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Mass Violence in Syria: A Preliminary Analysis

Author(s): Uğur Ümit Üngör

To cite this article: Üngör, Uğur Ümit, “Mass Violence in Syria: A Preliminary Analysis”, New

Middle Eastern Studies, 3 (2013), <http://www.brismes.ac.uk/nmes/archives/1161>.

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Online Publication Date: 7 October 2013

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New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

1

Mass Violence in Syria: A Preliminary

Analysis

UĞUR ÜMIT ÜNGÖR*

ABSTRACT This article discusses the forms of state-orchestrated violence in Syria between March 2011 and the summer of 2013 and offers some explanations for the logic, scope, and

direction of this violence. It focuses on the transition from non-violence to violence, briefly

outlines the prehistory of the regime, sketches the international context, and proceeds to offer a

preliminary analysis of the perpetration of mass crimes against civilians by Syrian security forces. Particular attention is given to the internal dynamic, discourse, and development of

regime violence. This article will limit itself to the regime's mass violence against civilians and

leave out the important questions of war strategy, international diplomacy, economic collapse,

and material destruction. The analyses offered in this article are meant to be preliminary and provoke deeper discussions of the perpetrating agencies and individuals. Based on media

articles, reports by human rights NGOs, YouTube video clips, and interviews, the article argues

that the violence can be explained by the Assad regime’s political extremism, the collective

sentiments of the Alawis, and the logic of territorial control.

Introduction

In March 2011, a local popular uprising broke out and the Arab Spring reached Syria. The

uprising rapidly spread across the country and two years later, more than 100,000 people are

dead, including 7,000 children. This violence approaches that of the war in Bosnia, both in

quantity and in quality. This article discusses the forms of state violence in Syria and offers some explanations for the logic, scope, and direction of the state-orchestrated violence.

Mass violence of the scale that has unfolded in Syria generally develops through three

fairly distinct phases: the pre-violence phase, the phase of mass political violence, and the post-

violence phase. The pre-violent phase is often rooted in a broader economic, political, and cultural crisis that vexes the country internally and aggravates its external relations with

neighboring states. Such a crisis between political groups and social movements can polarize into

non-violent confrontations such as mass protests, boycotts, or strikes.1 At the local level, it can

be characterized by fragile, even hostile, but still non-violent coexistence between political or ethnic groups. Occasionally, however, a local pogrom or a political assassination can occur, and

* Uğur Ümit Üngör is a Lecturer at the Department of History at Utrecht University and at the Institute for War,

Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam 1 Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,

2000).

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

2

often the state can gradually become engaged in a low-intensity conflict.2 The main precondition

for extreme violence such as massacres or genocide is (civil) war. During wars, violence is exercised on a large scale, first exclusively between armies in legally sanctioned military

hostilities, but later potentially also in illegal paramilitary operations against civilians.

The transition from crisis to mass violence is often a point of no return where serious

moral and political transgressions occur in a rapid process of violent polarization. Comparative research on mass political violence demonstrates that once unleashed, it can develop its own

dynamic and become nearly unstoppable by internal forces – reaching ‘relative autonomy’. This

dynamic consists of a routinization of the killing, and a moral shift in society due to mass

impunity.3 Two other key variables are the political elite’s decision-making and the organization of violence. The first is often conducted in secret sessions, develops in shocks, and becomes

visible only retroactively, when the victims are killed. Indeed, violent conflict exposes the

criminology of violent political elites, who often begin operating as an organized crime group

with growing mutual complicity developing among them. Secondly, the organization of the violence is another major analytical category to be examined. The violence is often carried out

according to clear and logical divisions of labor: between the civil and military wing of the state,

but also crucially between the military and paramilitary groups.4 The conflict in Syria has

revealed this very conspicuously. Finally, the transition to a post-genocidal phase often overlaps with the collapse of the

violent regime itself. The main perpetrator groups within the regime will attempt to deny their

crimes, while traumatized survivor communities will mourn and demand justice or revenge. In

this phase, these groups often struggle to propagate their own memory of the conflict by attempting to straitjacket the complexity of the conflict into a single, self-serving view.5 The

term ‘transitional justice’ often proves to be a hollow concept: sometimes a fragile democracy

develops, and sometimes a different dictatorship takes over. In either case, impunity has proven

to be the rule and punishment the exception in post-violence societies. This is a genuine problem because many times an enormous number of people are involved in crimes against humanity, and

there are often no clear, premeditated, written orders of particular massacres.6

In Syria, the first two phases have unfolded at breathtaking speed. Until March 2011,

Syria could still safely be considered to exist in the non-violent phase of contentious politics. Nothing was pre-determined, and it was entirely possible for the government to avert the

2 Low-intensity conflict can be defined as political-military confrontations between states and internal groups; it

operates below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition that defines modern politics. It ranges

from subversion to violence and is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational,

and military means. Low-intensity conflicts are often localized, but contain national, regional and sometimes global

security implications for the states involved. Giorgio V. Brandolini, Low Intensity Conflicts (Bergamo: CRF Press,

2002). 3 Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-century World (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2010); Philip G. Dwyer & Lyndall Ryan (eds.), Theatres of Violence: Massacre, Mass

Killing and Atrocity throughout History (New York: Berghahn, 2012); Uğur Ümit Üngör (ed.), Genocide:

Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming). 4 Abram de Swaan, ‘Dyscivilization, Mass Extermination and the State’, Theory, Culture & Society 18, no. 2-3

(2001), pp.265-76; Jacques S¢émelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 5 Alexander L. Hinton & Kevin L. O’Neill (eds.), Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation (Durham, NC:

Duke University Press, 2009). 6 Alexander L. Hinton (ed.), Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass

Violence (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010).

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

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catastrophe. But after April/May 2011, the phase of mass violence set in, first as a full year of

one-sided mass killing of civilians, then increasingly as a multi-dimensional civil war with frequent spectacular massacres.

This article will focus on the transition from pre-violence to violence, and the internal

dynamic and development of the violent phase, with special attention to the violence committed

by government forces. It briefly outlines the prehistory of the regime, sketches the international context, and proceeds to offer a preliminary analysis of the perpetration of mass crimes against

civilians by Syrian security forces. The article is based on media articles, reports by human rights

NGOs, YouTube video clips, and interviews. These sources will be triangulated as much as

possible. This article will limit itself to mass violence against civilians and leave out the crucial questions of war strategy, international diplomacy, economic collapse, and architectural

destruction. This approach differs from that of other scholars in that it adopts the theoretical

framework of genocide studies to examine violence as a category in itself, rather than as an

epiphenomenon or a concomitant effect of mobilization, clientelism, or sectarianism. All highlighted themes are open to much more elaborate future discussions, and the analyses offered

in this article are meant to be preliminary.

Historical Background

On 17 July 2000, Dr. Bashar al-Assad (1965) inherited the presidency of Syria. Initially, many

Syria experts were hopeful that Bashar’s appointment was a harbinger of liberalization and democratization.7 All hope that this succession would lead to some liberalization of the regime is

now gone. Under the rule of Bashar al-Assad, Syria is witnessing an unprecedented violent

conflict. The long-term causes, as well as short-term triggers, of the civil war are manifold. First

and foremost, there were few systemic changes in Syria’s internal power structures and institutions when Bashar became president. Scholars of Bashar al-Assad’s decade of presidency

have observed that had he ever attempted to disenfranchise regime elites, or proven unable to

protect their privileges, let alone initiated fundamental democratization reforms, he would

undoubtedly have been deposed and replaced.8 Human Rights Watch reported in 2006 that the Assad regime was responsible for widespread abuse, from arbitrary arrest to torture and

extrajudicial execution.9 In the media, his person (being the son of Hafez al-Assad) and his

position (being the president, commander-in-chief, and general secretary of the Ba’ath Party) are

often emphasized. But this approach overlooks a crucial context. Since the coup of 1970, the Assad clan has consolidated a “family dictatorship”10 that has come to consolidate its grip across

the country.

Virtually all key positions in the Syrian state are occupied by members of the Assad

dynasty. Brother Maher (b.1967), described as “brutal, unscrupulous, and dangerous” by diplomats who have met him11, is the commander of the army’s Fourth Armored Brigade. These

7 David Lesch, The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar Al-Asad and Modern Syria (New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press, 2005), chapter 9; Flynt Leverett, Inheriting Syria: Bashar’s Trial by Fire (Washington, DC: The Brookings

Institution, 2005), pp. 69-71. 8 Eyal Zisser, Commanding Syria: Bashar Al-Asad and the First Years in Power (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), p. 48. 9 Human Rights Watch, A Wasted Decade: Human Rights in Syria during Bashar al-Asad's First Ten Years in

Power (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2010). 10 Kathy A. Zahler, The Assads’ Syria (Minneapolis, MN: Twenty-First Century Books, 2010), pp. 50-89. 11 Stephanie Marsing, Elitenwandel in Syrien (Hamburg: Diplomica, 2012), p. 31.

