Is this report supposed to justify the 600,000 Syrians killed by the USA in our
war to overthrow the leader of that country & install a US puppet?
2
This is horrific. Toxic masculinity as it's worst.
Let`s not forget that Syria used to be President Bush jr.’s prime torture contractor. To harsh reactions may prevent the current government from having future access to professional help.
1
This whole mess began when Bush II decided that Saddam had to go, destabilizing the region and giving us the present disaster.
I want to express my gratitude to the brave persons who stand up for what is good in the face of such horrific inhuman treatment, and to their friends and family. Your courage is inspiring and your sacrifice is invaluable. Thank you.
11
In the face of radical evil, we have no right to remain silent, no matter where we live and what our own country has done. I am shocked and horrified. Thank you, New York Times, for this essential report.
9
Reading about these horrors perpetrated by the Syrian government against its own citizens I have only two questions: why do the UN and other Muslim countries single out Israel for its alleged human rights abuses and remain relatively silent on these in Syria and why do Syrians continue to see Israel as their greatest local enemy?
10
@S
There are people who question the authenticity and believability of Ms. Barnard's piece whose comments have not cleared moderation. SH, you seem to have the magic touch. Put in a good word for us.
1
W Bush: what a nice Middle East he left us with.....
5
How is it that Assad is still around and how is it that he is still living?
5
# Dan: he still around because the absence of American leadership in the region and Putin has military presence will stay behind Assad for the next 49 years , they just signed an accord not long ago .
2
While it is just to demand that people do not use such atrocious methods as torture, people have continually committed such acts throughout history. During the first term of Bush in the early 2000’s, we experienced the rationale that leads to torture. The people most vulnerable to being tortured are prisoners of war, so our military opposed the use of it, but it did not help. Then when the acts of torture and humiliation of people became known, and the revulsion of the public caused it to be delegitimized, again.
Assad is committing atrocity after atrocity and no one is able to stop him. He leads a regime that serves only a minority of the people in Syria, and no nation which supports his regime is inclined to pressure him to stop.
2
Comparing waterboarding to what is recounted here merely reflects the desire of many to cast America in the worst possible light. Life is full of gradations of offense; it aids no one's understanding to liken Gitmo to Syria, or to Sobibor, for that matter.
4
It is Russian "whataboutism.". Their man in Syria is being exposed, so they come on here talking about Gitmo. It is utterly predictable.
6
GITMO is full of aging victims of American torture. Torture performed at the explicit orders of the President, Vice President, and other senior US officials. America had an opportunity and duty to investigate, prosecute, convict, and punish our own war criminals. We certainly had probable cause, and we'll never know the full of extent of our own torture because we flatly refused to even begin the investigations needed to reveal that torture.
I find pieces like this essentially voyeuristic -- never mind hypocritical -- while we Americans refuse to mind our own house. It is unresponsive to say things like "but these Syrian offenses are so much worse". That is like saying that one murderer should be ignored and another murderer prosecuted because the first murderer only shot his victim through the head, while the second used a knife.
Murder is murder. Torture is torture. The "confessions" extracted by our own torture are just as meaningless as those extracted by the Syrians. That's just one of the many reasons why our own victims remain locked away in GITMO.
The comparison to be drawn here is NOT between torture of the Syrians versus the torture of the Americans. The appropriate comparison is, instead, what is the response of the government when compelling evidence of those war crimes is revealed. THAT more accurate comparison is the one I wish this piece focused on.
We can't change the behavior of the Syrian government. We CAN change the behavior of our own.
8
The circumstances are actually not comparable. We do have a rule of law which makes attempting to try people who have been forced to admit to crimes cannot be tried. We cannot offer due process to determine guilt, now. We can only let them go and hope that none will join in terrorism or hold them indefinitely. The initial policies were lame as well as unjust.
1
I have read the article, and almost all the comments.
What everyone here does NOT understand is that Assad is being kept in power by the USA, and the UK at least, if not by other members of the 5 eyes (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). These 5 nations are categorically working together to keep the status quo of ruling by proxy the "3rd world" or underdeveloped nations, and the weak monarchies, like Saudis, Emiraties, etc. These 5 nations rule by installing leaders who will do their bidding at any cost, human or otherwise. When there is an uprising in the client nations, they send in their military to totally obliterate those nations.
If anyone here thinks Assad is there because he can stay there by using force on his own people that person needs to wake up and understand the above said 5 eyes nations.
Until, the 3rd world nations get a leader who is interested the betterment of their country and will not capitulate to the will of the US, UK, and the others this sort of stuff will continue.
