Tag Archives: war crimes

Assad’s Crimes Against Humanity and Trump’s Options in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on February 7, 2017

Satellite picture of Sednaya prison, Syria (source)

Amnesty International released a report today, “Human Slaughterhouse,” documenting the conditions in Sednaya prison, run by the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, which amount to extermination as a crime against humanity. In addition to the deliberately insanitary conditions, routinized torture and maltreatment, there has been—and continues to be—a systematic campaign of extra-judicial massacre in which perhaps 13,000 people have perished. These findings buttress previous findings, and come with some political implications as the new American administration seeks to chart its way forward in Syria. Continue reading →

Syria Is Only Going to Get Worse After the Fall of Aleppo

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Published at The New Arab

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 14, 2016

Syrian pro-government forces recapture the old city of Aleppo, December 13, 2016 [Getty]

In May 2016, the Roman Theatre in Palmyra was the site of a Russian orchestra performance, led by Valery Gergiev, a supporter of Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. The event was broadcast widely on RT (formerly Russia Today), the state-run English-language propaganda channel, and images and clips of the event were disseminated worldwide. The concert crowned Putin’s eight-month intervention in Syria, reinforcing the Kremlin’s messaging: Moscow and its blood-drenched client, Bashar al-Assad, were staffing the front line for civilisation against the barbarous hordes of the Islamic State group—and they were winning. What a difference seven months has made. Continue reading →

What To Expect After the Fall of Aleppo

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Published at TRT World

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on November 29, 2016

The pro-Assad coalition in Syria has conquered more than a third of the rebel-held enclave in eastern Aleppo City, the last urban stronghold of the mainstream armed opposition. Without significant external assistance, it is difficult to imagine the rebels can hold off, and in the coming days or weeks will likely be forced out entirely. This will not end the war, nor will it suppress the opposition, but it will end the rebellion as a strategic threat to the regime of Bashar al-Assad and push the insurgency into a greater reliance on extremists, creating more space for international terrorists and protracting the war. Continue reading →

Trump Might Continue Obama’s Dangerous Syria Policy

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Originally published at The Henry Jackson Society

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on November 24, 2016

There is not yet any clarity with regard what Donald Trump would do about Syria once he becomes President. Virtually everything about the incoming administration is in the “wait and see” phase. Still, on the current evidence, Trump’s Syria policy would appear to be a continuation of President Barack Obama’s policy of prioritizing the threat of the Islamic State (IS) and other non-state Sunni jihadist groups, while effectively aligning with the pro-regime coalition, made up of Russian air power and a ground force led by the Islamic Republic of Iran, stitched together out of the battered remnants of Bashar al-Assad’s army and his sectarian militias, Iranian paramilitary and regular forces, and foreign Shi’a jihadist groups under Iran’s control. The only potential difference is that Trump may formally repudiate the anti-Assad forces. The effect of this would be to destroy the mainstream Syrian opposition and empower al-Qaeda, but it would not bring stability to Syria. There are hints, however, that Trump is recruiting senior officials who will alter this policy. Continue reading →

Moscow Rules in Syria, Again

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 11, 2016

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In Geneva on 9 September 2016, the United States and Russia announced an agreement to implement a ceasefire—formally a “cessation of hostilities” (CoH)—in Syria, which is intended to allow humanitarian access and restart the political process to end of the war, and then to begin jointly targeting the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, recently rebranded Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS).

There is reason to wonder if the deal will ever take effect and the lack of an enforcement mechanism against Bashar al-Assad’s regime leaves open the possibility that the pro-regime coalition will, as it did after the February ceasefire, abuse this process to their advantage.

Most dauntingly, if this process worked to the letter it will legitimate the gains of the regime’s aggression, carried out under the cover of the last ceasefire, and has the potential to weaken the insurgency and embolden the regime, strengthening radicalism on all sides, pushing a political settlement further away, and thus protracting the war. Continue reading →

Of Kurds and Compromises in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on September 2, 2016

PYD/YPG soldiers

PYD/YPG soldiers

Having written extensively about the authoritarian structure in the areas run by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in northern Syria, and the problems of media, local and Western, in covering this, it was very interesting to see a report in The Wall Street Journal underlining some of these points.

The Journal notes that the PYD and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have engaged in a ruthless consolidation of power within a single party, despite claims to be governing in a democratic way. This has included: heavy pressure on all non-pro-PYD media via various Soviet-style accusations of subversion; demographic engineering by a refusal to allow Arab inhabitants to return to homes or actively expelling them; forced conscription, including of children; the imposition of an ideological curriculum in schools; and the suppression and/or expulsion of all opposition. Continue reading →

A Rebel Crime and Western Lessons in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on July 24, 2016

Abdullah Issa on the back of a truck with Harakat Nooradeen al-Zengi fighters who will soon behead him

Abdullah Issa on the back of a truck with Harakat Nooradeen al-Zengi fighters who will soon behead him

A horrifying video emerged on Tuesday of a teenage boy being beheaded. This had occurred the day before around Handarat in Aleppo, northern Syria. The boy had been fighting for Liwa al-Quds, a militia of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, composed mostly of Palestinians from the Nayrab camp and likely also from the unofficial settlement at Ayn al-Tal near Handarat. The rebel group that took him captive and then murdered him was Harakat Nooradeen al-Zengi, which had previously received support, including TOW anti-tank missiles, from the United States’ covert program run by the Central Intelligence Agency, though that support ended nearly a year ago. The episode is important in itself, and underlines some trends, namely al-Zengi’s evolution and the dynamics underway in northern Syria, where the U.S. is preparing to intensify its de facto policy of collaborating pro-Assad coalition against Jihadi-Salafist terrorist groups, which are strengthening al-Qaeda. Continue reading →

The Assad Regime’s War Against Syria’s People

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on February 8, 2016

Viewing the pictures smuggled out of Syria by "Caesar" of prisoners tortured and murdered by the Assad regime (source)

Viewing the pictures smuggled out of Syria by “Caesar” of prisoners tortured and murdered by the Assad regime (source)

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report earlier today documenting the Assad regime’s “systematic and widespread attack against [the Syrian] civilian population.” The report is meticulously compiled from reams of internal documents and the evidence of 621 witnesses who have been in Assad’s prisons, covering the period March 10, 2011, to November 30, 2015. Two-hundred of these witnesses personally saw somebody murdered. The report is focussed on the mass-murder of prisoners and the evidence leads to the conclusions that the Assad regime has committed extermination, murder, rape, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity, as well as a raft of at least six separate counts of war crimes. Continue reading →

Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on August 9, 2014

Released on December 21, 2007, twenty-eight years to the month after the Soviet Union launched Operation STORM 333, decapitating the Afghan government and plunging the country into a decade-long war, Charlie Wilson’s War tells a story centred on Representative Charles Wilson of Texas (Tom Hanks), a conservative Democrat, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a Right-wing Christian socialite in Houston who has taken the Afghans to her bosom because of her hatred for communism, and Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a blue-collar case officer at the CIA who is the epitome of the adage that one can get anything done in Washington so long as one does not care who gets the credit. Between them they cajole Congress into moving its appropriations from $5 million to $500 million, which will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Saudis, to help the Afghan resistance combat the Red Army’s occupation of their country. Continue reading →

Use Force To Break The Terror-Sieges in Syria

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on April 1, 2014

Last September, a Save the Children report noted that children in suburbs of Damascus besieged by the regime were subsisting on “leaves, nuts, [and] fruits”. Throughout October it would become clear that a deliberate terror-famine was being waged by the regime against these rebellious districts, to starve them into submission. Continue reading →