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

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well-equipped elite troops of the army have been responsible for very serious human rights

violations in the past two years. Brother-in-law Asif Shawkat (1950-2012) for years was head of Military Intelligence and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Syrian army, until he was killed on 18 July

2012. He bore command responsibility for the shelling of the cities and the widespread

executions of alleged deserters. Cousin Rami Makhlouf (b. 1969) has considerable influence

over the Syrian economy; he owns Syriatel, two banks, free trade zones, several oil and gas companies, a construction company, an airline, two TV channels, and he controls the import of

most luxury goods. Makhlouf is seen as a linchpin in the corruption and nepotism that

characterize the Syrian economy.12 The list of family and in-laws in key positions is long.

Together, these men are the backbone of what Syrians call Assadiyya, the overlap of the Assad family and the state structures.

Syrian society has a long history of political violence. The postcolonial period of 1946-

1970 saw eight coups. These were never bloodless, and they spread a fear of counter-coups in the

Syrian political culture. The dictatorship of the Ba’ath Party, imposed on society since 1970, involved repression against the opposition from the very beginning. The threat of state violence

was always high. While tourists strolled through the ruins of Palmyra and the citadel of Aleppo

in a seemingly friendly country, Syria was, for its citizens, a grim society of arbitrary arrests,

disappearances, and extrajudicial executions. The revolt of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood against the regime (1976-1982) was a consequence of its resentment toward the socialist and un-

Islamic policies of the Ba’ath Party and the corruption and nepotism of the regime. Much like in

Egypt at the time, the movement radicalized due to a lack of democratic alternatives and

developed into a mass movement with a terrorist wing. The revolt escalated into a massacre in the city of Hama in February 1982, where Hafez al-Assad’s brother Rifaat had his artillery

indiscriminately bombard residential areas, killing up to 20,000 people.13 (In a bitter repetition of

history, Bashar and his brother have meted out a similar treatment to Homs, 40 kilometers south

of Hama.) In short, well before this uprising, the Assad regimes had a long history of violence. The repression that followed the protests in the first year of the conflict integrated

seamlessly with this past. The uprising was caused by internal factors, such as long-term

frustration over the lack of freedom and rights of just about any sort (civil, social, economic, and

political). Elections had never been fair, freedom of expression was very limited, and socio-economic inequality between citizens, already large, had been increasing. Most importantly, the

rule of law is dysfunctional: the security services wielded great power with virtually no

accountability or judicial review.14 The country had been under emergency law since 1963,

which meant that most Syrians lack access to justice. When it came to detention by the intelligence services, both prosecution and defense were marked by gross inequities. Moreover,

the regime also used the judicial apparatus as a tool of repression, for example through ‘special

courts’.15 Assad’s rule resembled totalitarian regimes that monitor their citizens: Syrian society

was characterized by a ubiquity of informers and, according to one expert, an “Orwellian”

12 Bassam Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 115, 206. 13 Syrian Human Rights Committee, Massacre of Hama (February 1982): Genocide and a Crime against Humanity

(London: Syrian Human Rights Committee, 2006). 14 Carsten Wieland, Syria, Ballots or Bullets?: Democracy, Islamism, and Secularism in the Levant (Seattle, WA:

Cune, 2006), pp. 75-6. 15 Reinoud Leenders, ‘Prosecuting Political Dissent: Courts and the Resilience of Authoritarianism in Syria’, in

Steven Heydemann & Reinoud Leenders (eds.), Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and

Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), pp. 169-99.

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

5

atmosphere of denunciations.16 The uprising was also about economic rights. Corruption was

widespread, and youth unemployment was very high. The Syrian inner cities were teeming with young university graduates who could not find satisfactory jobs because they were not plugged

into the Assad family’s network. Indeed, already in 2004 Volker Perthes identified the major

problem for the Syrian state to be ‘to secure the resources to meet growing societal demands, as

well as to maintain a political system that is still built…on the capacity of its leaders to distribute privilege.’17 Furthermore, 2009 and 2010 saw critical water shortages and crop failures, causing

food insecurity and the displacement of hundreds of thousands in the Northeastern Jazeera region

and the south.18 In other words, the emergence of mass protests in March 2011 was based on

rapidly brewing discontent with Assad’s rule among broad sectors of Syrian society. Apart from these factors there were also external, direct, short-term developments that

triggered the uprising. On 16 September 2009, Turkey and Syria lifted mutual visa restrictions,

as a result of which travel between the two countries boomed in an unprecedented manner. In

2010, almost a million Syrians traveled to Turkey and observed the quality of life and civil rights in a neighboring country. These mostly business and trade interactions were not just limited to

the middle class from Aleppo and Damascus (who were slow to support the uprising), but also

extended to students. For example, Turkish universities along the border launched cooperation

programs with Aleppo University.19 These exchanges and travels likely made a considerable impact on these Syrian students, who were among the first to demonstrate. On 1 January 2011,

the regime allowed an unprecedented liberalization of the internet, as all citizens were permitted

to sign up for it. At the same time, websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Amazon, and

YouTube were unblocked. For the first time, broad sections of Syrian society noticed the lack of freedom in their country. Finally, the Arab Spring proved to Syrians that the impossible was

possible. For the first time, their pent-up frustrations could be shouted out lustily in public outcry

sessions in major cities.20

The international context of the Syrian crisis is informed by the transnational influence of the Arab Spring, the constellation of regional alliances, and the immediate politics of

neighboring countries. The cascading wave of civil uprisings and protests in the Middle East,

commonly referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’, forced four heads of state from power and initiated

profound political changes in a dozen Arab countries.21 For many Syrians, the Arab Spring

16 Radwan Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the

Modern Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), p. 24. 17 Volker Perthes, Syria under Bashar al-Asad: Modernisation and the Limits of Change (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2004), p. 6. 18 Wadid Erian, Bassem Katlan & Ouldbdey Babah, Drought Vulnerability in the Arab Region: Special Case Study

Syria (United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, 2011). 19 Özlem Tür, “The Political Economy of Turkish-Syrian Relations in the 2000s: The Rise and Fall of Trade,

Investment and Integration”, in Raymond Hinnebusch & Özlem Tür (eds.), Turkey-Syria Relations: Between Enmity

and Amity (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 159-76. 20 Liberated from fear, rappers like Ibrahim Qashoush (1977-2011) in Hama lead the masses in chanting the

unthinkable lyrics: ‘Come on Bashar, Leave!’ (Yalla Irhal Ya Bashar!). Syrians clamoring against the regime

experienced these demonstrations as nothing short of collective catharsis. For an academic analysis of the Syrian

uprising see: David W. Lesch, Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

2012). For a journalistic account see: Stephen Starr, Revolt in Syria: Eye-witness to the Uprising (London: Hurst,

2012). 21 For the transnational argument see: Hamid Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (London: Zed,

2012), pp. 171-202

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

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functioned as an example, and generated expectations that change was possible in long-lasting

authoritarian regimes.22 Syria sits on a major political fault line in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic of Iran

has long supported the Assad regime partly as a result of Ayatollah Khomeini’s strategic 1977

move to declare all Alawis to be Shiites. As Iran is waging a regional cold war with Israel, it is

also embroiled in a struggle over hegemony with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (Qatar and the United Arab Emirates). Iran has remained the most unstinting supporter of the Assad regime

throughout the uprising. Syria’s relations with its immediate neighbors are fraught with disputes

and conflict over territories and historical grievances. Its relations with Israel have been in a state

of permanent crisis: the countries have no diplomatic relations, have fought four wars since 1948, and are constantly contemplating another over the disputed Golan Heights. Iraq is Syria’s

‘fratricidal reverse twin’: Saddam’s regime was also a minority-based government

disempowering the demographic majority and violently suppressing the Kurds, with a nepotistic

political economy and a cult of personality surrounding the President. Syria’s history shares many parallels with Iraq’s: both countries were colonies after the collapse of the Ottoman

Empire, achieved independence amidst violent anti-colonial opposition, and were ruled by a

minority running a ruthless family dictatorship through the Ba’ath Party. The Iraqi parliament

has denounced Assad’s violent crackdown, but prominent Iraqi Shia politicians have spoken out in favor of the regime. Syria’s relations with Turkey, long strained over historical and political

issues, improved greatly in the period 2003-2010 as diplomatic relations intensified, a free trade

agreement was signed, and visa restrictions were lifted. However, relations soured, broke off,

and became antagonistic after the Syrian authorities violently cracked down on the protests. To a large extent, these constellations would significantly shape the course of the conflict between the

Assad regime and the opposition. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Egypt began

supporting the uprising and the Free Syrian Army. China, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah have

consistently expressed support for the Assad regime, with Iran backing it logistically and militarily as well. These deeply seated inter-state relations formed the structural constraints that

underpinned the development of the crisis.23 The violence itself, however, was entirely home-

made.

The uprising rapidly went through several successive phases of transformation. The first phase was the attempt, in January and February 2011, to imitate the Arab Spring by organizing

protests through social media websites. After these failed, in March 2011 a local uprising erupted

in the southern town of Deraa as a response to the arrest and torture of fifteen children by the

regime. Local authorities responded to the demonstrations by shooting into a crowd of unarmed demonstrators chanting relatively moderate slogans. Mass media allowed the images of the

protests and violence to spread across the country, sparking mass demonstrations in major cities.