My advise to the people of the 3rd world is to get their houses in order and when you know that a leader is owned by the US, UK, and others remove him immediately, and give him the death penalty for treason. Furthermore, get your military houses in order for when the USA sends its military to bomb you, you bring their aircraft down.
5
Movements like Boko Haram are a total rejection of western scientific culture and democratic institutions.
3
Oh my. You mean it isn’t Russia who recently supplied them with anti-aircraft weapons to bring down Israeli planes? I only wish people who criticize the USA would get to spend a week in some of the countries they prefer.
5
I fail to see the difference between how Syria treats people who voice differing ideals & opinions and how Saudi Arabia does . Both are examples tyranny & man's inhumanity to man . Yet one country we villainize and the other we praise as a valued ally and esteemed leader in the Middle East . It is truly hypocrisy at it's finest .
14
This is an incredibly important and heartbreaking story. I hope it gets the attention it deserves and the action it requires.
11
@Theo Baker
Unfortunately, just as implied early in the article it will be business as usual as the Western democracies start dealing with this horrific dictator again, along with all the other undemocratic societies we support....for some variation of fulfilling our own power or money needs. This world isn't getting any better than it has always been.
These happenings are the result of a dictatorship. It matters not if the dictator is al Assad, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Tojo, or any number of South American or African dictators -- all dictators act in the same manner, with no regard whatever for human life of anyone - especially their own citizens. It can easily happen here if our government slides into dictatorship - a road which is definitely upon the horizon.
Not to stand up for it, in any form, is in itself, a form of dictatorship. Not to stand up to Trump and his minions is nothing short of encouraging such behavior. Enough, already.
7
These are very brutal people. Hopefully, it sheds some light on why Israel is so security conscious. They understand who their neighbors are.
9
I am in Paris on a trip and the French just recently celebrated May 8th, the end of WW II (for France).
The German occupation and Hitler’s extermination policies received attention during this holiday celebration.
Reading this article about the horrors Assad has put his own people through makes the comparison complete between Assad and Hitler. What is it about us as a species that we can be so cruel towards one another?
Why does it have to be that way? Why can’t we wipe off the face of the earth animals like these dictators once and for all?
5
@Len
Now if the people acting out twisted beliefs rooted in primitive religious misconceptions leave you no other choice, stopping them or wiping them out is alas the route go, it is what wisdom will instruct us to do. A military build-up and intervention can as such be the temporary expression of the best wisdom available on what course of action to pursue, as it was in World War II, when the allied forces toppled church darling Hitler lead by a US President who to great benefit brought and propagated more 'socialism' than Bernie Sanders ever has. They were willing to bring an enormous sacrifice. Under more because the regime change they strived to bring about could to a large extent be trusted to be radically more benign and to root in broad European people support (even as polls showed a majority of Germans still longed back for Hitler for quite some time after the war). This ain't the case in Syria and therein lies the rub. In fact, regime change in the USA, where a slow authoritarian coup is underway since 2000 with roots reaching back even further, a coup that is in the stages of its final completion, is the thing that's indicated first and foremost. After that one we can talk, where we should begin pointing out that all covert and overt USA-lead regime changes since WWII, many of them in Latin America, have been disgraces and disasters, which constitutes a strong plea against covert or overtly promoted acts of wiping out.
Ask an honest question receive honest answer.
1
So, do AOC and Rep. Omar blame the US for this too? Is it Israel's fault? If they can't blame the US or Israel, I guess AOC and Omar will be silent and accept Assad's torture as normal behavior in the Middle East.
10
@Tony
In my view, all world governments are complicit in these assaults on humanity, including the USA. Governments allocate social resources and values. That is a lot of power and money. And humans abuse both power and money which is why the US Constitution established balances of power and checks and balances. Sometimes it works better than others.Currently of course we have lowered our standards considerably "electing with Russian help" bullying from the top, calling facts "alternative facts", and feathering ones own nest while in office, and the list goes on. Political parties prop up such outrageous speech and action. This too will pass, as the Good Book says...we just don't know if the next round will be better or worse. At least we have a few new members of Congress who are challenging the status quo....I don't think we should feel threatened by a very few women in the House who speak their minds on the important issues of our time. We need to have way more input from the other gender, races, religions--in other words diversity of participation--rather than just the "white, 'Christian', 'good ole boy'" club which has dominated American policy since its founding.
