Fisk: How many have been killed in Syria?

Another reminder that we can't take "evidence" at face value in the Syrian case even if it comes from the UN. It is not just the question of accuracy, but also the narrative that this evidence is embedded in and its assumptions and politics. The so-called "international community" and its institutions are not neutral actors in this case. Their very choice of the terms, such as "rebels" vs. "terrorists", is political.

Why the numbers game doesn’t add up in the killing fields of Syria
Are the dead from Assad's army even counted in these statistics?

Robert Fisk, The Independent, Sunday 6 January 2013

Notice how Syria’s civil war casualty figures shot up by 15,000 overnight last week? The world’s press had happily settled into the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” statistic of 45,000 dead in almost three years.

But then at New Year’s the UN’s Human Rights Commission tells the world that the real figure is close to 60,000. Come again? Did 15,000 Syrians climb into a mass grave on 1 January, 2013?

First, however, a health warning. No-one disputes the carnage in Syria. But figuring out just how many souls die in a civil war – and whose “side” they were on when they expired – is a mighty dangerous game.

News desks beware, for history suggests that the “bad guy” must always be held responsible for the greatest number of deaths – at least in the Middle East – and that civilians who become “fighters” end up in civilian death lists, while men and women killed by the “good guys” don’t get on lists at all. It’s not just a question of lies, damned lies and statistics; in a war, each side produces its own rules for the dead. And none of them tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Government dead

For example, how many Syrian soldiers, pro-government militiamen, pro-government supporters and civilian sympathisers are counted among the statistics. SANA, the Syrian government news agency, once spoke of 2,000 dead among Assad’s military. Assad’s own officers suggested to me in Damascus last year that this figure had reached at least 6,000. I suspect it may be nearer to 10,000 pro-Assad soldiers who have now been killed. So does this mean that at least one sixth of the UN figures actually comprise the army which is accused by the West of committing atrocities? And if this is true, how many more “pro-Assad” civilians should be added to the list; hundreds of recent victims of the Syrian war have been Christians – who could scarcely rank among the insurgents. Does this account for one figure, which puts pro-government dead as more than 13,000?

One reason, of course, why the pro-opposition “Syrian Observatory” suspects the UN figure is inflated, is that the ladies and gentlemen of the Human Rights Commission want to heap more coals of derision upon the slumbering – and certainly impotent – UN Security Council. The UN, after all, is not a committee of wise men, but a monumental political beast, not unlike a giant donkey. Give it the carrot of a bigger mass grave and it might plod a little faster.

So how many rebels have been killed in Syria? We are told that almost 5,500 military defectors are among the dead. So are 372 Palestinians, killed in inter-Palestinian fighting around the largest refugee camp in Damascus.

Who to count?

It’s sobering to remember how we have wrestled with the same kind of statistics in the past. In “our” Iraq war from 2003-2009 – note how we assume the conflict ended when “we” abandoned the country, although another 4,500 Iraqis were killed in 2012 alone – every blue-eyed Western casualty was meticulously listed. But the Western occupation authorities went along with General Tommy Franks’ obscene invention about the Iraqi dead, that “we don’t do body counts”. The Pentagon was later revealed to have kept a list of civilian dead up to 2005 – the total was 25,902 – but these figures were slyly contrived. They listed only civilians killed by insurgents: unarmed Iraqis killed by Western military forces found no place in the Pentagon’s figures.

But you can go further back. Armenians claim – with good reason – that a million and a half of their people were victims of the 1915 Turkish genocide. But the Turks still peddle the myth that these figures were falsified, and that Armenians died in the “chaos” of internal conflict during the First World War.

And what about the Second World War? Did 40 million die, as we used to believe, or was it 70 million (more likely if you include the Sino-Japanese war)? Against this hecatomb, a 15,000 discrepancy in the killing fields of Syria is hardly surprising.  

Syria's Stalemate

Below, Vali Nasr discusses the probable implications of the ongoing turmoil in Syria:

Syria's Stalemate - Vali Nasr - July 27, 2012 - ABC News Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-27/syrias-stalemate/4159398

Take this clip with a pinch of salt though. Consider, for instance, these issues:

1. The problematic characterization of the conflict as primarily a "sectarian war". Given the involvement of many regional and global powers in Syria, the equation is much more complicated than just a communal-political conflict among different sects;

2. There is no probe into who this "international community" is and its interests and hypocrisies. For instance, why all of a sudden the monarchical states of the Persian Gulf have become the champions of human rights and democracy?;

3. No probe into the role of this "international community" in supporting and sending al Qaeda and other militant elements to Syria;