As the protests widened, the government’s violent response became more extensive and

intensive. The next phase was the desertion of Syrian soldiers who refused to shoot at non-combatant demonstrators. The critical transformation was a depacification, i.e. the relationship

between the state and society crossed the threshold of violence. As desertion increased, clashes

began to erupt between the deserters and security forces, and by early 2012, daily protests were

22 David W. Lesch, ‘The Uprising That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen: Syria and the Arab Spring’, in Mark L. Haas &

David W. Lesch (eds.), The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview,

2012), pp. 79-96. 23 For a concise treatment of the international context of the Syrian crisis see: Emile Hokayem, Syria’s Uprising and

the Fracturing of the Levant (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 149-90.

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

7

eclipsed by the spread of armed conflict. The International Crisis Group argued that ‘by seeking

to force entire communities into submission, they pushed them toward armed resistance; the protest movement’s militarisation was a logical by-product of heightened repression.’24 This

dynamic rapidly propelled Syria into civil war, and it now finds itself in the current phase of

stalemate and territorial fragmentation.

The Apparatus of Violence

Syria has an extensive and very well-equipped security apparatus, which consists of at least twelve institutions. The regular army of conscripts is the institution least associated with regime,

evidenced by the frequent desertions of soldiers and even occasionally (high-ranking) officers.

The main means of violence are the other agencies: Political Security, National Security,

Military Intelligence and State Security. The Intelligence Service of the Air Force is very important: it has a good reputation for fighting Israel, it is well-funded, and according to human

rights NGOs, it runs a major detention center in Damascus where torture is routinely applied.25

The Presidential Guard is composed of 25,000 trained men, a praetorian guard charged with

protecting the President. The army’s Fourth Armored Brigade is under the command of Bashar’s younger brother Maher al-Assad. This tightly knit mobile brigade has been responsible for many

arrests and executions since March 2011. This variety of organizations means that the regime

rests on several pillars: even if one of the bodies would be eliminated, the regime could survive

by leaning on the others.26 There are also significant divisions within the regime, due to the competition between these organizations. The uprising is seen by some members of one security

service as an opportunity to strengthen their own power base at the expense of another by

proving more efficient in the suppression of protests. These structures of violence indicate, first

and foremost, that the Assad regime commands a security apparatus with extraordinary destructive potential.27 The course of the uprising has unlocked and unleashed the full force of its

violence.

A major force is the Shabbiha, a group of irregular paramilitaries dressed in civilian gear

and linked organically to the regime. The Shabbiha are recruited by leading members of the Assad family, such as Hafez Makhlouf, Ghandi al-Assad, and Numir al-Assad. The rank-and-file

of the Shabbiha is drawn largely from young, rural, Alawi men from the coastal areas with few

other job possibilities. The foot soldiers carry out dirty work for what they call their “maternal

uncles” (khaal) or “boss” (muallem), and in their turn the senior officials act as their patrons, bankrolling and protecting them. At the core of these forces seems to be a group of seasoned

professional criminals with long-standing prior careers in the ‘regular’, non-political violence of

organized crime. A significant number of the foot soldiers have been in and out of the prison

system, while others are young enthusiasts trying to prove themselves in battle. Many of these soldiers are drawn in because of private reasons – the generous daily compensation the regime

24 International Crisis Group: Syria’s Mutating Conflict (Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2012), p. 3. 25 Husam Wafaei, Honourable Defection (Victoria, BC: FriesenPress, 2012), pp. 151-62. 26 Nikolaos van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Baath Party

(London: I.B. Tauris, 2011); Shmuel Bar, ‘Bashar’s Syria: The Regime and its Strategic Worldview’, Comparative

Strategy 25 (2006), pp. 353-445. 27 Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria, pp.23-7.

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

8

offers, ethnic hatred, a thirst for revenge, or kinship ties are all draws.28 From the first days of the

Syrian crisis, their crimes were well-documented in YouTube clips, leaks, confessions, defections, and interrogations.

The roots of the Shabbiha can be traced back to the organized crime structures that

sprang from Hafez al-Assad’s brothers Jamil and Rifaat. Both men held powerful positions in the

Syrian government: Rifaat ran the elite Defense Brigades until he was ousted; Jamil headed the National Security Committee in Parliament. As the Assad family descended from their ancestral

village of Qardaha, their children became major players in Latakia and the wider Syrian coast.

Jamil’s sons Munzir and Fawwaz grew up smuggling goods along the Syrian coast. Growing up

as Assad royalty, Fawwaz al-Assad quickly understood he was above the law and began behaving as such: wearing intimidating outfits, driving around in Latakia in his huge Mercedes

with blinded windows (a vehicle known as the ‘Ghost’, al-Shabah), racketeering, and terrorizing

citizens. An avid football fan, Fawwaz became president of Tishreen football club, bullying

referees, bribing players, gambling, and fixing matches. By the late 1980s, he was the most powerful man in Latakia.29 The behavior of the likes of Fawwaz led to a proliferation of thuggish

masculinity in and around the Syrian Mediterranean coast. Shabbiha gangs began running

protection rackets, smuggling weapons, drugs, food, and engaging in other criminal enterprises.

Most importantly, they felt they were above the law since none of them were ever held legally accountable for their actions. On the contrary, they enjoyed the connivance and patronage of the

state. The Assad regime maintained these networks ‘on retainer’ through its patronage system. It

used this mobilizational power to suppress dissent, well before the uprising developed in the

spring of 2011.30 Why does the Assad regime employ the Shabbiha? There are at least two explanations for

this pattern: plausible deniability and spreading complicity. First of all, the Syrian state benefits

from the paramilitaries because they provide it plausible deniability for the violence. The regime

can simply disavow any linkage with these shadowy organizations by claiming they operated on their own volition and for their own motives. An Alawi woman, whose cousins are Shabbiha,

explained that if the thugs wear civilian clothes, “then the television can say that these are just

civilians who love Bashar.”31 A second explanation is that the regime is spreading complicity

and, by doing so, they are irreversibly tying certain groups in society to the regime. By committing such atrocities as rape, torture, and massacre, the Shabbiha burn their bridges to the

affected communities and prove their loyalty to the regime. By their complicity in guilt, they also

pledge themselves to mutually assured silence and forge the unique intimate bonds that arise

from complicity in crimes. This interdependence and entanglement between organized crime and the state evokes parallels with the Serbian state’s employment of criminals like Arkan32 to

28 Ruth Sherlock, ‘Confessions of an Assad “Shabiha” loyalist: how I raped and killed for £300 a month’, The Telegraph, 14 July 2012, at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9400570/Confessions-of-

an-Assad-Shabiha-loyalist-how-I-raped-and-killed-for-300-a-month.html 29 Mohammad D., ‘The Original Shabiha’, Syria Comment, 17 August 2012, at:

http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/the-original-shabiha-by-mohammad-d/ 30 Perthes, Syria under Asad, p. 181 ff. 31 Harriet Alexander & Ruth Sherlock, ‘The Shabiha: Inside Assad’s Death Squads’, The Telegraph, 2 June 2012, at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9307411/The-Shabiha-Inside-Assads-death-

squads.html 32 Željko Ražnatović (1952-2000), also known as ‘Arkan’ was a major Serbian crime boss turned paramilitary leader

who organized covert paramilitary units under the supervision of the Serbian Interior Ministry. His unit, Arkan's

Tigers, were responsible for widespread crimes against humanity during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.

New Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2013)

9

commit mass violence against civilians. The involvement of professional ‘men of violence’ can

account for the nature, dynamic, and direction of the violence. The most important catalyst of the violent escalation in Syria was the President’s decision

to opt for the ‘security solution’, i.e., subduing the protest movement through force. Human

Rights Watch interviewed many Syrian defectors from all ranks and areas, clearly establishing

that there were general orders, throughout the army, to shoot at the protestors. A Syrian defector was present in a meeting in Deraa on 7 April 2011, which was largely intended to intimidate the

protest organizers. As Commander-in-Chief of the army, President Bashar al-Assad joined the

meeting through a conference call and said to the military and intelligence officials: ‘What’s

going on over there?! Get the situation under control by all means necessary!’33 But Bashar does not just bear command responsibility for the carnage; leaked secret documents of the regime’s

internal correspondence demonstrate that he is intimately involved in the organization of the

violence. In March 2012, Abdel-Majid Barakat, head of information for the state crisis

management unit, defected and smuggled 1,400 highly-classified security documents out of Syria. The whistleblower leaked some of the files to news channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera,

who published and translated them.34 If treated with care and caution, these documents contain a

wealth of information and offer a unique insight into the Assad regime.

First of all, the documents clearly indicate that Assad pressures government officials to close ranks, provides impunity for crimes committed by pro-regime forces, and issues orders that

expand the power of the security services. Second, the documents employ a clear language on

violence, and prove that Assad is informed about all major decisions. What is striking about the

documents is that the upward reporting of conditions on the ground reflects the – for totalitarian states typical – over-reporting to impress and gratify superiors. (This may change if major orders

and instructions are conveyed orally to avoid a paper trail on the crimes committed.) The most

damning revelations are two executive orders. On 29 August 2011, Bashar al-Assad personally

signed legislative decree no. 110, which stipulated: “Any gathering or march on public roads or any public venue shall be deemed a rally for riot; and shall be culpable for imprisonment from

one month to one year; and payment of a fine of fifty thousand Syrian liras.”35 On 22 September

2011, Bashar authorized Air Force Intelligence to assassinate the prominent Kurdish activist

Mashaal Tammo, who was killed in his home in Qamishli on 7 October 2011. Tammo’s son was wounded in the attack, and five people were killed when security forces opened fire on Tammo’s

funeral.36 Although these examples do not warrant labeling Assad a micromanager, there is

sufficient evidence for the claim that he is in charge of the apparatus, and that his decrees and

fiats are widely interpreted to create impunity among the rank-and-file.

