Accountability now

During Syria’s conflict, the Assad regime has continued committing many war crimes. Although de-escalation zones were established to mitigate conflict violence, the number of displaced Syrians increased. On February 5, Arab Center Washington DC hosted a panel discussion and a book review on the topic of Accountability in Syria: Achieving Transitional Justice in a Postconflict Society. The discussion involved three speakers: Radwan Ziadeh, a senior fellow for the Arab Center Washington DC, Mai El-Sadany, the legal and judicial director at the Tahrir Institute, and Mohammad Alaa Ghanem, a Syrian academic and pro-democracy campaigner.

War crimes

Ziadeh noted that because justice and accountability are left out in the Geneva and Astana talks, he wrote the book Accountability in Syria to call for attention to war atrocities and raise the issue of accountability. He listed five crimes that the Assad regime has committed in the last eight years.

1. Use of air force: Opposition areas have been exposed to heavy, systematic, widespread, and indiscriminate bombing. While only 1% of victims killed by barrel bombs are opposition but 99% of victims are civilians. Other governments have failed to prevent the Syrian government from utilizing barrel bombs.
2. Use of prohibited weapons: The Assad regime has utilized prohibited chemical weapons 37 times.
3. Siege: Half a million of Syrians live besieged by Assad’s “surrender or starve” strategy.
4. Torture and sectarian crimes: The regime carried out systematic torture at its secret prisons.
5. Forced displacement: Displacement aims to remove people who have been disloyal. Forced displacement induces both the demographic change and the flight of Syrian refugees.

Forced displacement

Ghanem says that ceasefires, such as the Idlib and Daraa de-escalation zones, are a prelude to liquidation. Political analysts in Washington misunderstood ceasefires, which they thought would constitute a win-win solution that could empower local communities. Instead, ceasefires emboldened and benefited Assad’s regime, which used them to induce demographic change. He presented three purposes of ceasefires:

1. Ceasefires have helped the Assad regime to conquer more territories by setting up a 1-2 year de-escalation period to relinquish oppositions’ heavy weapons and evacuate fighters.
2. Ceasefires serve to relieve shortage of Assad’s manpower by freeing up regime resources to focus on other priority areas.
3. Ceasefires provide an illusion of political process by designating areas for reconstruction while permitting the regime to commit systematic sectarian cleansing.

Remedies

El-Sadany argues that it’s time for justice now. Three tools are available for accountability:

1. Documentation: Civil society, journalists, and lawyers should act together to preserve history and contribute to truth. For example, the New York Times utilizes open source investigation.
2. UN Mechanisms: The United Nations has disappointed Syrians because of UN Security Council vetoes and the failure to make a referral to International Criminal Court (ICC). However, the UN Human Rights Council’s commissions of inquiry serves accountability by fact-finding and investigating crimes and perpetrators. In addition, the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) was created to prepare files and assist the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
3. Prosecution outside Syria: Syria is not a party to the Rome Statute and the UNSC has failed to refer its crimes to the ICC. But prosecution in other states is still possible.

El-Sadany proposes that the international community needs to amend, strengthen, and improve accountability mechanisms. Advocates should lobby their governments for more funding for accountability efforts and improved human rights laws. Lawyers should translate materials, especially on universal jurisdiction, into Arabic to reach Syrian victims and civil society.