The Urgent Challenges Facing Syria Following the Fall of Bashar Assad

The brutal dictator Bashar Assad has fallen and taken refuge in Russia. The Soviet Union and then Russia has long been an ally of Assad and, before him, his brutal father Hafez Assad. Assad’s ignominious flight to Moscow has deprived a lamppost of a cameo appearance in history, but has also seen the doors of horrible prisons flung open, leading to joyous reunions and the revelation of disgraceful crimes against humanity perpetrated by Assad’s enforcers. 

I’ve been an observer of this wretched conflict since 2012 when I first started helping Eliot Higgins with reports on chemical weapons, in what eventually grew into the phenomenon known as Bellingcat. The situation in Syria is still evolving, but there are already some key observations and lessons that we must learn from this

Dictators Are In Power Until They Aren’t

As recently as 10 days ago, people were talking about Assad like he was a permanent fixture. Then he wasn’t. These things can go very quickly. The collapse of the Assad regime happened faster than the fall of Kabul. One wonders how this is being observed in Pyongyang and Moscow. Or in the Georgian Dream party HQ.

The Immediate Return of Refugees Would Be Unwise

Certainly, no Syrian refugee should be denied the opportunity to return to their home. Many are doing this right now. But now is not the time to end asylum for the numerous refugees abroad. Uprooting people and dumping them in a country with a wrecked economy, no jobs, and hundreds of thousands of destroyed homes is a recipe for increasing chaos when we should, in fact, be striving to reduce chaos. 

Pro-European Protests Sweeping Across Georgia Stir Memories of a Darker Past

Huge numbers of protesters are demonstrating their resistance to their disputed Government’s Putin-pleasing decision to suspend the country’s bid for EU membership

Will Neal, Nicholas Pearce and Guga Chomakhidze

We Need to Chase the Paper Trails

Assad’s car collection or family photos of Assad’s relatives in Nazi-themed T-shirts are certainly worthy of remark, but what the world really needs to see the paper trail. One hopes to find many interesting things left on paper and hard drives. The world needs to see the supply chain that kept both his conventional and chemical weapons programme going. Suppliers and those that handled the money to pay the suppliers need to be identified and investigated. While it may be mildly amusing to see how Asma Assad managed to buy things from Harrods while under sanctions, it is of deep interest to see where certain lots of chemicals came from. And it will be useful to see the connections between the regime and the long list of people who were loud advocates for it in the West. Assad’s fellow travellers have much to answer for. But if some of them took money or direction from his regime, they have even more to answer for. 

What to Do With Stranded Russians and Their Arms

Russian military forces are now stranded in Syria. This is an interesting situation. Perhaps now that Syria is no longer a combatant nation, these forces need to be interned. Their weapons and ammunition need to be impounded. Certainly, the world should think twice about letting combatants go back to Russia where they can aid the unlawful invasion of Ukraine. 

Why Did We Leave Any Chemical Weapons in Syria?

The world vowed to rid Syria of chemical weapons in 2013 after the Assad regime’s brutal murder of civilians in Ghouta with rockets filled with the nerve agent Sarin. Much money and effort were spent pulling chemical weapons-related materials out of Syria and disposing of them, only to have further chemical weapons attacks occur. The world left the job only partly done, in part because of veto and obfuscation in the UN and in the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by Russia, Syria’s benefactor. If, suddenly, Israel knows where these sites were, why didn’t it say something a long time ago. As I type this, there are numerous reports of Israeli strikes on a number of sites reputedly associated with Syrian chemical and/or biological weapons programmes. Stating “but it’s a chemical weapons site” without further evidence is now being used as carte blanche to blow things up. We are right to question whether that’s actually the best thing to do. 

Israel and US Plot to Reshape Middle East as ‘Compensation Package’ Offered to Stop Strikes on key Iranian Targets

The growing conflict, an analyst suggests, ‘represents a real opportunity to redraw the political map… and dismantle the Axis of Resistance’

Mel Frykberg

Resist Bombing Chemical Weapons Sites

While it might seem like a nice idea to destroy bad things, dropping bombs on them indiscriminately may not be the ideal course of action. We do not actually know what really was in these locations and the answers may range from “dry hole – an empty building” to “utter shop of horrors.” Carefully exploring these sites is a better and safer option for the broader world. A lot of useful incriminating information just went up in smoke. We need the files. We need to know who worked in the programmes and where they are now, so that we can reduce the risk of proliferation of the wrong kind of knowledge. We need to know the supply chain. We need to know where the chemical waste is buried. 

Did Israel Just Give ‘Gulf War Illness’ to Thousands?

The science is now tending toward the idea that many thousands of people have long term illness because of exposure to very low levels of chemical weapons-related materials after the deliberate destruction of an Iraqi chemical weapons depot in March 1991. The cost of health care will reach into the billions and untold thousands of people have been suffering from a variety of health conditions. Toxic “burn pits” are, for the 1991+ generation of military veterans, very much the Agent Orange scandal of our time. I hope that Israel hasn’t just speckled its northern frontier (and much of Syria and Lebanon) with burn pits, but I certainly can’t rule it out. 

Rejoice

The situation will continue to evolve in Syria. The fractious coalition that ousted Assad is by no means a stable one and many of its factions are unlikely to get along well with each other in the absence of a common enemy. But let us rejoice that a wretched dictator is no longer running an entire country as a prison.