33 ‘By All Means Necessary!’: Individual and Command Responsibility for Crimes against Humanity in Syria (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2011), p. 59. 34 See for a comprehensive report on these leaks: ‘The Damascus Documents,’ Al-Jazeera, 20 March 2012,

at:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/03/2012319182523316314.html. 35 Ibid. 36 ‘Assad ordered killing of Kurdish activist Mashaal Tammo: Leaked files’, Al-Arabiya, 10 October 2012, at:

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/10/10/242928.html . Although caution is needed in using Al-Arabiya as a

source, the content of the leaked files is confirmed by published interviews with one of Tammo’s sons, Faris

Tammo, who witnessed the attack. Adrian Blomfield, ‘Thousands of Kurds Could Awaken Against Syrian Regime’,

The Telegraph, 9 October 2011, at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8816825/Thousands-of-Kurds-could-awaken-against-

Syrian-regime.html

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The Discourse of Violence

In the twentieth century, three radical ideologies were responsible for most mass political

violence: communism, ethnic nationalism, and fascism. Although these ideologies stretch from

the extreme left to the extreme right, they have several things in common: they project future utopias based on class or ethnicity, they are profoundly anti-liberal and anti-individualistic, and

politics consists of carefully choreographed mass spectacles. Most importantly, they revolve

around sharp classifications between an in-group and one or more hated out-groups, and their

attitude towards the use of violence ranges from permissive to prescriptive.37 Based on these last two observations, Syrian Ba’athism, as a particular combination of Socialist and Nationalist

ideals, bears the hallmarks of fascism.38 The Assad regime’s official discourse conceives of

politics as death versus survival, of politicians and even countries as enemies versus friends, and

of Syrians as ‘real, honest, loyal citizens’ versus ‘treacherous, unpatriotic infiltrators’. It equates loyalty to Syria with loyalty to the regime without allowing any compromise or middle ground.

The relationship between state and society is largely coercive. The regime feels little

more than disdain for the average Syrian, as well as a lack of identification and empathy with the

civilian population. The veteran journalist Stephen Starr, a longtime observer of Syrian matters, has summarized the Assads’ mentality as follows: ‘They do not care if Syria falls into civil war.

They do not care if the entire Syrian population is destroyed as long as they and the few close

people around them survive.’39 Indeed, the many leaks that sprang from regime defectors

illustrate in the clearest possible way the state of denial that prevails for the Assad regime. Assad and his wife are living in a gilded bubble and seem entirely insensitive and unresponsive to the

human suffering the regime is causing. But behind the scenes, the picture is more complex.

According to well-informed diplomatic circles in Damascus, President Assad himself is said to

have radicalized considerably as a result of the crisis, and is increasingly obsessed by winning the war. He is said to suffer from nervous disorders, excessive sweating, and frequent outbreaks

of fits of rage, during which he apparently gesticulates wildly and gives orders to ‘kill them

all’.40

The Syrian civil war is very much a media war as well. The proliferation of regime propaganda on the crisis has been accompanied with ever-tighter censorship imposed on the

population. The official state-controlled media such as Sana, Suriye, and Al-Dunya have been

desperately trying to keep a lid on the truth by carefully choreographing their broadcasts. Callers

who express anti-regime sentiments or expose the official media’s propaganda and lies are cut off and traced. The official media’s representation of the crisis consists of grotesque fabrication

and distortion, which corresponds entirely with the regime’s narrative. Prominent Syrian writer

Yassin al-Haj Saleh argues that the Assad regime actively cultivates an ethos of doubt,

relativism, and skepticism. The regime aims ‘to create confusion so that people cannot distinguish between right and wrong and between true and false’.41 As a consequence, several

major reporters, such as Ola Abbas and Abdullah al-Omar, have defected and exposed the reality

37 Sémelin, Purify and Destroy, pp.21ff. 38 For an analysis of Ba’athism from the perspective of fascism see: Peter Davies & Derek Lynch, The Routledge

Companion to Fascism and the Far Right (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 256. 39 Starr, Revolt in Syria, p. 207. 40 Private discussion with the former Dutch ambassador to Syria Desirée Bonis, 3 July 2013, Amsterdam. 41 Now That We Have Tasted Hope: Voices from the Arab Spring (San Francisco, CA: McSweeney’s/Byliner, 2012),

chapter 4.

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behind the façade of Syrian official media.42 The regime has also expelled foreign media and

targeted journalists on an unprecedented scale. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, arrests, disappearances, torture, and killings have taken the lives

of at least 72 journalists in Syria.43 Security forces have extracted passwords for social media

sites by torturing journalists and citizens.44

During the crisis, President Bashar al-Assad’s discourse has included platitudes, blatant equivocation, outright denial, and hollow rhetoric – in short, anything but a realistic depiction of

events. As the uprising spread, escalated, and militarized, his attitude became more and more

uncompromising and his speeches more and more belligerent. Assad gave his first speech in

parliament at the very beginning of the revolt, on 30 March 2011. He dismissed the protests as ‘sedition’ and a foreign plot run by ‘armed terrorist gangs’ (majmua’at musallahin irhabiin). He

summarized his position as follows: ‘Syria is facing a great conspiracy whose tentacles extend to

some nearby countries and far-away countries, with some inside the country…So there is no

compromise or middle way in this. What is at stake is the homeland and there is a huge conspiracy.’45 On 16 April he inaugurated his new cabinet and paid lip service to such concepts

as dialogue, transparency, reform, justice, dignity, security, and national unity. Most importantly,

he expressed his intention to lift the emergency law and allow Syrians to demonstrate.46 But the

very next day, 44 people were killed: fourteen in Latakia, one in Deraa, one in Baniyas, and the rest in Homs. Six of the victims were soldiers who refused to fire at demonstrations and were

executed, while the rest were all civilian demonstrators.47

Assad’s much-anticipated speech at Damascus University on 20 June 2011 raised the

expectations. According to Stephen Starr, who was in Damascus at the time, the speech was watched by an exceptionally wide audience that was deeply disappointed by it.48 As such, the

speech constituted a major missed opportunity. Assad opened by asking the questions: ‘What is

happening to our country, and why? Is it a conspiracy, and if so, who stands behind it? Or is it

our fault, and if so, what is this fault?’ Assad then proceeded to answer these questions: ‘It doesn’t require much analysis, based on what we heard from others and witnessed in the media,

to prove that there is indeed a conspiracy.’ In what could only have been a remarkable act of

deliberate prevarication, Assad then spun the truth and claimed that ‘peaceful demonstrations

were used as a pretext under which armed men took cover’.49 Journalists present in Damascus reported that for the millions of nervous Syrians huddled around television sets in offices, homes,

42 Ivan Watson, Raja Razek, & Saad Abedine, ‘Defecting Syrian propagandist says his job was “to fabricate”’, CNN,

10 October 2012, at: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/09/world/meast/syria-propagandist-defects 43 See the country profiles at: Committee to Protect Journalists (http://cpj.org/mideast/syria) and Reporters Without

Borders (http://en.rsf.org/report-syria,163.html). 44 Committee to Protect Journalists, ‘Syrian Facebook Users Develop Strategies against Online Threats’, at:

http://cpj.org/internet/2011/05/syrian-facebook-users-develop-strategies-against-o.php. 45 His speech was rife with confused phrases such as: ‘The relationship between the government and the people is

not that of pressure or based on pressure. It is based on the needs of society; and these needs are the rights of

society.’ See ‘President al-Assad Delivers Speech at People’s Assembly,’ Sana, March 30, 2011, at:

http://sana.sy/eng/21/2011/03/30/339334.htm 46

‘President al-Assad’s Speech to the New Government’, Sana, 18 April 2011, at: http://sana.sy/eng/337/2011/04/18/pr-341923.htm. 47 See the website Syrian Shuhada, which keeps a detailed and fairly reliable body count of the crisis:

http://syrianshuhada.com/Default.asp?a=la&p=date&v=17/4/2011. 48 Starr, Revolt in Syria, pp. 16-7. 49

‘Speech of H.E. President Bashar al-Assad at Damascus University on the situation in Syria’, Sana, 21 June 2011,

at: http://sana.sy/eng/337/2011/06/21/pr-353686.htm.

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restaurants, and coffee shops, this particular phrase triggered widespread feelings of disbelief,

disappointment, and betrayal.50 The next speech Assad gave was one year and 10,000 deaths later, on 4 June 2012. The speech reiterated his earlier alarmism: ‘What we are facing is a project

of internal sedition aiming at the destruction of the homeland.’51

As the security services enveloped him in a system of misinformation and propaganda,

Assad’s speeches became more radical. On 6 January 2013, Assad gave his most radical speech at the Opera House in Damascus, standing before a collage of images of the conflict’s victims.

