Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East by Christopher Davidson

Author:Christopher Davidson [Davidson, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781786070029
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2016-10-05T18:30:00+00:00

SYRIA – THE MEDIA WAR

In parallel to the increased funding and weapons supplies for Syrian rebel militias and jihadist organizations, since 2013 there were also renewed and substantial efforts to win the ‘media war’. Not necessarily aiming to provoke fresh debate about a NATO intervention, most of the secret information operations conducted by the Western powers and their regional allies were instead focused on further damaging the Syrian regime’s international reputation while at the same time deflecting attention away from the identities and behaviour of their more extremist proxies. In this context, the objective was not the establishing of new ‘red lines’, but rather the weakening of the Bashar al-Assad administration’s ability to portray itself as a legitimate guardian of the Syrian state. In turn this would make it easier on moral grounds to prevent the Syrian regime and its partners from participating in peace negotiations or future transitional governments.

In January 2014, with the Syrian army holding its ground on the battlefield and even advancing in some areas, there was a very real danger that impending ‘Geneva II’ talks would allow Damascus and Tehran to press for favourable terms. Funded by Qatar and prepared by a leading London law firm, a substantial report on torture under the al-Assad regime was released to CNN the day before the talks were due to begin. With graphic and gruesome contents, the report’s primary source was an anonymous defector, codenamed ‘Caesar’, who had been smuggled out of Syria. Endorsed by a team of lawyers, the report sparked international outrage and resulted in the Iranian government having its Geneva invitation withdrawn. It likely also contributed to the eventual Geneva outcome, with the only terms offered to Bashar requiring him to leave power completely, despite the government still controlling thirteen out of Syria’s fourteen provincial capitals.345

Alluding to the thousands of foreign fighters in the ranks of the opposition, a spokesman for Damascus tried to rationalize the government’s brutality on the grounds that ‘we have professional killers inside Syria from around the world. We are defending ourselves.’346 But as a good example of the sort of ‘politics of the last atrocity’ that had frequently been used at the last minute to derail peace talks in Northern Ireland,347 the Qatar report naturally made no reference to other extensive investigations that had described horrific acts of torture and sectarian cleansing being perpetrated by rebel groups. Published the same week, for example, Human Rights Watch’s annual World Report had described how ‘armed opposition forces, including a growing number of pro-opposition foreign fighters, have also carried out serious abuses including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, executions, kidnapping, and torture.’ The report also documented how an opposition attack in the Latakia countryside in August 2013 had led to the deaths of ‘at least 190 civilians, including 57 women, at least 18 children, and 14 elderly men. Many of them were summarily executed.’348 In December 2015, Human Rights Watch published a follow-up investigation on torture and detentions in Syria after reviewing all of the available Caesar evidence.

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