Syria Watch

Syrian Accountability Project – Idlib Left Breathless: The Chemical Attack in Khan Sheikhoun

April 24, 2017

Jurist: The Fist in a Velvet Glove-Hardened Humanitarianism

April 24, 2017

The Fist in a Velvet Glove-Hardened Humanitarianism

Friday 21 April 2017 at 12:16 AM ET edited by Yuxin Jiang

JURIST Guest Columnist David M. Crane, Syracuse University College of Law, discusses the necessity of use of force in the Syrian conflict…

© WikiMedia (Voice of America News: Scott Bob report from Azaz, Syria.)

The cornerstone to the UN paradigm is to settle disputes peacefully, using force only as a last resort. Yet, restoring international peace and security sometimes requires a hardened approach to ensure that peace and security.

There are decades of international treaties, custom and precedent that support what I call hardened humanitarianism. When we have to deal with a tyrant, thug, dictator or rogue head of state who turns on his own citizens, the international community or a member state of that community should step forward with a clear and firm position-stop it or force will be used.

A tyrant only understands one thing-power. When he feels the sting of consequence for his actions that tyrant begins to focus on that use of force against him. The use of this more hardened approach in using force to stop a tyrant’s actions will cause that tyrant to pause, to consider his next steps.

Appeasement in the face of tyranny never works. History is replete with anecdotal evidence of this from the Armenian genocide to the Sudetenland. A hardened policy of seeking a peaceful dialog with the assurance of a forceful resolution, should that dialog fail, makes for a more meaningful discourse.

Our international legal and policy system has drawn lines related to protecting civilians in a conflict and banning certain type of weapons systems per se. Most, if not all, states parties have signed onto these norms. We don’t have to be histrionic when a tyrant ignores these clear lines beating our chests with empty words. When that tyrant steps over a line hit them hard, use force, show the world there are consequences!

US action against Al Qaeda after they attacked the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are examples of facing down the lawless elements of our society under the international legal concept of reprisal. In 2005 the world came together to create a doctrine that laid down a marker that declared that the international community has a right to step in to block a tyrant or head of state who is turning against his own citizens committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the doctrine was a clarion call to arms should there be alleged violations of international law. Unfortunately, R2P has fallen short of the ideal based on the political perception that it is a doctrine that can be easily used by various powers against weaker nation states for alleged violations. Despite this the principle idea of this responsibility to protect citizens from their own leaders remains.

The long and tragic kaleidoscopic conflict that is Syria has now gone beyond peaceful resolution. A hardened sense of humanity calls for continued cruise missiles strikes and other military action every time Assad crosses the lines laid out under international norms. Kaleidoscopic conflict is fast becoming a new concept in the dirty little wars of the 21st century. Old doctrines for war fighting and the legal set of rules that surround warfare that have been tested over time are being challenged at all levels. Just when planners think there is a viable course of action developing related to a conflict, such as in Syria, one thing changes and everything changes, hence the term kaleidoscopic. This impacts on what is called the deliberate planning cycle in modern parlance throwing out how international and domestic organizations plan for and deal with conflict on a day to day basis. At the end of the day we are beginning to face situations where there is no solution under current policy and doctrine. This gives us pause as to how to advise world leaders in dealing with any given conflict. This pause can allow a tragedy, such as in Syria, to go on and on without any foreseeable ending.

These dirty little wars have a direct impact on how parties to a conflict deal with civilians found in and around the battlefield. One of the key cornerstone concepts of the international humanitarian law is that civilians are to be protected and that the intentional targeting of a civilian is a war crime plain and simple. We see around the globe today parties to a conflict flagrantly ignoring this key legal concept. With no apparent repercussion to these attacks on civilians, actors move about the battlefield with impunity. Again this is the conflict in Syria, but can be seen also in the fighting in South Sudan. This is why a more hardened approach to our humanitarian principle of using force where legally appropriate will cause actors to pause and reconsider wholesale destruction in any given conflict.

