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The War in Syria, the Humanitarian Crisis, and the Armenians

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  • The War in Syria, the Humanitarian Crisis, and the Armenians

    The War in Syria, the Humanitarian Crisis, and the Armenians

    http://www.armenianweekly.com/2014/01/01/whitson/
    By Nanore Barsoumian // January 1, 2014

    In early December, I conducted a telephone interview with Sarah Leah
    Whitson, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of
    Human Rights Watch (HRW), on the Syrian crisis. HRW monitors and
    highlights human rights abuses worldwide, and has been documenting the
    plight of refugees since the outbreak of violence in Syria in March
    2011.



    Sarah Leah Whitson

    In this interview, Whitson talks about how the international
    community, and particularly neighboring countries where `the
    streets...are littered with child beggars,' are coping with the refugee
    crisis.

    Whitson also discusses the plight of Syria's minorities - including
    Armenians - whose very existence in the country is under threat. `We
    know that the Armenian community in Iraq was completely destroyed,'
    she said. `It's not clear how much longer the Armenian community in
    Aleppo can withstand or can survive.'

    The interview also covers the makeup of the opposition groups; the
    spillover into neighboring countries; the urgency of referring Syria's
    case to the International Criminal Court (ICC); and HRW's work in
    Syria.

    * * *

    Nanore Barsoumian - In September, HRW reported that there are around 2
    million Syrian refugees - an average of about 5,000 people leaving Syria
    daily - and over 4 million internally displaced people. There are also
    reports of severe food shortages. How are neighboring countries and
    international organizations coping with the refugee situation?

    Sarah Leah Whitson - I think there are a couple of ways you can look at
    it. I think the first way we have to look at it, particularly from the
    perspective of Lebanon, most of all, but also Jordan and Turkey, and
    even Egypt, is that their governments have been tremendously
    hospitable and generous and accepting of many refugees - two million, as
    they have. Time and again, countries in this region are shouldering
    the burden of wars, and this is just the latest example of that. On
    the other hand, they are tremendously under-resourced. They don't have
    the resources to provide for the health, housing, education, and
    employment needs of this refugee population - much less for
    psychological trauma and resettlement assistance. And while some money
    is coming in from UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for
    Refugees], it's just not enough. You can see the streets of Beirut are
    littered with child beggars from Syria.

    N.B. - A report by HRW stated how China and Russia have been reluctant
    in providing financial assistance to UNHCR for these efforts.

    S.L.W. - That is true, but even the countries that are purported to
    support refugees have not paid up their full quota, their full share
    and their commitment to the UNHCR, which remains underfunded.

    N.B. - What are we looking at in the long term with the refugee situation?

    S.L.W. - It's a disaster. This is one of the largest humanitarian
    refugee disasters of this decade. We don't see it getting better. We
    don't see the war in Syria wrapping up, and as long as the war doesn't
    wrap up, as long as there continues to be fighting on the scale that
    we've seen so far this year, we expect the refugee flows to continue.
    What I do expect, however, is that the neighboring countries are going
    to make it harder and harder for refugees to enter their own
    countries. And we're going to have more and more internally displaced
    people who can't get out.

    N.B. - What's the situation like now for minorities in Syria? We've seen
    pictures of churches being burned, schools and schoolchildren being
    targeted, civilians executed and used as human shields. I know HRW
    reported on what recently happened in the regions of Sadad and
    Latakia.

    S.L.W. - I think that one of the worst aspects of the Syrian civil
    war - and now it is clearly a civil war - is the extent to which it has
    taken on a sectarian dimension. Long ago [it stopped being] about
    democracy and freedom in Syria. Sadly it has been distorted into a
    sectarian conflict, primarily pinning Sunnis against Shias, Sunnis
    against Alawis inside Syria, but also against the minority communities
    in Syria, particularly the Christian and Armenian minorities, who
    because of their identification with the Assad government, have in
    some cases been targeted by opposition groups.