He delegitimized the revolution by calling them ‘a bunch of criminals’ and continued: ‘They are

the enemies of the people (a‘ada al-sha‘ab); and the enemies of the people are the enemies of

God; and the enemies of God will be burnt by hellfire on the Day of Judgment.’ He insisted that there was a universal conspiracy against his regime, referring to ‘outside aggression which is

aided by some internal tools’, and praising those who ‘have the genuine Arab Syrian blood

running back in their veins’. Most importantly, Assad exhorted: ‘The blood of martyrs protected

and will protect the homeland and the region, and will protect our territorial integrity and reinforce accord among us, while at the same time purify[ing] our society of disloyalty and

treason, and keep us from moral, human and cultural downfall.’52

One of the key elements of the regime’s discourse is its denial of the systematic nature of

its violence. The regime’s leaked e-mails offer a rare insight into its denial mechanisms. These messages prove that Assad took advice from Iran and mocked the reforms he promised, and they

also demonstrate that his family lives in a carefully constructed totalitarian fantasy world. Assad

has specifically been advised to deny that the violence is policy.53 When journalist Barbara

Walters asked him who gave the order for the crackdown, Assad repeatedly insisted: ‘We don’t have such a policy to crack down or to torture people’.54 In his parliamentary speech of 4 June

2012, he attempted to obfuscate the fact that many massacres were committed by pro-regime

forces:

What happened in al-Houla, al-Qazzaz, al-Midan, Deir Ezzour, Aleppo, and many other places in Syria, and which we described as brutal, heinous and ugly massacres, is in real

fact very difficult to describe. Even beasts do not do such things, particularly what happened in al-Houla. I believe that neither the Arabic language nor any other human language can describe what we saw. We, the Syrians who lived [in] this period, will

continue to feel shame whenever we remember it as long as we live. We hope that it will not remain in the memory of our children and grandchildren. Still I hope that we will

retain the lessons learned from this crisis but without the feelings and the images

associated with it.55

Whether Assad really believes this distortion and mystification, or whether he is deliberately

misrepresenting the truth, is difficult to assess. Whatever his motives, these are denialist

50 Starr, Revolt in Syria, pp. 16-7, 100-1. 51

‘Speech Delivered by H.E. President Bashar al-Assad At the People’s Assembly’, Sana, 4 June 2011, at:

http://sana.sy/eng/21/2012/06/04/pr-423234.htm . 52 ‘President al-Assad: Out of Womb of Pain, Hope Should Be Begotten, from Suffering Important Solutions Rise’,

Sana, 3 January 2013, at: http://sana.sy/eng/21/2013/01/07/pr-460536.htm (emphasis added). 53 All of the leaked correspondence is available at: http://wikileaks.org/syria-files, and the most important messages

are examined in The Guardian, at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/assad-emails. 54 ‘Assad: Deaths Were “Individual Mistakes”’, ABC News Nightline, 7 December 2011, at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__PFaTK6l4k. 55

‘Speech Delivered by H.E. President Bashar al-Assad At the People’s Assembly’, Sana, 4 June 2012, at:

http://sana.sy/eng/21/2012/06/04/pr-423234.htm.

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arguments familiar to scholars of mass violence. The regime’s persistent denial suggests it is

covering its tracks, protecting its reputation, and repressing its guilty conscience as a collective self-defense mechanism.

While Assad has adamantly attempted to keep up the appearance of civilization, prominent

Syrians friendly to the regime have been much more explicit in their violent discourse. Khaled

al-Ahmed urged Assad in an e-mail dated 13 November 2011 to crack down on protestors and “tighten the security grip and to start an operation to restore state power and authority in Idlib

and Hama countryside using all possible means.”56 Professor Jamal al-Mahmoud of Damascus

University urged that a ‘final blow’ be delivered, ‘regardless of the victims’, literally calling for

massacre: ‘I call the Syrian Arab army to use violence and finish them off…Let a thousand die…I call upon Bashar al-Assad now to order the decisive military operation at once.’ At this

point, even the TV host had to admonish al-Mahmoud to tone down his comments.57 In one of

his many appearances in the Arab media, regime insider and propagandist Dr. Talib Ibrahim

painted the conflict as an existential battle for the Syrian state and the Syrian people, and called for the severest possible measures. Wildly gesticulating, Ibrahim shouted:

The enemy from within, which carries out foreign agendas and takes its orders from

abroad, is much more dangerous than the external enemy. In order to prevail over the external enemy, we must pulverize these people. We are not asking the president to

give them amnesty, or anything. Only a policy of an iron fist will work with these

people. They must be pulverized (yus’haq). Syrian land must be cleansed (tahhar) of

them and any trace of them, so that we can build a more beautiful Syria and a better tomorrow.58

Later he called the opponents of the Assad regime ‘vermin’, ‘cockroaches’, ‘beasts’, ‘apes’, and

‘pigs’ that needed to be ‘trampled on’.59 This discourse is inherently genocidal. As Jacques Sémelin argues, genocide begins in the

mind as a function of destructive fantasies.60 These murderous intentions by regime supporters

suggest that they have already killed the victims and committed the massacres in their fantasies.

These collective fantasies have two dimensions: dehumanization and purification. Dehumanizing the opposition expels those human beings from the universe of moral obligation and legitimizes

violence against them. This can be seen as a form of racialization of political identities. In other

words, the regime precludes behavioral change in their opponents by diagnosing that: a) there are

people with wrong ideas, b) if we kill the people with wrong ideas, we will cleanse the country of wrong ideas, and therefore c) we must kill the people with wrong ideas. The equation of a

perceived external threat with an internal fifth column, too, fits perfectly with nearly every case

of modern mass murder, such as in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Guatemala, or Indonesia.61 The regime’s

sociological imagination revolves around metaphors of cleansing and purifying Syrian society, bordering on pro-Arab racism. Clearly, it employs political and ethnic purity as a term of

division and unification: it singles out all those who are ostensibly bad Syrians and thus

56 See ‘Assad Emails: “Restore State Power in Hama”’, The Guardian, 14 March 2012, at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/14/bashar-al-assad-syria14. 57 Al-Dunya TV, 12 November 2011, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBY5SSH1E-M. 58 MEMRI TV, 15 June 2011, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1-q87kWEDI. 59 MEMRI TV, 18 December 2012, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXTsxcFFahM. 60 Sémelin, Purify and Destroy, pp. 17-21. 61 For a comparative analysis of genocidal discourse, see ibid., pp. 59-60.

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constitute the filthy impure enemies, and, as a term of unification, it attempts to pull all Syrians

together against their mutual enemies. Much of this imagination is coupled and concluded with explicit calls for mass violence.

The Forms of Violence

The Assad regime is committing a kaleidoscope of violence, using its full range of resources

which includes sniping, executions, massacres, detention, and torture. At the time of writing, the

crisis in Syria had created 100,000 deaths, 40,000 detainees, 800,000 refugees, four million internally displaced persons, innumerable human rights violations, and several major crime

waves. It has destroyed cultural heritage, devastated the economy and infrastructure, polarized

ethnic, religious, and regional relations, and ‘spilled over’ into neighboring countries. Bundled

together, these social forces are rapidly destroying the country. The body count has exceeded that of many other violent conflicts, such as those between the PKK and Turkey, ETA and Spain, the

IRA and the UK, or Israel and Palestine. Syria’s casualty figures are about to exceed those of the

wars in Bosnia (101,000 deaths) or Chechnya (90,000 deaths). This section argues that the Assad

regime is committing violence so large, serious, deliberate, systematic, and persistent that only a purposeful policy can explain it. Despite the regime’s public relations campaign, for the first two

years of the crisis, the line between perpetrators and victims was relatively clear. The vast

majority of the crimes have been committed by the regime, particularly by the main security

services discussed above. The bulk of the targets of the violence have been the civilian population in areas where protests were held. Overrepresented categories within the group of

victims are based on region (Central and North Syria), age (the young), class (the working class

and students), ethnicity (Sunni Arabs), and gender (men). The question that remains is about the

quantity and quality of the violence: What are the forms of deadly violence that are committed by the Assad regime?62

Sniper fire is a major cause of death – 3,500 at the time of writing. Before the uprising

militarized, one-third of all civilian deaths were caused by sniper fire.63 Syria is a relatively flat

country and many cities’ residential districts are built on a grid pattern, all of which suitable for sniper fire. The regime deployed snipers and instructed them to shoot at the protests’ leaders,

who could be recognized as those holding a microphone or megaphone. There are many

YouTube clips documenting sniper gunfire in various cities, including footage in which, at the

end of the clip, the cameraman looks directly into a sniper’s barrel.64 Sniping was particularly rampant in Homs in 2012, prompting one commentator to dub the city ‘Sarajevo on the

Orontes’.65 The snipers of Homs were positioned in strategic locations such as rooftops and

minarets,66 and were ordered to shoot at anything that moved. One Syrian army sniper, whose

62 This article will leave out torture, which is so pervasive in Syria it would require a separate treatment. For a good

overview see: Torture Archipelago: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture, and Enforced Disappearances in Syria’s

Underground Prisons since March 2011 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2012). 63 See the list of deaths at Syrian Shuhada, at: http://syrianshuhada.com/?a=st&st=9. 64 See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdds9_lPEf4. 65 Ajami, The Syrian Rebellion, chapter eight. 66 When the Free Syrian Army responded in kind and began installing its own snipers in minarets, the regime began

shelling them, with predictable consequences. For three examples see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzcczewKhj4 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDGmbjeMMDQ , and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6BNFWQ456c.

