Jan 22, 2014, Stephen Gowans
A report sponsored by one of the Syrian insurgency’s major weapons suppliers claims to provide (as the New York Times puts it) “new visual corroboration that Mr. Assad’s government is guilty of mass war crimes against its own citizens.” Based on photos of dead detainees said to be taken by a defector from the Syrian military, the report alleges that Syrian forces engaged in widespread torture.
While the allegations may be true, there is considerable room for skepticism.
First, and foremost, the photographs on which the report is based have not been independently verified.
Second, the driving force behind the report is Qatar, which has been energetically engaged in efforts to bring down the Syrian government. Part of that effort has been to supply Syrian and foreign jihadists– themselves the target of torture accusations–with arms.
• To strengthen assertions that Assad must step down, preventing any deal at the Geneva II conference that might leave him in place.
• To provide a pretext for direct intervention by Western military forces into the Syrian conflict.
• To divert attention from the brutal war crimes (including mass executions, beheadings and eviscerations) carried out by the insurgents, now under investigation by Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights chief.
Of course, we can’t be sure that the financing of the torture allegations report is a stratagem to gain the upper hand in the Syrian conflict, but as The New York Times acknowledges in an understatement, the funding of the project by one of the insurgents’ principal backers is “likely to raise questions.”
Indeed.