4. No probe into the role of this "international community" (and its propaganda machinery of media, political pundits, and gullible, involuntary, or fake lesbian bloggers) for not seeing the distinctions between Saddam's Iraq and Qaddafi's Libya on the one hand and Assad's Syria on the other**. For one, Assad still retains significant popularity among the masses, as Vali Nasr points out in the above clip, and even greater numbers of Syrian people are against a regime change, as verified by the Qatar Foundation. This "international community", however, actively supported the more uncompromising and militant elements in the opposition*** to hijack the whole opposition movement (to sabotage the possibility of the pro-democracy opposition pushing the Assad's government to engage in democratic reforms, which the Assad's government was willing to concede to stop the early protests and violence);

5. No probe into the impact of a debilitating Syria on the anti-colonial/hegemonic resistance in the region;

6. And, whether, perhaps, this debilitation of Assad's government was the goal of (at least some elements of) this "international community" from the first day? As discerning analysts knew from the beginning that the hegemonic forces could not have toppled Assad's government that easily, and even if they did, the alternative would not have been very desirable to them. Instead, perhaps, the "international community" wanted to make Syria engulfed into internal conflicts and bloodshed, so that it could not play its regional role in support of the anti-hegemonic resistance?

Another scenario is that perhaps the global and regional powers have already extracted enough from the Syrian turmoil -- in terms of weakening the regime and in terms of dividing the public/activist opinion (in the Middle East and beyond) and dividing the public/activist support for the anti-hegemonic resistance efforts -- that these powers now do not feel that a regime change would be necessary (they probably took into consideration the alternatives of either al Qaeda type extremists taking over power or the eruption of a full-fledged civil war if Assad's government were toppled. Either of these options would have destablized the border regions, and that would not have been desirable to the bordering countries, including Israel, Turkey, and Lebanon).

In both of these scenarios it is also possible that the foreign powers were hoping to remove Assad but retain the government (to keep Syria from a plunging into a full-fledged chaos), but haven't been successful at that, yet (despite their attempts to demoralize Assad's aides -- through rumors, bribes, bombings, defections, and so on).

** The emphasis on this distinction is not meant to support Washington's wars on the former two states.

***This was a repeat of the "strategic victimhood" and prolonging of conflict that was seen in the case of Darfur. As Kuperman argues in the following op-ed, the rebels became uncompromising because they believed that the Western powers and its support (including the Save Darfur movement) were behind them: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/opinion/31kuperman.html

In conclusion, no morality tale is being told here with the above questions -- just exhortation of doing a realistic assessment of the situation.

Some references:

""al-Qaeda" All Over Syria"

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31974.htm

"Al Qaeda Taking Deadly New Role in Syria’s Conflict"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/world/middleeast/al-qaeda-insinuating-its-way-into-syrias-conflict.html?pagewanted=all

On Arab League's human rights concern for Syria, see

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/06/20126221714569625.html

And, simultaneously, see this: "Saudi Arabia condemns Russian comments on human rights"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/15/us-syria-crisis-saudi-russia-idUSBRE86E00420120715

On Qatar Foundation's poll, see:

"Most Syrians back President Assad, but you'd never know from western media"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrians-support-assad-western-propaganda

On the fake lesbian blogger, see

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/13/syrian-lesbian-blogger-tom-macmaster

Here is an honest blogger who is rethinking his earlier assessment of Syrian violence

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/07/was-i-wrong.html

Another blogger: Check out the map given at Michigan Professor Juan Cole's site. The regions on the Lebanese and Turkish borders are the most volatile one. But, Cole does not analyze this observation the way Ron Paul does (see below). Is it because this is a democrat's war, not republican's? (Cole opposed Washington's wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, but supported the wars on Libya and now Syria.)

http://www.juancole.com/2012/03/syria-revolt-enters-second-year-as-world-stands-feckless.html

(A clearer map of Syria's neighbors:
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/online-atlas/images/map-of-syria.gif )


US Congressman Ron Paul on Washington's involvement in Syria (June 19, 2012)

"There’s no benefit for us to be picking sides, secretly providing assistance and encouraging civil strife in an effort to effect regime change in Syria. Falsely charging the Russians with supplying military helicopters to Assad is an unnecessary provocation. Falsely blaming the Assad government for a so-called massacre perpetrated by a violent warring rebel faction is nothing more than war propaganda. Most knowledgeable people now recognize that the planned war against Syria is merely the next step to take on the Iranian government, something the neo-cons openly admit. Controlling Iranian oil, just as we have done in Saudi Arabia and are attempting to do in Iraq, is the real goal of the neo-conservatives who have been in charge of our foreign policy for the past couple of decades."