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story is corroborated by many other descriptions, explained how in Homs officers instructed him

to shoot an unarmed farmer on a bicycle in the back, but he refused and defected soon after.67 The snipers’ indiscriminate firing unwittingly caused some casualties among the loyal group as

well. One man was shot by a sniper, and when his body was recovered it became clear he had

pro-Assad tattoos on his chest.68

Massacres are probably the most deadly form of violence, and the regime is responsible for carrying out mass killings all over the country. Eyewitnesses have reported that most

massacres of civilians have been carried out either by the Shabbiha or by the Special Forces. In

most massacres, the perpetrators methodically invaded neighborhoods and homes and executed

unarmed families. All of this denotes, first and foremost, a colossal and brutal collective criminality. The list of such massacres is long and any list would be incomplete; however, four

major massacres shed remarkable light on the organization of the violence: Kfar Owaid, Houla,

Tremseh, and Al-Qubair. The northern village Kfar Owaid was largely exterminated on

Christmas Eve 2011 when regime forces herded together 111 civilians in a valley just outside the village and machine-gunned them. Kfar Owaid was a village whose population was mostly

opposed to Assad and had been the site of many demonstrations. Two survivors told opposition

activists that security forces showed up at the village with lists of names of protest leaders.69

The violence then struck the Orontes valley countryside. On 25 May 2012, news of a large massacre in the small town of Houla, 25 kilometers northwest of Homs, trickled into the

world. Most sources, including a United Nations Commission of Inquiry report and extensive

interviews with eyewitnesses, converged around the narrative that Shabbiha militias killed a total

of 108 civilians, including 34 women and 49 children. Again, the massacre was carried out quite systematically: Shabbiha from two neighboring Alawi villages entered Houla, spread out, raided

houses and stabbed or shot the victims execution-style in the head.70 This was the biggest

massacre of civilians to date and it is a telling example of the Assad regime’s violent modus

operandi. On 6 June, the Shabbiha committed another massacre, this time in the village of Al-Qubeir, 25 kilometers north of Houla. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

and the United Nations, 78 to 87 civilians were killed, including 20 women and 20 children. The

protocol was similar to Houla’s: after the army was done shelling the village, the Shabbiha

moved in and used light arms to kill dozens of defenseless civilians at close range.71 The head of the Syrian government-appointed investigation commission, Talal Houshan, traveled to al-

Qubair to investigate the crime. But faced with the crime scene, Houshan defected and accused

the regime of carrying out the massacre.72 And the list went on and on as the massacre trail crept

northward. A few weeks later, on 13 July, regime forces carried out a massacre in the village of Tremseh, 20 kilometers north of al-Qubair. The few villagers who managed to escape the area

67 Fouad Ajami, The Syrian Rebellion (Washington, DC: Hoover Press, 2012), p. 145. 68 ‘The Horror of Homs, A City at War’, Channel 4 News, 22 February 2012, at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyQIv5wyYGE. 69 For the aftermath see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxFB2p8wVcg. 70 United Nations Human Rights Council, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the

Syrian Arab Republic (United Nations, 2012), p. 10 ff, 64-8. For eyewitness accounts see ‘Syria: UN Inquiry Should Investigate Houla Killings’, Human Rights Watch, May 28, 2012, at: http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/05/27/syria-un-

inquiry-should-investigate-houla-killings; Christoph Reuter & Abd al-Kadher Adhun, ‘A Syrian Bloodbath

Revisited’, Spiegel Online, July 23, 2012, at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-look-back-at-the-houla-

massacre-in-syria-a-845854.html. 71 UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, pp. 69-70. 72

See the video at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SddIbUJOAEc.

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said that Shabbiha entered the village and committed the massacre after the army easily defeated

the FSA. Observers from the UN Stabilisation Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) confirmed these facts after research on the ground and interviews with 27 villagers. The survivors also reported that

houses and mosques were set ablaze by the government forces.73 Lebanese journalists

interviewed eyewitnesses who claimed that Shabbiha from neighboring Alawi villages entered

the village with swords, knives, and AK-47s, and slaughtered more than 100 people.74 The single worst massacre happened on 24-25 August 2012 in the Damascus suburb of

Darayya. It followed the usual script: initial shelling killed more than 330 people, and when

regime troops moved in, another 300 civilians were led away and executed in public against

walls. In some houses, entire families were executed with firearms or knives.75 Other massacres followed in the shadow of the battle of Aleppo, along with indiscriminate air strikes against

bakeries and funerals.76 Similar atrocities were to follow. On 2 and 3 May 2013, a pro-Assad

militia headed by Mihraç Ural murdered at least 458 unarmed civilians including 93 children in

the twin villages of al-Bayda and Ras al-Nabaa, just south of the coastal city of Banyas. According to a comprehensive field report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights based on

survivors’ testimony, the security forces first cut off all electricity and communications to the

village, after which the army indiscriminately shelled the village for several hours. Then, security

forces along with Shabbiha militiamen from neighboring villages and Lebanese Hezbollah members stormed the village and began systematically killing people.77 Most victims were

herded together on street corners and shot at close range with semi-automatic firearms. Video

footage shot by the perpetrators confirms these findings.78

All of these instances of mass murder require more precise research. The next section will attempt to explain these massacres in more detail because they share parallels and

similarities, both with each other and with other cases of mass murder. What is important for

now is to note that in the summer of 2012, the Assad regime’s violence gradually transformed

from incidental massacres as isolated events, to mass violence against civilians as a broader, more routine policy. The second shift that occurred in the spring of 2013 was a shift from

violence against selected civilians in strategic locations (such as roads, valleys, and junctions), to

all-encompassing violence against Sunni civilians in Alawi-majority areas, especially on the

northern coast. Both the quantity and (especially) the quality of the violence suggests that the contours of a proto-genocidal process are emerging. Nowhere is this clearer than in the selection

of victims.

A closer look at the selection of the victims reveals that the regime commits violence that

is targeted at specific categories of people. Obviously most of the sniping and shelling was rather indiscriminate; rebellious neighborhoods were indiscriminately bombed without any regard for

73

‘Attack on Syrian village appears targeted at defectors and activists – UN mission’, UN News Centre, 15 July 2012, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42479&Cr=Syria&Cr1=#.US5wuaX2_ME. 74 Nadine Elali, ‘Exclusive: An eyewitness to the Treimsa massacre’, Now, 13 July 2012, at:

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/nownews/exclusive_an_eyewitness_to_the_treimsa_massacre. 75 See the report on the ground by the Local Coordination Committees: Abeer, “‘New Massacre in Darayya’, 25

August 2012, at: http://www.lccsyria.org/9998. 76 The regime has made widespread use of both indiscriminate airstrikes. Moreover, its use of ballistic missiles

within the country is probably a first in history. For a detailed report see: Human Rights Watch, Death from the

Skies: Deliberate and Indiscriminate Air Strikes on Civilians (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2013). 77 Syrian Network for Human Rights, Baniyas Massacre: Blatant Ethnic Cleansing in Syria (London: Syrian

Network for Human Rights, 2013). 78 See the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f1KC6floyM.

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the actions and loyalties of individuals. Also, the regime’s paranoia has caused it to cast a broad

net. Many individuals who had little to do with the actual uprising were targeted and detained in large-scale sweep operations.79 The regime sees all neighborhoods that protested as unreliable

territory and metes out collective punishment to them. These residential areas are shelled

indiscriminately with air strikes or mortars, causing immense death by shrapnel. Most of these

areas are working-class Sunni neighborhoods such as Baba Amr in Homs, and especially the Sunni suburbs around Damascus: Douma, Arbeen, Darayya, Jdeidet Artouz, Moadamiyeh, Hajar

al-Aswad, Qudsaya, Qaboun. A similar logic is at play in Aleppo, where the FSA controls the

eastern districts such as Hananu. No matter how extensive and destructive this type of

indiscriminate violence is, it should not eclipse the reality that the regime is engaged in meticulous, targeted group killings.

From the outset of the uprising, targeted assassinations of individuals were ubiquitous.

They were an extension of the regime’s established practice of political assassinations and the

elimination of individuals with a history of opposition activism. The aforementioned Kurdish politician, Mashaal Tammo, was assassinated. The regime also murdered Bassel Shehadeh, a

young filmmaker from Homs who was covering the shelling of his city. After his assassination,

the official media labeled him a terrorist allied to the Islamists, even though his background was

Christian. Security services then intimidated his family, desecrated his body, and prevented a funeral ceremony.80 The repression targeted a much wider scope than the (armed) opposition.

The regime arrested and tortured the Palestinian intellectual (and regime critic) Salameh Kaileh,

as well as the imam of the Umayyad Mosque, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib (who has headed the

Syrian National Coalition). Samar Yazbek, a vocal Alawi oppositionist writer, narrowly escaped death by fleeing Syria in July 2011. Her high-profile opposition was particularly embarrassing

to the Assad regime because as an Alawi woman she was widely seen, both by the regime and

the opposition, as a whistleblower. There was no way for the regime to explain her away as a

pawn of some grander conspiracy.81 Many other Syrians who oppose the regime disappeared into the prisons and have not been heard from since.82 What these people have in common is that the

regime saw them as an alternative political elite that could potentially spark a social movement

and therefore needed to be nipped in the bud.

