Syria has detained a prominent former military officer accused of corruption and wartime abuses under the Assad regime, marking the first financial crimes arrest in Damascus's widening accountability campaign.
That wasn’t something the government was intending to kick off, though. Remnants of Assadist forces disgruntled by losing their livelihoods and prominent Assadists getting arrested organized spectacular ambushes and attacks that caught the government off-guard with hundreds of casualties and also some captives taken of their side. The government freaked out since they were caught off guard, didn’t know how organized or big this would be and what foreign support if any it had and so called for massive reinforcements that streamed in from surrounding areas in case it was a big deal. A lot of these reinforcements were from units with very shaky discipline like former SNA and even random people who just picked up a rifle after seeing videos on social media. People with loose trigger fingers like that are not the best to throw into a fearful situation to put it mildly, particularly with the sectarian divide and grudges that has been aggravated by the years of civil war and in the meantime social media was amplifying every rumor and throwing gas on the fire of sectarian division and amping up fears. And when the killing started, it became infectious. It was not a uniform kill-em-all sort of policy from the center though or the central government wouldn’t have bothered to give instructions to protect civilians, establish curfews and establish checkpoints to keep armed individuals out of certain civilian areas which were followed by some but unfortunately not all groups. As the referenced report puts it:
It is clear to the Commission that many interim government forces elements neither engaged in nor condoned the actions of those groups set out in the preceding paragraph. To the contrary, it has documented their active efforts to evacuate, or protect certain populations and individuals. However, it is a reasonable conclusion that at least
some elements of certain government-affiliated armed factions cited above, and likely some civilians, were aware of the widespread and systematic nature of the violence and themselves engaged in extreme violence with that knowledge.58 The Commission has found no evidence of a governmental policy or plan to carry out such attacks.59 At the same time, the systematic nature of the acts in certain locations may be indicative of an organizational policy within certain factions or groups or among private individuals operating in the area to attack civilians. Should such elements be established through
further investigation, the acts described above may amount to the crimes against humanity of murder, severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law, torture, persecution on religious grounds, and other inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical
health. Investigations continue into these aspects.
Faced with a serious and volatile situation, the interim Government took steps to prevent and end the violations; it launched an independent investigation and arrested a number of alleged perpetrators. This is in line with the State’s obligations to investigateacts that may amount to war crimes as described above under international humanitarian law as well as the obligation to investigate alleged violations of human rights violations, notably in relation to the rights to life and freedom from torture and ill-treatment.60 Nevertheless, the fact that many of the alleged perpetrators comprised individuals and forces acting in their official capacity attaches the international responsibility of the State.
I tis very common technique to punish some as a facade. Like even Israel explicitly advocating for genocide still hold few soldiers accountable. Here an example of war criminals still in position of power after committing atrocities
I said in my first comment that I figured applying justice to their own guys is not their priority right now? The former SNA which is quite low discipline and has been rather war-crimey was despite those ill qualities way WAY bigger than the former HTS forces. So if they go around arresting many of the bad guys who were in the SNA then a bunch of those guys would probably see the writing on the wall and rebel to avoid jail, which would be a big problem if they’re back to fragmenting their security forces into small pieces fighting with each other while there are still giant gaping security issues for Syria. So, for the meantime the Syrian government is punishing a relatively small number of unsympathetic offenders from the forces on board wiith them to signal that their behavior is undesired but not get people worrying so much about their future that they do something drastic that could impact national stability. It’s much easier to punish criminal Assadists as that’s not only very popular with most of Syria but also there’s not any substantial factions in their military that would be losing sleep over that. Still, as the former SNA component of the military is being gradually diluted over time with the training of new people and retirement of the old, the passage of time makes it easier to revisit the topic later on if Syrian leaders want to consolidate the factions in government later and/or please the Alawites as necessary.
That wasn’t something the government was intending to kick off, though. Remnants of Assadist forces disgruntled by losing their livelihoods and prominent Assadists getting arrested organized spectacular ambushes and attacks that caught the government off-guard with hundreds of casualties and also some captives taken of their side. The government freaked out since they were caught off guard, didn’t know how organized or big this would be and what foreign support if any it had and so called for massive reinforcements that streamed in from surrounding areas in case it was a big deal. A lot of these reinforcements were from units with very shaky discipline like former SNA and even random people who just picked up a rifle after seeing videos on social media. People with loose trigger fingers like that are not the best to throw into a fearful situation to put it mildly, particularly with the sectarian divide and grudges that has been aggravated by the years of civil war and in the meantime social media was amplifying every rumor and throwing gas on the fire of sectarian division and amping up fears. And when the killing started, it became infectious. It was not a uniform kill-em-all sort of policy from the center though or the central government wouldn’t have bothered to give instructions to protect civilians, establish curfews and establish checkpoints to keep armed individuals out of certain civilian areas which were followed by some but unfortunately not all groups. As the referenced report puts it:
I tis very common technique to punish some as a facade. Like even Israel explicitly advocating for genocide still hold few soldiers accountable. Here an example of war criminals still in position of power after committing atrocities
https://syriadirect.org/the-case-of-abu-amsha-how-commanders-of-turkish-backed-factions-in-northwestern-syria-go-unpunished/
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/turkeys-lingering-influence-in-syrias-new-army/
I said in my first comment that I figured applying justice to their own guys is not their priority right now? The former SNA which is quite low discipline and has been rather war-crimey was despite those ill qualities way WAY bigger than the former HTS forces. So if they go around arresting many of the bad guys who were in the SNA then a bunch of those guys would probably see the writing on the wall and rebel to avoid jail, which would be a big problem if they’re back to fragmenting their security forces into small pieces fighting with each other while there are still giant gaping security issues for Syria. So, for the meantime the Syrian government is punishing a relatively small number of unsympathetic offenders from the forces on board wiith them to signal that their behavior is undesired but not get people worrying so much about their future that they do something drastic that could impact national stability. It’s much easier to punish criminal Assadists as that’s not only very popular with most of Syria but also there’s not any substantial factions in their military that would be losing sleep over that. Still, as the former SNA component of the military is being gradually diluted over time with the training of new people and retirement of the old, the passage of time makes it easier to revisit the topic later on if Syrian leaders want to consolidate the factions in government later and/or please the Alawites as necessary.
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