It is therefore perhaps no surprise that Syria’s reaction to accusations of war crimes contains unsettling echoes of Sri Lanka’s. As the civilian death toll has mounted over the past six years, President Bashar Assad has rejected all allegations of atrocities as “devoid of logic” because “the Syrian Army is made up of Syrian people.” When confronted with overwhelming evidence of systematic violations of the laws of war, he has stuck to this line, insisting: “We don’t kill civilians, because we don’t have the moral incentive, we don’t have the interest to kill civilians.”
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The striking similarity of the response to allegations of war crimes extends beyond bald-faced denials. Syria has employed three other key elements of the Sri Lankan playbook. The first is to restrict the flow of information. In addition to forbidding foreign correspondents and human rights organizations access to the conflict zone, the Sri Lankan government terrorized the domestic press. Under Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka became one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. The delivery of humanitarian aid was also severely restricted. In September 2008, the government ordered all aid workers out of the conflict zone in northern Sri Lanka. The Assad regime has followed this example closely. While foreign journalists are not officially banned from the country, access to regime-held territory is limited to pre-approved journalists, often accompanied by a minder. Today, it tops the list of deadliest countries for journalists, in large part due to regime attacks on the domestic press. Humanitarian aid delivery has been restricted since the conflict began. In both Sri Lanka and Syria, these measures cut off nearly all sources of independent information.
The second tactic out of Colombo’s playbook is to vehemently contest the limited information that does trickle out of the war zone. The Sri Lankan government challenged all casualty reports as “Tiger propaganda.” In late April 2009, as thousands were dying from government shelling, the Sri Lankan Air Force denied that it was carrying out any operations. Both during and after the war, the Rajapaksa regime also challenged the veracity of all photographic and video evidence. Syria has pursued an identical approach. In 2016, Assad disputed the existence of the Aleppo siege, arguing that if it were true, “people would have been dead by now.” (One estimate suggests that more than 30,000 people died in Aleppo between 2012 and 2016.) The regime has disputed the authenticity of photo and video evidence of chemical weapons attacks, barrel bombs, torture, and extrajudicial killings. And Assad’s farcical suggestion last month that the dead children in the videos from Idlib were actors was almost identical to Sri Lanka’s claim that video evidence of extrajudicial killing was faked by “Tamil rebels in army uniform.”
Finally, like Sri Lanka, Syria has disputed the attribution of all war crimes it can’t deny, and portrayed its opponent as the only blameworthy actor. Despite the implausibility of the claim, Sri Lanka insisted that any shelling of civilian targets had been committed by the “terrorists.” The government also repeatedly accused the LTTE of employing civilians as human shields, arguing (incorrectly) that this exonerated the military of any responsibility for their deaths. Likewise, Syria has attempted to shift the blame for atrocities to the rebels. Early in the conflict, Assad told international media that “Most of the people that have been killed are supporters of the government.” In 2013, he rejected responsibility for the sarin gas attack in Ghouta, insisting “We’re not there.” Finally, the Syrian government has accused the rebels of using civilians as human shields, and excused its targeting of hospitals and schools on the grounds that “terrorists” are using them as bases and weapons storage.
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For six years, victims’ advocates, international human rights activists, and horrified onlookers have been asking themselves how high the death toll in Syria has to get before someone will step in. But international action on mass atrocities is the exception rather than the rule. The Sri Lankan experience shows that obfuscation and denial can be enough to exploit this inertia and prevent intervention. If Syria manages to do likewise, it will show that even an international pariah can get away with mass murder.