This hardened approach must be done under law or we weaken our international norms, yet it must be done. Enough is enough in Syria. States parties who for whatever reason give that tyrant support should also be dealt with for their aiding and abetting of international crimes with legal sanctions. We charged President Charles Taylor with aiding and abetting a conflict, among other modes of liability, in next door Sierra Leone, and he was convicted on those charges I signed in an indictment against him on an aiding and abetting theory. The aiding and abetting mode of liability in international criminal law is alive and well and certainly can be touted as a possible ramification for a country who aids a party to a conflict that gasses its own people with sarin. Russia’s complicity in that gas attack sets Putin and his regime up for political sanction and possible legal action in the future.

Certainly, dialog and appropriate diplomatic discourse should continue. An end to the Syrian conflict must be the goal, hopefully a peaceful end, yet the hardened fist of a legal use of force to protect humanity should be a viable course to bolster that dialog. The missile strike on the airfield in Syria changed the political discourse on how the world’s is looking at the quagmire that is the Syrian conflict. Regardless of how one feels about the motives or the rationale behind the strike, it is posited that Assad, with the advice of Russia and Iran will think carefully about another sarin gas attack. If they know that force could be used again in reprisal for clear violations of international norms such as gas, perhaps they will refrain. This is the outcome that is hoped in using this new concept of hardened humanitarianism.

Suggested citation: David M. Crane, The Fist in a Velvet Glove-Hardened Humanitarianism, JURIST – Forum, Apr. 20, 2017, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/04/David-Crane-hardened-humanitarianism.php

This article was prepared for publication by Yuxin Jiang, a Senior Editor for JURIST Commentary service. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: Atrocity Alert

April 19, 2017

Atrocity Alert, No. 51, 19 April 2017	No Images? Click here

Atrocity Alert is a weekly publication by the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect highlighting and updating situations where populations are at risk of, or are enduring, mass atrocity crimes.

Syria

On 14 April at least 126 people, including over 60 children, were killed in an attack targeting a convoy of evacuees from the besieged pro-government towns of Fouah and Kefraya. No one has claimed responsibility for the car bomb at a checkpoint in Rashidin where a handover of evacuees was due to take place. In an 18 April Press Statement the UN Security Council (UNSC) labeled the attack an act of terrorism. The government, and many Syrian opposition organizations, have condemned the attack.

The evacuees were being transferred under a local ceasefire agreement whereby the mainly Shia residents of Fouah and Kefraya, who have been besieged by opposition forces, would be evacuated in return for safe passage for residents from the mainly pro-opposition towns of Madaya and Zabadani. It was estimated that more than 30,000 people would be relocated during the exchange.

Any local ceasefire agreements reached between the Syrian government and opposition parties that result in the involuntary transfer of civilian populations constitute a violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). However, in response to the war crime at Rashidin, the UNSC should demand UN access in order to monitor any voluntary evacuations and ensure the well-being of civilians. The UNSC previously demanded similar access for UN monitors to eastern Aleppo via Resolution 2328.

The attack on evacuees in Syria came two days after Russia vetoed a UNSC draft resolution that would have condemned the 4 April sarin gas attack in Khan Shaykhun and obligated the Syrian government to comply with recommendations of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Joint Investigation Mechanism. The 12 April vote marked Russia’s eighth veto of a draft resolution regarding the situation in Syria since the conflict began in 2011. Bolivia also voted against the draft resolution, while China, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan abstained. Ten UNSC members voted in favor of the resolution. By vetoing an impartial international investigation into the deadly attack at Khan Shaykhun, Russia has weakened the global prohibition of chemical weapons under international law.

Photo credit: Reuters Media

UN Photo/Manuel Elias

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The UN has discovered 17 additional mass graves in the Kasai Central Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), bringing the total number documented in the Kasai region since January to 40. As noted in Atrocity Alert of 29 March, violence between security forces and the Kamuina Nsapu militia poses an escalating risk to civilians in the region, with more than 400 people killed since last August.

