Last Wednesday (Jan. 22), the long-awaited Geneva 2 conference on Syria opened with great fanfare and equally impressive roster of attendees. The Syrian regime and the opposition were represented at the opening, as well as high delegations from super and lesser powers with a stake in the Syrian conflict.
The opposition, represented by the National Coalition, was the last to announce its participation in the conference, because it was not sure that the regime had agreed to abide by the main principle underlining the Geneva process. According to Geneva I and subsequently Geneva 2, the main outcome should be the formation of a transitional government with full executive and security powers, where Assad and his close associates should have no role. After the National Coalition received assurances that in fact the government had agreed to that underlying principle, it agreed to take part.
However, as soon as the conference started, the regime’s representatives dismissed the opposition as terrorists and failed to announce commitment to Geneva I principles. In typical peremptory fashion, they failed to abide by the time rule or any other rule that the organizers had laid out. The multinational opening of Geneva 2 laid the ground for direct talks between the regime and the opposition, which was scheduled to take place on Jan. 24, but did not take place until the following day (Jan. 25).
It is too early to say with certainty what the conference outcome would be, but it is safe to say that no quick solution is expected given the nature of the Syrian regime and tenacity with which its three supporters: Iran, Russia and Hezbollah have frustrated previous attempts at reaching a solution. There were two developments last week that fed the pessimism many feel about the Geneva talks. The first was the release of a major human rights report chronicling the large-scale, indiscriminate killing of civilians as well as widespread and systematic torture and detention, catalogued in a dizzying array of torture perpetrators and their gruesome techniques, at an industrial scale not seen in decades.
The second was the report that a defector from the same torture establishment was able to smuggle with him out of Syria thousands of photographs and documents further proving the scale of human rights violations committed by the Syrian regime. The cache could provide the smoking gun to trigger prosecution of Syrian officials before the International Criminal Court.
On Jan. 21, Human Rights Watch, the New York-based human rights organization, published its annual report, of which the most explosive chapter dealt with Syria. Over the years, HRW has thoroughly documented the extent of the human rights catastrophe that is Syria. Since the Syrian uprising started in March 2011, HRW has published several reports and some of their findings were summed up in its report published last week, forming a powerful punch that spelled out the extent of gross human rights abuses in the country.
The report documented the use of cluster bombs, chemical and other weapons that the regime has used, deliberately, in populated areas, including schools. Cluster bombs, for example, were used over 200 times during the year in nine out of 14 Syrian provinces, in clear violation of the 2008 United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions. The report also documented hundreds of summary executions used to terrify whole populations. It also documented how this brutality has succeeded in emptying large swaths of the country of their populations. By now about three million refugees have left their country and another five million forced from their towns and are internally displaced within Syria. Large-scale detention and torture have been consistently reported by HRW and other human rights group. The descriptions read as if from a medieval manual employed during the Inquisition. Like their medieval counterparts, Syrian torturers are creative and give their techniques names like proud parents. HRW documented over 20 torture methods carried out by about two dozen security agencies spread out throughout areas under government control.
The second development during last week was the news that a defector from the security establishment had fled Syria with a large cache of photographs and documents detailing the government-supervised carnage. He gathered reportedly (55,000) photographs of nearly (11,000) bodies, proving that the torture, starvation and execution were widespread and systematic, with each case described in minute detail.
Some bodies were thrown in the desert, others into rivers, or showing signs of strangulation. The defector, whose identity has not been revealed yet, is reported to have been a military police photographer. The photographs are being examined by lawyers and human rights experts to serve as a basis for prosecution before the International Criminal Court. In the past, attempts to refer Syrian officials to the ICC were blocked at the Security Council by Russia but experts hope that with these photographs and documents providing incontrovertible evidence that backers of the Syrian regime will find difficult to block future referral of Assad and his henchmen to international prosecutors.
With such a record, can we seriously hope that the Syrian regime would agree to hand over power to the Syrian people?
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