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A man holds a girl who survived what activists said was heavy shelling by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Douma neighborhood of Damascus on June 16, 2015. (Khabieh/Reuters)
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Yesterday, the New York Times published an infographic, “Death in Syria,” that presents the more than 200,000 combatants and noncombatants who have been killed in the four-and-a-half-year Syrian civil war. The Times’ website relies upon estimates “provided by the Violations Documentation Center [VDC] and are as of Sept. 9, 2015.” This non-governmental organization (NGO) claims to use a three-stage process for gathering and documenting information from within Syria, and verifying its accuracy to the best extent possible. The VDC notes that it strives for “conveying the truth as it is on the condition that those data and information are being regularly reviewed, checked and revised.”
These fatality estimates used by the Times should therefore be viewed with an understanding of the inherent difficulties of reporting from within Syria, and the conscious or unconscious biases often found within NGOs. The VDC categorization and numbers conflict significantly with those published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a human rights NGO based in London—as you can see from the SOHR chart at the very bottom of this post. Even the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights decided to stop providing public estimates of casualties in January 2014, because it could no longer guarantee that the source material for its estimates was accurate.
Nevertheless, the Times’ presentation of the VDC data is illuminating for policy discussions about whether and how to intervene militarily in Syria. Consistent with earlier analyses, most people who have tragically lost their lives in Syria are not civilians, but rather active combatants. This is worth bearing in mind when U.S. Senators repeat the inaccurate statement that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has “massacred” 200,000 of his own people. The Syrian security forces under Assad’s authority have perpetrated an untold number of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and as the head of state he must be held accountable by a post-conflict special tribunal for Syria. However, those advocating the use of force to protect civilians should recognize that there first must be an end to the fighting between the combatants, within which civilians have suffered and died tremendously.
More specifically, as I wrote almost two years ago, any proposal for using force to protect civilians in Syria must take into account how noncombatants are actually being killed and injured. Note that of the 85,404 civilians estimated to have been killed (by both regime and rebel forces) by the VDC, just 22 percent were killed by Syrian government air attacks. (This includes over one hundred civilians killed by air-launched missiles while shopping in a Douma marketplace on August 16.) Those who propose a no-fly-zone (NFZ) or “cratering” Syrian Air Force runways should recognize that these tactical responses will do nothing to save the lives of most Syrian civilians. Moreover, as was the case with other NFZs throughout history, the Assad regime will simply reprioritize its offensive operations from air power to infantry and artillery attacks, which combined are already killing most Syrian civilians.
Of course, the United States and a coalition of outside states could intervene in Syria to protect civilians from such infantry and artillery attacks, as well as the many disappearances by the regime and rebel forces. I have written about what these time-tested military countermeasures consist of: counter-sniper tactics, counter-battery radars and fire, and infantry “movement to contact” operations to clear out Syrian and pro-government militia ground forces that threaten civilian populations. Yet, these operations require a level of cost, commitment, risk, and uncertainty that intervention proponents are apparently unwilling to accept, including a significant number of the unthinkable—“boots on the ground.” So when policymakers and pundits advocate intervening in the Syrian civil war to save civilians, consider whether their proposals would actually achieve this intended objective.
Sources: Violations Documentation Center, September 14, 2015; Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, August 5, 2015.
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Your analysis, though good, and thought provoking, presumes a fact not in evidence. That is, that the Obama administration has a policy goal of wishing to put an end to the civil war in Syria. It does not. If it did, there would be evidence of it, in the form of actions fitted to that purpose.
The surest, and least violent way to put a stop to the Syrian civil war, would be to cut off the flow of supplies to all of its combatants. It would lead to the fall of the Assad regime. Thus it would be the most effective way to bring necessary parties to the table. This, the Obama administration has shown no interest in doing over the course of four years.
Russia’s leaders have taken note of this, and recently have capitalized on it by military moves into Syria that have had the effect of making the task more costly, more difficult, and more dangerous. It is highly unlikely that President Obama will call their hand.
There is no prospect that his administration will change course and have the US military do anything more than it presently is doing in Syria. As the fight against ISIS increasingly is borne by Russians and Iranians, it is likely that Arab nations will pull out of the anti-ISIS bombing “coalition”, with Turkey following suit. The US will then once again be left alone, and it will need to mind where it goes and what it does, so as not to offend any of its enemies in the region.
