Bashar al-Assad Steps In From the Cold, but Syria Is Still Shattered

 'Assad’s grip on power is often tenuous even in areas he controls.

 From the Presidential Palace in the capital, Damascus, he cannot drive to his country’s northern border with Turkey or to much of its eastern border with Iraq without hitting hostile front lines.

 Syria’s northwest is run by jihadists formerly associated with Al Qaeda who expend more effort trying to open a line to Western countries than they do to Mr. al-Assad.

 Rebels backed by Turkey hold other territory along the border, where Turkish currency has displaced the drastically devalued Syrian pound.

 Administering the northeast, where most of Syria’s oil and much of its farmland are, are Kurdish-led forces backed by the United States. Rounds of talks about reconnecting the territory to Damascus have failed.

 Assad relied heavily on Russia and Iran to fend off the rebels, and now both countries are eyeing his economy for opportunities to recoup their investments.

 But the economy is so weak that businessmen are closing up shop.

 The owner of a Damascus ice cream company said in an interview that he was shuttering his family business after 50 years and moving to Egypt. Recently, the tax authorities, the electricity company and the consumer protection department had all come to collect bribes after threatening to shut him down over bogus infractions if he refused to pay up.

 Other families had already moved their businesses, and the badly needed jobs they created, to Turkey, Iraq, Egypt or Gulf countries, he said.

 The Syrian government has no money and wants to collect its employees’, soldiers’ and militiamen’s salaries from the traders and industrialists,” the man said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.



 International powers have largely given up on seeking peace through diplomacy, and many acknowledge that 10 years of war, sanctions and peace talks have failed to secure concessions from Assad.

 Since he has resisted compromise so far, he probably won’t start now, said Karam Shaar, research director of the Operations and Policy Center, a research institute in southern Turkey.

 “Western policymakers do not appreciate what they are asking Bashar al-Assad to do” when they speak of integrating the opposition into his government, Mr. Shaar said.

 Mr. Shaar recalled Adib Shishakli, a Syrian politician who was president in the 1950s before being pushed out and fleeing to Brazil, where he was assassinated a decade later by a man who had been orphaned in a battle Mr. Shishakli oversaw.

 Assad had killed many more people, Mr. Shaar said, so he faced greater risks.

 “If Bashar al-Assad is ever out of office, he knows that there will be thousands of people going after him,” Mr. Shaar said.

 Still, the moves by Syria’s neighbors to draw closer with Assad reflect an erosion of the feeling that he should be ostracized when there are so many other problems in the region.



 The pipeline that the United States has backed is supposed to transmit Egyptian gas from Jordan through Syria to Lebanon, where an economic collapse has caused extensive blackouts. Despite sanctions on the Syrian government, the United States supports the plan, in part to compete with efforts by the militant group Hezbollah to bring in sanctioned fuel from Iran.

 Jordan, seeking to revive its own ailing economy, has reopened its border with Syria for trade and recently was host to the Syrian defense minister for security talks. King Abdullah II, who called on Assad to step down in 2011, spoke with the Syrian leader last week to discuss ties between the “brotherly countries and ways to enhance cooperation between them,” according to Jordan’s royal court.

 Wealthy Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., some of which bankrolled the rebels early in the war, have dropped their opposition to Assad and scoped out investment opportunities. But the cash has not followed, largely because of American sanctions.

 The Biden administration has taken a less aggressive approach toward Assad than former President Donald J. Trump, but the Biden administration has still discouraged its Arab partners from normalizing relations.

 In an interview, a senior Biden administration official said it was clear that Assad had survived and that sanctions had yielded few concessions, so the administration preferred to focus on other issues, including fighting the coronavirus pandemic, assuaging economic distress in the region and limiting Iranian influence.

 The United States would like the gas deal, whose details are still being worked out, to avoid triggering sanctions and provide minimal benefit to Mr. al-Assad, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under government protocols. The administration was also telling its friends not to let Mr. al-Assad off the hook.

 “We are actively telling the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, ‘Don’t go building shopping malls. Don’t unfreeze Bashar’s assets. Don’t give the government in Syria access to any kind of revenue for rebuilding or reconstruction,’” the official said.

 But it was allowing flexibility on issues like the provision of electricity to Lebanon and some kinds of aid inside Syria, in hopes of having a “humane, sensible policy,” the official said.'

When will the world wake up to the Russian occupation of Syria?

