagon to draw up a list of targets that would send a clear message to Al Assad that the US will no longer sit idly by while war crimes are being perpetrated.
Trump and Haley have called Al Assad “an animal” and a “monster”, respectively. Al Assad did not become those things because he used chemical weapons in Douma; he is an animal and a monster because he has spent the past eight years bombing, starving and torturing to death hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians. To prove to Al Assad that he will be held accountable, and to prevent him from carrying out mass murder through any means, it is long past time for the Trump administration to deem those actions equally unacceptable, and to ensure that any action taken is part of a coherent and consistent strategy that takes into account both US national security interests and basic humanitarian principles.