3
Decent people the world over cannot help but plead that something be done. But what? We invaded Iraq twice for less. Surely a coalition of nations can be formed to invade that miserable country, get rid of that even more miserable regime, and, unlike Iraq, have a plan for rebuilding. In so doing, we would also call Putin's bluff. He's just a paper tiger compared to what the rest of the world can muster.
2
Why NYT calls islamists and terrorists who are killing innocent people left-and-right with a very positive word "rebels"? In Syria, while few who actually do not shoot the guns are decent people, the rest are former Al-Qaeda. This is real hypocrisy to call the same thugs "terrorists" when they kill Americans or Brits, but call them rebels when they kill Russians or Syrian.
3
@Felman: When in doubt, which nation is first to add guns to a combustible situation?
2
Imagine the transformation that could occur if the Israeli Army were to move in and rescue the Syrian people.
1
The Israelis Have been taking in Syria women who cross the border to have their babies, take steps to ensure their anonymity so they are not mistreated when they return to Syria. I have not seen any report of this in our media, But plenty of criticism for Israeli “ overreaction” Two incoming Rockets. Go figure.
4
yes the Russians and the Iranians would transform Israel's army into ashes.
What was happening in the 70's in South America under the dictatures put in place by the USA ?
Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, etc...
Same .
10
Of course the problem is that the US shouldn't be throwing stones from a glass house. The US commits equally heinous crimes and support equally ruthless dictators.
10
Assad and those living from his financial enterprise network, which by the way is hundreds of thousands of his supporters, will continue to torture and kill with impunity. Their goal is solely to maintain their way of life at all cost of others who are not loyal to their corruption. It is a well oiled machine of cronyism thriving in a world of immoral greed. We fully expect to witness the Arab world, Europe and Israel embrace Assad as the long lost brother, returning from unknown perils, renewed with the long sought knowledge to push civilization forward toward a utopian world.
So Assad is basically doing at home what the US and the CIA have been doing around the world in all those secret and illegal by any means torture chambers of the US inteligence services and in the official US torture operation at Guantanamo.
How dare the US speak up its mind about this when they are even worse than Assad as their torture was done all over the world?
How dare the US speak up when there are still the pictures of waterboarding and the Al Gharib prison around?
Doe anyone in the US understand the critics of Orwell in the book "Animal Farm" about "all are equal only some are more equal than others"?
That was aiming at Communists but the US of today is doing just that.
It is this kind of hypocrisy that makes it hard to read such self righteous articles and wonder when the US will ever start to live up to the standards they demands from others at gun point.
This is what bullying is all about, being the biggest bully in the yard with the biggest stick while accusing others of of being a bully.
10
And the New York TImes is shocked, shocked. Let's get real. What the Syrian Government does to its dissidents is a commonplace in most of the Muslim world. Do you think for a moment that things are any different in Iran, Iraq, Jordan or under the murderers of Hamas in Gaza or their seemingly more benign counterparts in the Palestinian Authority? Why, even NATO member Turkey under arc-Islamist Erdogan is behaving in kind.
4
This is a horrific account of arbitrary detention, torture and murder. It is a great pity that one cannot be sure whether is truth or propaganda, designed to ‘justify’ continued American occupation of part of Syria. (I do recall similar photographs some years ago.) The Syrian War is over – possibly the final action of the sovereign government of Syria shall be to eject the American occupation forces.
The USA has of course used Syrian torture ‘facilities’ under the CIA extraordinary rendition programme. In Abu Graib USA forces themselves used all of the horrific methods described in this article and also used the despicable acts of raping children in front of their mothers.
We must not allow horror stories of arbitrary detention, torture and murder, whether from Israeli or Saudi Arabian prisons, as a justification for occupying a Sovereign foreign Country. There is, of course, no likelihood whatsoever of punitive American action against Israel or Saudi Arabia.
6
Deflecting the argument by conflating the actions of unrelated, independent sovereigns as one and comparing their actions to factual arguments that demonstrate intentional genocide, is propaganda.
These are the same techniques utilized by many regimes to undermine their detractors and justify their inhuman actions.
The facts are ubiquitous and damming. The reality is painful to observe but the choice of action should be singular for any person or nation with a moral compass.
1
One of the larger moral failings of our time. The conundrum- this beast or Daesh stepping into the vacuum like the mess in Iraq.
And where is the U.N.? If the time spent bashing Israel was spent on behavior like this, perhaps rogue regimes such as this would not last.
Of course, it would have been helpful if the U.S. had some influence in the Middle East from 2008-2016. We left a vacuum for dictators and terror.
4
@jrgfla
Our middle name is vacuum...our history is replete at only acting in our power and money self interest...until then we tend to be isolationist. It took pearl harbor for us finally to enter WWII.