 

 'As the Russian occupation of Syria enters its seventh year and with the Syrian crisis no longer in the news, serious questions must be asked. Vladimir Putin's intervention on behalf of his ally Bashar al-Assad may have offered Assad a short term victory, but moving forward, both lose out. At the same time however, the West has lost out too, its empty rhetoric coming to nothing, as the international community failed the Syrian people.

 Putin's intervention in late September 2015 was never meant to be a long term fix; there were concerns that Assad's position was genuinely weakened, so what was originally short term intervention has become a six-year occupation that has no sign of it ending. Russia is essentially stuck in Syria. To abruptly leave would be an admission of defeat, no matter how Putin spins the fact that Assad is still in power. The Syrian president's hold on power is tenuous, and nowhere near as strong as it was pre-March 2011. Any indication of Russia abandoning Assad would embolden even fragmented opposition groups, and threaten the régime.



 Similar to the invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, Syria is essentially being used by Russia to score political points in a new cold war. The occupation of Syria is a way of showing the international community that Russia – as a great power – is "back", and that its weaker days of the 90s and early 2000s are behind it. The fact that Russia has a veto on the UN Security Council (an organisation that is fundamentally broken) is crucial here too; it can shield the régime from any wrongdoing, binding it ever closer and making it even more reliant. Weapon sales and the use of warm water ports are also benefits Russia enjoys as a result of its occupation and shielding of the réegime.

 The statement "a diplomatic solution must be sought to end the Syrian crisis" is often repeated, but is now completely meaningless. A diplomatic solution cannot be achieved unless there is genuine political will; this looks like it is in extremely short supply right now.

 Any help for Syria has to go beyond humanitarian aid. This cannot simply be used by politicians and policy makers to soothe their consciences. The root of the problem, the disease, has to be tackled and that is the Assad régime, which has destroyed the state over the last decade. Countless conferences and meetings failed; the longer the crisis continued, the more the appetite shrunk amongst the international community who quickly became preoccupied with a variety of internal and regional political problems. Fighting Daesh isn't less important as fighting Assad, with the former's creation and support being the result of the latter's brutality and a way in which all protesters were tarnishes with the label "terrorist". But unfortunately, Russia simply had to state that its airstrikes and intervention were aimed at eradicating Daesh (evidence indicates that it was not), and the response was muted.



 The Syrian uprising is not over yet. Whilst the narrative slips away from the news, recent protests in Dara'a serve as a reminder that the people of Syria are still taking to the streets and are still demanding justice and accountability for their perpetrators. A possible step for the West to take is to re-engage with Turkey. As a neighbouring state on the doorstep of Europe, it would be prudent to have Turkey onside and distance itself from Russia; essentially an occupying power here.

 Efforts to legitimise the régime must be resisted at all costs. The steps that Gulf states and other Arab states who in the past were staunchly opposed (Jordan being a notable example) have been making in rebuilding their ties with Al-Assad are deeply concerning. Al-Assad must remain an international pariah. It is deeply concerning too, that international organisations such as the WHO and Interpol are recognising the legitimacy of Assad. Ultimately, the UN never stripped the Assad régime of Syria's seat either.

 Russia is ultimately part of the problem, not the solution. No matter how it may run a protection racket with Assad, destroying the state but then claiming it is the only power that can defend and rebuild it, any efforts to accept Russian hegemony cannot stand.

 The EU should adopt policies similar to that of the Caesar Protection Act to those who finance and support the Syrian régime. Seeing Russian figures at the top of that list would be no surprise whatsoever. Moreover, holding perpetrators of the last ten years accountable, has to be considered.

 Where there is political will, there is a way. The Middle East is said to be a troubled place, but the longer the Assad régime remains, the less likely it is that other problems in the region – including Iranian aggression and the spill over crises – will be solved.'

'Little Palestine': How History Will Remember Assad's Siege of Yarmouk

 

 'Over the course of the ongoing decade-long Syrian conflict, documentation of the war and its effects has always been desired by the outside world. From footage spread on social media to entire masterpieces produced by those who lived through it, such as the movie 'For Sama' in 2019, those who were fortunate enough to only witness the conflict were able to catch glimpses of the atrocities committed by the Syrian régime, its allies and the numerous opposition groups on the ground.

 The period resulted in the emergence of a generation of unlikely filmmakers and directors, who picked up their cameras and decided to record exactly what they saw around them, without any certainty of whether the world would, one day, see it or if they would even survive the ordeal. Abdallah Al-Khatib was one such individual.