    And they've been targeted by opposition groups - by extremist opposition
    groups, the jihadist opposition groups - because they are Christian and
    simply because they are minorities. It's obviously a great tragedy for
    the Armenians in Syria, particularly in Aleppo, which has been one of
    the last Armenian holdouts in the Middle East. We know that the
    Armenian community in Iraq was completely destroyed. It's not clear
    how much longer the Armenian community in Aleppo can withstand or can
    survive - not just because it's caught up in the war in Syria but also
    because the Armenian community is finding itself targeted and the
    subject of kidnappings or robberies.

    N.B. - Do you find that it's important to highlight the
    minoritieswhitson separately in this conflict? How is their plight
    different than that of the majority of Syrians?

    S.L.W. - Obviously, we at the Human Rights Watch will examine and
    document the abuses against any group in the country that is being
    particularly targeted. And so, for example, in Saudi Arabia, we focus
    on the targeting of the Shia community. In Iran, we focus on the
    targeting of the Sunni community. Wherever minorities are being
    targeted because of their minority status, because of their different
    religion, nationality, national origin, or ethnic origin, it's
    something we highlight. The reality in Syria is that many minority
    groups are being targeted, and one of them is the Armenian minority
    group...because of the war situation, but also because of their status
    as Christian.

    N.B. - Minorities also fear that the alternative to Assad could be a
    despotic or fervently Islamic government that would introduce policies
    restricting their freedoms, in terms of religious practices,
    education, lifestyle. These are real concerns that can't be easily
    dismissed. Could you talk about this, about what the future could
    hold, and also about the groups that are fighting in the opposition?

    S.L.W. - Certainly the Syrian opposition is now sadly dominated by
    extremist Islamist groups, who are completely intolerant of religious
    freedom, of basic rights, of free expression and free association, and
    so forth. Many minority groups that fear the domination of Islamist
    extremists in any future Syrian government are right to be extremely
    concerned about the impact that will have on their own status as
    minorities, on their own religious freedom, and cultural autonomy
    inside Syria.

    I think they have sadly had a bad taste of what these Islamist
    extremist groups in Syria portend. In Aleppo and other opposition-held
    areas, we're currently documenting how, for example, Islamist
    opposition groups are forcing women to veil, and putting restrictions
    on their freedom of movement. I think women have the greatest concerns
    about what Islamist extremist rule might look like.

    That being said, I wouldn't so easily categorize all of the opposition
    as Islamist extremist, and that the only choice is either Bashar al
    Assad and his criminal barbaric regime or Islamist extremists and
    their criminal barbaric practices. Certainly, the Syrian opposition
    still has a variety of elements in it. They might be weak, they might
    not have a lot of power, but it would be our hope that a future Syrian
    government will reflect the diversity of Syrian society and will
    protect the rights of all minorities. But I would avoid seeing it as
    an either-or.

    N.B. - There have been reports about the many fighters from abroad. What
    are you seeing in Syria?

    S.L.W. - Without a doubt there is a significant presence of foreign
    fighters inside Syria. There are countless videos and statements and
    information that make that clear. But I don't think anybody really
    knows what percentage of the fighters in Syria are foreign fighters.
    The estimates I've seen put them at less than 10 percent. So while
    it's extremely disturbing that people are fighting in Syria with
    agendas that have nothing to do with democracy and freedom in Syria, I
    think that the reality is that this remains an overwhelmingly Syrian
    war made up of Syrian fighters on all sides.

    N.B. - In the beginning of the war, there were many Syrians involved who
    wanted democracy and who were fighting for democracy. At some point,
    that was all hijacked. What were your observations?

    S.L.W. - That's obviously true. I think it's very hard to say that what
    we're seeing in Syria now has to do with democracy and freedom. I
    think that sadly the war has evolved far, far beyond that. And what we
    now see is a civil war in the country that has pitted the Sunni
    population against the Alawi/Shia-affiliated government. It is as much
    about a Syrian civil war as it is a Sunni-Shia competition inside
    Syria - a competition between Saudis and Iran that's being played out on
    the backs of Syrians, as well as a showdown between Russia and the
    United States also being played out on the backs of Syrians.
    Tragically, the ways in which intervention has happened in Syria (both
    intervention in support of the government and intervention against the
    government) has amplified those divisions and morphed it far away from
    what it was initially about.

    N.B. - Do you see a threat of a spillover into neighboring countries,
    like Lebanon?