A better course of action might be to just leave, as the President has all along wished he could do.
r/s TPH
The data is indeed suspect. Is the Syrian civil war one of the few wars in modern history which has fewer civilian than combatant casualties? I am very skeptical. Nevertheless, if regime artillery and air attacks are responsible for at least a third to a half of the civilian casualties then those can be stopped through allied air power, including a no-fly zone.
(Is it true that) the Obama administration has a policy goal of wishing to put an end to the civil war in Syria. It does not. If it did, there would be evidence of it, in the form of actions fitted to that purpose…
This is not a feature specific to the Obama administration. ALL administrations, in whatever Western country and whatever political colour, suddenly support the idea of maintaining wars when they get into power.
Could it be that the political administrations are not really in power here, and that the military/industrial complex is easily able to keep their justification for existence going from behind the scenes…?
The Syrian people continue to suffer while western pundits and demagogues continue to pontificate nonsense. Those pundits who can’t see right from wrong, can’t differentiate yin from yang and can’t comprehend the mass murderous actions perpetuated by Assad’s tyranny are indirect participants in the crime of the century. I suggest to these pundits to recalibrate their moral compass and visit the holocaust museum in Washington DC to look at the 15,000 pictures of people tortured to death in Assad’s Gulags. Then, imagine as if these humans are their relatives or loved ones.
The VDC also states that 66% of all civilian deaths due to airstrikes in May 2015 as compared to 12% in Aug 2013.
So you are absolutely wrong when you say “Those who propose a no-fly-zone (NFZ) or “cratering” Syrian Air Force runways should recognize that these tactical responses will do nothing to save the lives of most Syrian civilians.”
The VDC numbers are a 4 year survey and the facts on the ground have changed significantly. For people in liberated areas, they are (obviously) less likely to be shot by the regime than pounded from the sky by the regime.
Try looking at Syria today rather than through a weird, ahistorical lens based on a 4 year survey.
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As someone else has noted, this is a misleading presentation of the data. The number of civilians killed by warplane shelling has not remained constant throughout the duration of the conflict. A more rigorous analysis of the VDC statistics reveals that the causes of civilians causalties have changed drastically from the beginning of the conflict to now.
If I had to guess, I’d say that this is probably due to the fact that the rebels occupy much more territory now than they did at the beginning of the conflict, causing the Assad regime to much more aggressively pursue it’s collective punishment” tactics in rebel-held areas.
Regardless, if we’re considering whether or not to implement a NFZ, what we should look at is how this will affect the current and future situation in Syria, not how it would have affected Syria at some earlier point in the conflict. Including this irrelevant data in your assessment only serves to obfuscate the the debate.
I am missing an important on this topc and respectfully request clarification for teh following question:
What exactly does the United States have to gain from military involvement (irrespective of its scope) in Syria?
Please elaborate on any economic or strategic justifications.
Thank you very much!
Mr. Zenko’s’ contention that the government of Syria is responsible for war crimes is a mere assertion that will allow him some cover within the conventional line of thought as generally expressed on the CFR website. His plan to protect civilians through what he presents as time-tested military strategies also seems designed to help him meld in with the status quo.
Even mention of the idea that boots on the ground could be mounted outside of a UN mandate, which would be virtually impossible to procure, is a complete slap in the face to international law and the international order, as was the US covert intervention in Syria. 200,000 lives have been needlessly sacrificed in America’s attempt to dethrone Assad, drive a wedge between Iran and Syria, and prevent Syria, Iraq and Iran from uniting. America must now bare the deep stain of needless bloodshed and loss of life that Syria has experienced.
As far as war crimes are concerned, the US must put itself at the top of the perpetrators’ list, as it has admittedly funded and trained people to fight against a government with representation at the United Nations. The failure of US policy is not because proponents of intervention did not have enough commitment to put boots on the ground. There is little reason to believe that Zenko’s approach as he has outlined above would not lead to more bloodshed over the long haul, or that Americans would tolerate a substantial military commitment to the program he has outlined.
A far better approach would have been to follow the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton Commission) by mobilizing Iran and Syria to bring stability to the region. US policy has undermined the thoughtful recommendations of this commission.
That Assad is the bad guy is a mere assertion that has been used as a pretext for the attempted conquest of Syria. Whether Assad really is or not a bad guy is irrelevant to the actions the U.S. has taken. It is apparent from the casualty statistics that the US has at least zero interest in the welfare of Syrians, and in fact may be malevolently disposed toward them.
SOHR’s is a joke operated by one man in a two bedroom house in Coventry, not based in London as stated.