Other examples of killing based on group identity are much clearer. The thuggish and sectarian Shabbiha exploited their carte blanche to settle scores with Sunni youth in general. In

Tell Kalakh, a mainly Sunni village surrounded by twelve Alawi villages, the perpetrators had

been checking residents’ identity cards to find local Sunnis. One woman witnessed these killings:

‘If they see he’s a Sunni from his family name, they take him away and kill him’.83 The prominent long-time socialist activist Yassin al-Haj Saleh is in hiding in Damascus, and reported

the following:

On the evening of 12 December 2012, the identity [card] of Nasser Kahlous (31) was examined at one of the checkpoints in the city. He came from Douma, near

Damascus, and was therefore immediately suspect in the eyes of the secret service.

79 Human Rights Watch, ‘We’ve Never Seen Such Horror’: Crimes against Humanity by Syrian Security Forces

(New York: Human Rights Watch, 2011), pp. 34-9. 80 International Crisis Group, Syria’s Mutating Conflict, p.15. 81 Samar Yazbek, A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution (London: Haus, 2012). 82 For an interactive list of disappeared people in Syria see http://disappeared.avaaz.org/. 83 ‘Syria Unrest: Who are the Shabiha?’, BBC News, 29 May 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-

14482968.

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Douma, just like dozens of other places in the country, is seen a hotbed of resistance

because there the revolution broke out very early en masse, first peaceful, later violent. Nasser was accompanying his wife to the doctor; he was not a rebel fighter

and was not even known as a peaceful protester. He was beaten on his head so long

until he would confess that he had received money from a woman from abroad. They

threatened to beat him until he would die. He confessed.84

By confessing, Kahlous had obviously signed his death warrant. But his only fault was being a

young Sunni man – sufficient probable cause for the regime to target him. In other words, the

victims are often selected for religion, gender, and age, in a manner reminiscent of the Srebrenica massacre.

Others are targeted for their professional identities. Lawyers are targeted because they

have an antagonistic history with the regime, insist on the rule of law, and defend the protestors’

rights. Medical personnel are targeted because they help those wounded. The regime understands help to the wounded as acknowledgement of the violence and of the victims’ humanity, thus

tantamount to a form of resistance. So, in Aleppo, Air Force Intelligence arrested and killed

Basel Aslan, Mus’ab Barad, and Hazem Batikh, students at Aleppo University, for offering

medical care for demonstrators wounded due to regime violence. The victims were tortured, blindfolded, and executed with gunshot wounds to the head.85 Reporters are another category

systematically targeted by the regime, and so far 72 journalists have been killed. As a result,

young Syrians pick up cameras and mobilize themselves as ‘citizen-journalists’ to videotape

demonstrations and violence. These people are ruthlessly targeted, and currently it is illegal and potentially deadly to carry a camera in Syria.86 This may well be a direct consequence of Bashar

al-Assad’s personal grudge against Syrians who upload footage to YouTube or send it abroad to

satellite TV channels.87 The same suspicion is cast on computer owners, because computers

connected to the internet are seen as a potential source of opposition. In other words, the regime’s belief in an omnipresent conspiracy significantly widens the circle of potential targets.

Anyone and everyone is suspected of opposition, including children.

The regime’s initial crackdown and the ensuing civil war have taken an exceptionally

heavy toll on children. After all, the uprising began as a response to violence against the children of Deraa. If we define children as anyone under the age of 16, according to conservative

estimates, at the time of writing 6,989 children had been killed. (Of these, approximately 5,000

were children under the age of ten.) Most died as a result of shelling, air strikes, gunshot wounds,

sniper shots, slit throats, and fires.88 Interviews with Syrian children in refugee camps demonstrate that many have suffered violence by security forces (detention, torture, use as

84 Yassin al-Haj Saleh, ‘Afgesloten Damascus’, NRC Handelsblad, 19 February 2012, at:

http://www.nrc.nl/damascus/2013/02/19/afgesloten-damascus/. 85 Amnesty International, All-out Repression: Purging Dissent in Aleppo, Syria (London: Amnesty International,

2012), pp. 19-20. 86 Oliver Holmes, ‘Running Toward Danger, Syria’s Citizens Become Journalists’, Committee to Protect

Journalists, at: http://cpj.org/2013/02/attacks-on-the-press-on-syrias-citizen-journalists.php (accessed 24 April 2013). 87

See Assad’s comments on the media in his speech of 30 March 2011, ‘President al-Assad Delivers Speech at

People's Assembly’, Sana, 30 March 2011, at: http://sana.sy/eng/21/2011/03/30/pr-339334.htm; Ivan Watson, Raja

Razek, & Saad Abedine, ‘Defecting Syrian propagandist says his job was “to fabricate”’, CNN, 10 October 2012, at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/09/world/meast/syria-propagandist-defects. 88 See the list of victims, broken down by age, at: http://syrianshuhada.com/default.asp?a=st&st=13.

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human shields), and have witnessed violence against strangers and family. These experiences

have caused serious physical and mental trauma, as some children have begun stuttering or sleepwalking, and most were having nightmares.89 Why are so many children being killed? Apart

from the fact that in all civil wars, non-combatants are targeted, there are at least two additional

explanations. First, the regime may be killing children because of the racialization of political

identity: children are seen as having ‘inherited’ their parents’ political identities.90 One example comes from the Khaldiyeh neighborhood in Homs, where security forces tried to entrap an eight-

year old boy named Ahmed. The boy was stopped in the street by the security services, who

asked: ‘Repeat after me: “The people want...” and what’s the rest?’ The child, cognizant that the

expected answer ‘…the downfall of the regime’ would bring dire consequences, replied, ‘Bashar al-Assad’.91 Second, the opposition has mobilized children politically, first in demonstrations and

later in dangerous non-combat roles, such as runners and messengers. The children’s

politicization increased the (existing) risk that the regime would see them as legitimate targets.

Another category that is targeted for murder is the conscientious objector. During crackdowns on demonstrations, conscript soldiers were deployed up front, whereas the

mukhabarat operatives stood behind them. Snipers on rooftops would then fire at soldiers

pointed out to them by the mukhabarat. Outright refusal or deliberate missing was seen as

sabotage and high treason, and would lead to summary execution on the spot. At the time of writing, 1,100 Syrian soldiers had been executed.92 (Much of this is similar to Stalin’s use of

NKVD barrier troops, deployed behind the regular Soviet army soldiers to open fire on anyone

who made attempts to retreat.93) These actions testify to the fact that the regime is based on

coercion, not motivation, among its own standing army. Women are a major target of the regime. Sexual violence is prevalent in modern civil

wars and Syria is no exception to this. Syrian culture is generally patriarchal and a family’s

honor is partly based on the reputation of its women. The regime understands this very well and

therefore gender-based violence is rampant. There is overwhelming evidence of mass rape of the daughters and wives of protesters; men and children are also raped. The rape of the daughters,

sisters, and partners of oppositionists leads to a heavy stigma in the patriarchal culture of Syria.

This type of violence clearly intends to terrorize and shame the population into submission, and

is a sexist message that the opposition is unable to protect its womenfolk.94 Finally, some of the violence is symbolic. On 1 July 2011, anti-regime poet Ibrahim

Qashoush sang a satirical song demanding the fall of the regime in front of nearly half a million

demonstrators in Assi Square in Hama. The regime raided the demonstration and three days later,

89 Untold Atrocities: The Stories of Syria’s Children (London: Save the Children, 2012). 90 Racialization need not necessarily be biological. Racialization in this case appears as essentialization of the

individual, and the irredeemability or indelibility of his/her identity. This is based on the twin assumptions that a)

children automatically take on their parents’ political identities and b) political identities can only be erased by destroying the person. 91 A major slogan in the Arab uprisings was ‘The people want the fall of the regime’. Journeyman Pictures,

‘Playground From Hell’, 17 December 2012, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXiORvq3kU8. 92 Ajami, The Syrian Rebellion, p. 146. See the table on the types of victimizations at:

http://syrianshuhada.com/?a=st&st=9. 93 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press, 2006), p. 132. 94 See e.g., Mohammed al-Najjar, ‘Qissa Suriya Ightisabatha Quwwat al-Nizam’, Al-Jazeera, 7 June 2012, at:

http://www.aljazeera.net/news/pages/2ef3e5f8-cb6d-4488-9420-7af432dc8516 and the accounts in ‘Syria: Sexual

Assault in Detention’, Human Rights Watch, 15 June 2012, at: http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/15/syria-sexual-

assault-detention.