 What made his situation even more unique, though, was that he was not just in Syria but in one of the areas where the régime of Bashar al-Assad and his loyalist forces laid siege to. The Yarmouk camp—that site which was home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees since the Nakba and their exile from Palestine in 1948—had all the roads leading to and from it blocked off by Assad's forces while they held checkpoints on the camp's outskirts.

 Since the siege was enforced in 2012, the régime starved the camp's population and forbade international aid from getting in. Anyone who dared to escape through a checkpoint was arrested, disappeared and often tortured to death.

 Speaking to me about his experience, Khatib revealed that he initially had no plans on releasing his own film. Using the camera of a friend—Hassan Hassan, who attempted to leave but was detained and tortured to death—Khatib filmed footage of the situation within the camp for others who would use it outside to produce their own films. "I thought I would die" in the siege, he told me, and had no idea if he would ever escape.

  to the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution, he had worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) while studying sociology at the University of Damascus, planning to continue his life in Yarmouk and to contribute towards the Palestinian population's well-being. The Assad régime's brutal crackdown on protestors throughout the country and the ensuing siege on Yarmouk changed that.



 Like most of the country, Yarmouk and its Palestinian residents faced the full force of the régime's repression, and Khatib's film has an intense way of showing that. With starvation ravaging the camp and aid resources running dangerously dry, the camp's inhabitants—including numerous children—could be seen picking weeds out of the ground to eat them, both raw and to be cooked as a soup. Undernourished babies and skeletal figures could be seen throughout the camp as testimony to Assad's long-perfected strategy of 'siege and starve' warfare.

 Aside from the obvious human rights violations that this strategy resulted in, the fact that it targeted Palestinian refugees en-masse was also seen as a contradiction of the Assad family's long-perpetuated myth that it supports Palestinians and their historical plight. When asked whether he—as a Palestinian from Syria—saw the siege and other atrocities by the régime against his people as a betrayal, Khatib disagreed.

 Rather than a betrayal, the siege "was rather a continuation of the series of crimes committed against Palestinians, and the Syrian régime never leaned towards the Palestinian cause at all." He stressed that, through acts such as historic massacres and the targeting of hundreds of Palestinian fighters, "the Syrian régime used the Palestinians as a card of pressure for its own good in order to reach its own goals."

 Throughout the film, the viewer often notices that, contrary to popular Western notions of what would take place in an apocalyptic scenario, the inhabitants of the camp acted with an air of dignity and upheld much of their joy and laughter despite their condition. Khatib insisted, however, that it "was actually nothing exceptional to us as Palestinians, but you can also see it in other parts of Syria and you could also see it in Afghanistan."

 The important question is, he explained, "who is making the film and how do they want to portray them? Western media is used to picturing us as broken people, as victims and in that sense only as numbers."

 The siege on Yarmouk may have ended a few years ago, but the ordeal left long-term effects on him and others who survived it. When he eats, uses electricity, showers with running water, and other basic daily tasks, he says he remembers the siege. While there was no physical effect on his body, he admitted that it left a mark on his soul and psyche.

 That impact was most obvious when he was about to title his film 'The Siege within Me' rather than the current and final title of 'Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege.'

 "There are also positive aspects," he said, recalling when everything was locked down during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. "It didn't make such a big difference for me because I had lived this experience before." When social media apps like Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram also temporarily shut down this week, he mentioned that it did not bother him because "I lived in situations where they were not available."

 The siege reportedly gave Khatib immunity against certain aspects of life, as well as allowing him to see the true value of things. "We have to realise that we live in a consumerist world. We value things that pass by, that can break, like a refrigerator. We do not consider the true values like the relationships between people, for example, or the human being itself."

 When hearing about the growing and increasingly vocal class of public figures, academics and journalists who support the Assad régime and echo its claim that it is only fighting terrorism, Khatib compared them to a thief who "would ask himself for a moral excuse to rob the bank."

 By using the rhetoric of fighting terrorism, Damascus and its supporters aim to justify their atrocities and crimes against humanity. "Everyone always tries to find the moral justifications, although in the end they are political and economic interests."

 He added that the entire concept of fighting terror using atrocities is "the rhetoric of the superiority of the West," referring to the popular narrative following the state of the US-led 'war on terror.' "This serves the interests of the West, so the whole world circles around them and their interests. We should not accept in the very beginning this rhetoric of fighting terrorism," Khatib insisted.

 Abdallah Al-Khatib's film 'Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege' is, therefore, the intimate and revealing—with dashes of humour and wisdom—account of that siege of Yarmouk camp, brought to us by hard copy footage smuggled by Khatib's friends, once he fled Syria to Turkey and then Germany, where he now lives.'