    S.L.W. - The spillover is already happening: the fighting in Tripoli,
    Lebanon, over the past month; the continued attacks on Alawi
    businessmen in Syria; the recent bombing of the Iranian embassy in
    Beirut. This is all a spillover. The spillover is happening now, and
    Lebanon as a result right now is in an extremely volatile state. The
    Saudi government just a few weeks ago recalled all of its citizens
    from Lebanon, saying it's too insecure for them there.

    N.B. - Human Rights Watch has urged the UN Security Council to refer the
    situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to strip
    the sides of the feeling of impunity. How effective can that step be
    in deterring the targeting of civilians?

    S.L.W. - I think it can be quite powerful, because ultimately no
    military commander is going to make that decision to target civilians
    if he knows that he is going to be awaiting trial. I think the idea is
    that you create a disincentive for commanders to follow orders that
    are crimes against humanity. We're not even talking about the hard
    cases, where it's hard to tell; we're talking about the easy cases,
    like dropping cluster bombs on civilian areas or launching cruise
    missiles on civilian areas... The breadth of criminal prosecution can be
    a powerful one. I don't think that threat has come into play in any
    meaningful way because an ICC referral has not yet taken play, but I
    think the prospect of going the way of [Slobodan] Milosevic and going
    the way of [Sudan's Omar al-] Bashir even as an international outlaw
    can have a very strong deterrent effect.

    N.B. - How has Human Rights Watch's approach to the conflict evolved
    over the past two years?

    S.L.W. - Well, it evolved from being an investigation on the attacks on
    unarmed protesters - that is how the Syrian uprising started over two
    and a half years ago - to being a documentation about civil war, in
    which the government has committed unbelievable abuses, unbelievable
    crimes, against its civilian population, but which now also involves
    various opposition groups carrying out terrible abuses, as well.

    The challenge in this situation, when we document abuses by both sides
    or all sides...is how that can be used as a cover, and I think the
    emphasis - what we have to remind everyone - is that the vast proportion
    of the crimes, of the violations of international humanitarian laws,
    are being committed by the Syrian government, a party that is most
    capable of avoiding these abuses. Whatever weapons the opposition has,
    whatever abuses the opposition is committing, the vast majority of
    those killed in Syria - the number that puts us over 100,000 today - falls
    clearly on the lap of the Syrian government.

    N.B. - Could you talk a little about the weapons being used and where
    they're coming from?

    S.L.W. - Well, the weapons providers to the Syrian government are no
    secret; this is publicly available information. It includes Russia and
    it includes Iran. It also includes a few Eastern European governments
    as well. Those providing arms to the opposition groups are also not
    making a secret of the arms they're providing, including Saudi Arabia
    and Qatar, as well as now, of course, the U.S. and France, with the
    U.K. providing non-lethal material support to the various oppositions.

    N.B. - How does HRW get its information? Do you have people on the ground there?

    S.L.W. - We have researchers who have been going in and out of Syria for
    the past two and a half years, both undercover and with government
    authorization on various trips.

    N.B. - It has been reported that some of the pictures coming out of
    Syria have been manufactured, manipulated, and Photoshopped. Have you
    found that to be true?

    S.L.W. - We don't really focus on fraudulent evidence. We focus on real
    evidence - evidence that we gather ourselves from investigations on the
    ground. This involves not only talking to eyewitnesses and victims,
    but looking at physical evidence, such as the remnants of weapons that
    indicate that they're incendiary weapons, that indicate that they're
    cluster munitions, that indicate that they're chemical weapons. For
    example, Human Rights Watch was able to document the Syrian
    government's deployment of chemical weapons in two suburbs outside of
    Damascus by using satellite imagery to show the trajectory of the
    rockets with the chemical weapons...from government bases. We were able
    to gather evidence of the chemicals that were used through medical
    facilities, and on-the-ground samples that were made available. In
    certain cases we also use, look at, examine, and verify video evidence
    where it exists. Some video evidence is, I'm sure, liable to being
    manipulated and falsified, but...we have multiple means to verify its
    authenticity. And we never rely on the evidence of others. We always
    have our own evidence, our own direct evidence that we ourselves have
    gathered.

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