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Qashoush was found murdered in the river; his throat had been slit and his vocal cords ripped

out.95 Ali Ferzat is a Syrian political cartoonist renowned for drawing cartoons that criticize and satirize corruption, bureaucracy, and hypocrisy within Arab governments. Reportedly he

acquainted and befriended Bashar al-Assad, who enjoyed his cartoons. But when Ferzat began

drawing critical cartoons of Assad himself, security forces arrested him and beat his hands until

they were broken.96 These two cases are reminiscent of the Lebanese journalist and editor Salim al-Lawzi (1922-1980), who had written bold articles critical of the Syrian occupation of

Lebanon. Security forces kidnapped him, tortured him by pouring acid on his right hand, and

shot him in the back of the head.97 These executions and mutilations aim not only to eliminate an

opponent, but also to send an unmistakable message to the public: be prepared to sacrifice that with which you criticize the regime. Moreover, they also suggest that what is going on in Syria is

a cultural revolution.98 Syrian political humor traditionally operated within very clear boundaries

of licensed rituals of transgression. According to Lisa Wedeen’s detailed analysis of the

discourse and rhetoric of the Assad regime in the 1990s, ‘Syrian resistance is made up primarily of mundane transgressions that do not aim to overthrow the existing order.’99 This has rapidly

changed since the spring of 2011, as the urban demonstrations increasingly began wielding the

slogan: ‘The people want to overthrow the regime’.

Explaining the Massacres

How can we explain the Assad regime’s ruthless violence against its own population? It is clear that the infrastructure and conditions for a murderous state already existed: an exceptional

concentration of power, a radical ideology, and paranoid political elite. We could certainly do

with more evidence, but these preliminary arguments and analyses offered in this article merit

three explanations for why those conditions have in fact produced such violence: the radicalism of the regime, the communal fears of the Alawi core, and territorial calculations.

The main engine behind the violence is the regime’s political radicalism, or perhaps lack

of moderation. A 1991 Human Rights Watch report on Hafez al-Assad’s regime argued that ‘the

dogged determination of Asad and his colleagues to maintain power is fueled by the fear of reprisals should they fall. Their use of violence against even the democratic opposition suggests

anxiety and isolation at the pinnacle of power.’100 These words could have been written in 2011.

The threat of violence was so inherent in Assad’s state that most astute experts predicted that the

Arab Spring would never reach Syria, and if it did, it would cause violent cataclysm.101 The Ba’athist constitution is fascist by any definition of the term and intrinsically programmed for

95 Anthony Shadid, ‘Lyrical Message for Syrian Leader: “Come on Bashar, Leave”’, New York Times, 22 July 2011,

at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/world/middleeast/22poet.html?_r=0. 96 ‘Ali Farzat: علي فرزات’, Facebook, at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ali-Farzat-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%8A-

%D9%81%D8%B1%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%AA/74184769474. 97 Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 165. 98 Blanca Camps-Febrer, Political Humor as a Confrontational Tool against the Syrian Regime (Barcelona: Institut

Català Internacional per la Pau, 2012). 99 Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 87 (emphasis added). 100 Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked: The Suppression of Human Rights by the Asad Regime (New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press, 1991), p. 3. 101 Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi & Oskar Svadkovsky, ‘Demography is Destiny in Syria’, The American Spectator, 6

February 2012, at: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/02/06/demography-is-destiny-in-syria.

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political exclusion. It is based on one-party rule (at the expense of a wide political spectrum),

virulent Arab nationalism (at the expense of unrecognized ethnic minorities), and confused socialist ideals and utopian visions of the future – such as a Greater Syria, the liberation of

Palestine and disappearance of Israel, and an end to American hegemony. Altogether, these

ostensibly legitimized minoritarian and totalitarian rule. Still, there was nothing inevitable about

the violence. The Assad regime did depend on pillars of legitimacy, albeit shaky ones: pro-Palestinian rhetoric, pan-Arab rhetoric, advocacy of secularism, protection of religious

minorities, domestic security, the maintenance of social balance, hopes for modernization, and

favorable comparisons to the chaos in Iraq.102 But when confronted with mass protests that

exposed its hypocrisy, it expended this legitimacy quickly by retreating into its authoritarian reflexes. Whether anxious or isolated, the regime’s use of unrestrained violence most of all

denotes a guilty conscience. Based on its reaction to dissent, the political elite appears to be fully

aware of its illegitimacy. At the micro level, the perpetrators have killed so much that the point

of no return was passed quickly; now, they feel they must prevail. Indeed, some Shabbiha are so extreme that they have even expressed contempt for the regular army, which they see as

incapable of radically ‘finishing the job’.103 Some commentators have even argued that the Assad

regime, at least for the time being, has decentralized its security apparatus and morphed into a

state of ‘militiafication’.104 A second explanation can be drawn from ethnic conflict theory, particularly mobilization

based on collective sentiments. Donald Horowitz has theorized that an overlap between class and

ethnicity, also known as a ranked ethnic system, carries a strong potency for violence. The

subordinate group’s feelings towards the superior group are characterized by admiration and resentment, whereas the superior group looks downward at the subjugated group with disdain

and fear.105 Alawis in Syria were ranked considerably below Sunnis in the Ottoman Empire,

which discriminated against non-Sunni Muslims. The French turned this hierarchy upside down

during the Mandate era (1923-1946) by allowing the empowerment of the Alawis, thereby re-ranking the system. After independence, this ranked system was tilted even more in the Alawis’

favor when Hafez al-Assad and Salah Jadid gained extensive power in the postcolonial Syrian

state. This turbulent history has produced an Alawi identity that is based on an existential fear of

returning to a condition of submission to Sunnis. To add fuel to the fire, the Assad regime exploited Alawite insecurity and exacerbated their fear. This fear, coupled with the knowledge

that the victimized Sunnis will most certainly be vindictive should Assad lose power, generates a

powerful violent impulse. Indeed, some FSA commanders, Sunni activists, and others have been

quoted as saying that Sunnis are the majority and therefore it is only just that the number of Alawis in power is drastically reduced. This discourse of ethnic majoritarianism to legitimize an

entitlement to a certain degree of primacy or even hegemony adds to Alawi anxieties. Even

worse, extremist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and to some extent Jabhat al-

Nusra, have been unequivocal in their categorical assault on Alawis as apostates and infidels

102 Carsten Wieland, Syria, A Decade of Lost Changes: Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab

Spring (Seattle, WA: Cune, 2012), pp. 79-102. 103 International Crisis Group, Syria’s Mutating Conflict, p.15, fn. 94; ‘Syria’s Paramilitary Gangs a Law Unto

Themselves’, Reuters, 2 July 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-syria-crisis-shabbiha-

idUSBRE8610N620120702. 104 Aron Lund, ‘Gangs of Latakia: The Militiafication of the Assad Regime’, Syria Comment, 23 July 2013, at:

www.joshualandis.com/blog/the-militiafication-of-the-assad-regime/. 105 Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), p. 22 ff.

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who need to be annihilated. This pattern of ethnic conflict follows that of other post-colonial

cases of mass violence, for example in Rwanda, Indonesia, and Sudan.106 Third, as all violent conflicts take on territorial dimensions, some of the massacres may

be explained by looking at the logic of territorial control and settlement patterns. The regime

employs indiscriminate shelling and sniping against areas where demonstrations occurred, what

they consider ‘unreliable territory’. By indiscriminately shelling towns, the regime hopes that residents will reject and expel FSA fighters. Furthermore, the strategic locations of some villages

and towns have made them particularly vulnerable to violence. The dynamic of the military

conflict in the spring of 2012 magnified the strategic importance of the Orontes valley for troop

movements and supply lines. This might explain the string of massacres running from Houla (situated directly on the vital Latakia-Damascus road) to Al-Qubeir and Tremseh. The regime

could not risk having large opposition villages in this strategic strip between the Sunni heartland

and the Alawi coast. Well-placed massacres, as one expert argued, ‘drive fear into the local

populations so that they discontinue their dissidence.’107 The more nefarious corollary may be yet to unfold. Robert Fisk, reporting from the ground, argued that there seems to be a ‘pattern of

destroying Sunni villages on the edge of the Alawite heartland’.108 Recurring massacres against

Sunni communities in areas deemed vital to the regime’s interests and survival suggest that

ethnic cleansing is looming in the mixed borderlands. An Alawi woman from Homs with Shabbiha family members indicated that Shabbiha in Homs operated in this way: ‘If they know

the whole area is against the regime they have no problem killing everybody.’109

106 This constellation shares similarity with Rwanda, where the Belgian colonizers deemed the Tutsi minority

superior, catapulted them into a privileged power position and during decolonization left them timorously clinging

to the status quo. The Tutsi elite knew well that this ranked system was unjust, but felt compelled to hold on to

power. In fact, the more unjust the system was, the more violence the elite exercised to hold on to it. The massacres

of Hutus were not intended to eliminate every single Hutu in Rwanda, but to keep the ranked system intact. In popular parlance, this was known as ‘letting them know their place’. Once the system was turned upside down in the

post-colonial state, it bore the marks of class vengeance and could culminate in the Rwandan genocide. See

Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 107 Stephen Starr, ‘Shabiha Militias and the Destruction of Syria’, CTC Sentinel 5, (2012), p. 12. 108 Robert Fisk, “If Alawites are turning against Assad then his fate is sealed”, The Independent (23 July 2012), at:

www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-if-alawites-are-turning-against-assad-then-his-fate-is-

sealed-7965154.html (accessed 24 April 2013) 109 Harriet Alexander & Ruth Sherlock, ‘The Shabiha: Inside Assad’s Death Squads’, The Telegraph, 2 June 2012,

at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9307411/The-Shabiha-Inside-Assads-death-

squads.html.