The UN’s Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC (UNJHRO) and UN Police investigated the latest mass graves, which were reportedly dug by members of the DRC’s armed forces (FARDC) after clashing with presumed militia members between 26-28 March. At least 74 people, including 30 children, were killed during the fighting. During the same week, FARDC soldiers reportedly shot dead 40 people, including 11 children, during door-to-door searches for militia members in Kananga.

It is essential that the DRC government conducts credible investigations into these killings and takes expeditious action to diffuse the conflict in the Kasai region. The government should also actively cooperate with UNJHRO investigators and facilitate their access to all mass grave sites. Any members of the FARDC proven to have participated in unlawful killings should be held accountable, regardless of their rank.

Photo Credit: Aaron Ross, Reuters

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Syracuse University Media, Law, And Policy: Syrian Accountability Project Releases New Report on April 4 Chemical Attack in Khan Sheikhoun

April 19, 2017

Wednesday, April 19, 2017, By News Staff

College of Law Syrian Accountability Project

The Syrian Accountability Project, an initiative at Syracuse College of Law, is unveiling new evidence that the catastrophic gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun was a crime against humanity and a war crime.

The 45-member organization, staffed by College of Law students and led by Professor David Crane, a former war crimes prosecutor, has released its latest white paper, “Idlib Left Breathless: A Report on the Chemical Attack in Khan Sheikhoun .”

Report title page The paper details the April 4, 2017, attack that killed at least 87 people and injured more than 500. The paper offers compelling evidence that the gas used in the attack was the nerve agent sarin, one of the most potent and fast-acting chemical weapons, banned under international law ever since the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

“This white paper continues the Syrian Accountability Project’s careful analysis of war crimes and crimes against humanity that have been committed by all sides during the six-year-long Syrian Civil War, a list of horrors that beyond the use of chemical weapons also includes the torture of prisoners, siege of cities, denial of humanitarian aid, rape and deliberate targeting of civilian populations,” says Crane. “Our aim is to provide future prosecutors with a database of evidence that will help the Syrian people seek justice for these crimes after the war concludes. To this end, we will send this and other analyses to the newly created United Nations Syrian Accountability Center, which was formed with my help in December 2016.”

The white paper’s sources include first-hand accounts of the chemical attack, subsequent news reports from both local and international news agencies, and other open-source materials. The Syrian government denies that it launched the attack.

The chemical attack happened at 6 a.m. on April 4 when two or three aerial strikes occurred on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, located in northwestern Syria, a stronghold of anti-Assad forces. People reported choking and gasping for air, and first responders reported people lying on the ground and convulsing, symptoms that are consistent with the use of a nerve agent such as sarin.

Specifically, sarin gas targets a body’s neurotransmitters, and even in small doses it can quickly cause respiratory failure due to lung paralysis. Unlike chlorine gas, a powerful irritant that also has been reportedly used during the Syrian Civil War, sarin is lethal even when dispersed outdoors. Images from the attack, including the deaths of young children, shocked the world, and they were the catalyst for the United States government to reverse its current policy toward directly targeting the Assad Regime by launching 59 missiles on April 7 at the Syrian air force base where the attack was unleashed.

The white paper was written by College of Law students Kaitlyn Degnan, Andrew Dieselman, Kseniia Guliaeva, Casey Kooring, Sean Mills, Zachary Lucas and Colin Tansits. Further support for the project came from Newhouse School Associate Professor Ken Harper, first director of the Newhouse Center for Global Engagement. Margaret Mabie was responsible for the graphic design of the paper.

This is not the first white paper detailing crimes against humanity and war crimes by the Syrian Accountability Project. In 2016, the project released the groundbreaking “Looking Through the Window Darkly, a Snapshot Analysis of Rape in Syria, 2011-2015,” which analyzed 142 sexual crimes perpetrated by all sides in the Syrian Civil War and which revealed that the Syrian Regime perpetrated 62 percent of the total incidents.