So we prop up dictators for oil and money and more.... Our moral basis in really very low as we wrap ourselves in our own religious majority.
I am sure all of our problems stem from the last US administration and not the bully administration of "alternative facts" we currently "enjoy".
And our current top leader is a big fan--a buddy even--of?
Totalitarian governments of Russian, China, North Korean, and Saudi Arabia!
2
The uprising was from the beginning violent. Already on the first day buildings were set on fire and within days the first cops had been killed. All signs are that there was foreign involvement from very beginning too.
In 2011 Assad was quite popular. Even many opposition supporters have admitted that he would have had a good chance to win elections.
Assad discovered soon enough that talks with the opposition were useless. Yes, the opposition wanted to talk. But this was a color revolution and the only purposes of talks were to give the opposition legitimacy and publicity and to win time so that the uprising could expand before the government got serious about putting it down. And so repression became the norm.
Yes, Syria's prisons are horrible. But as anyone who has followed the discussion about Abu Ghraib or any other problematic prison system knows: prisons are hard to reform.
The article claims that without security reforms the refugees won't return. It forgets economics. US sanctions keep Syria devastated and poor: it is hard to return under such circumstances. Security reform is a classic chicken-and-egg problem: it is hard to convince people of the need for more checks on the security apparatus as long as there is a serious terrorist threat.
Assad won't go anywhere. The only function of sanctions is to keep the violence and poverty in Syria high.
2
Some of us weep. Some of us look the other way. Some of us feel helpless to do anything. All of us have a measure of responsibility for allowing the worst of humanity to proceed in this shocking and heartbreaking way. Who will save us from ourselves?
Maybe the reality is that the best we can do is protect ourselves, and on occasion health and Ally.
1
We are being prepared for another regime change war in the Mideast. More than likely, Iran will be the next victim of U.S. imperialism. Iraq's people were starved for the sins of Saddam back in the 1990s. Then 9/11 was blamed on his regime in a pack of lies sold by the neocons and Bush 43. I remember the discourse of the corporate media and neocons in 2002-2003. The neolibs in the dominant corporate wing of the "opposition" party all went along for the ride...and the result has been death and mayhem ever since. Tulsi Gabbard-who has seen this movie up close, and knows who pays for the tickets-is right.
4
Truly, sadly, historically horrific.
However, President Obama made the right decision — not to invade and fight Assad, Russia and ISIS at the same time.
In fact, would anyone now somehow blaming the USA for these atrocities ever have recommended and supported the US invasion and occupation of Syria necessary to stop the tortures and killings?
3
Thank you for your important and courageous contribution, Anne Barnard. It is time to shine a light on the morass that Syria has unfortunately become, and to provide support to those who struggle for a way out.
2
As a survivor of one of those torture prisons, it feels strange I couldn't finish the article, it's been 7 years already, thinking about it for every single day, the 24/7 non-stopping screams, the smell, the heat from crowding, the people who lost their minds inside, the helpless feel hearing children being tortured, the need to lie and say you love the president while being tortured, the total unknown destiny, the endless talk about an agreement between the big countries about Syria resulting in our release, every single face I saw and still remember like it was yesterday.
I lost hope in humanity a long time ago, probably when thousands photos of dead and tortured Syrians were leaked and nobody did a thing, people wonder why I hate Obama and think it's because I like Trump, they think he did the right thing by staying away from Syria and not starting a new "war", but the result was very obvious, millions of refugees, millions of victims, ISIS, the far right rising everywhere, Russia getting a chance to lead and establish new roots again, other Arab dictators getting a hope and threatening their people with a new Syria if they wanted a change...
16
Israel celebrated it’s birthday, many of the is Railey herbs demonstrated about the catastophy, Unless reports are that nobody was thrown in prison for objecting to Israel’s birthday.
I can’t believe people believed set alarm had weapons of mass distruction. The Middle East is a tough neighborhood, and one would be Lowe’s to admit he did not have the same weapons as his opponents. But he was a little monster and his own right. It is interesting to thousands who did not serve a “reckless with having to use our army.
@Mohamad
I am humbled and cannot possibly collect enough imagination to even come close to knowing what you've gone through.
I think I will live on in my offspring and in my offspring's offspring and will live through the unspeakable torment of seeing the earth lose its face of friendly habitability. In fact I think I suffer immeasurably in every fellow human's suffering, as I am her/him, grown up in another body with other consciousness-shaping parameters from upbringing & personal experiences.
Still I ain't given up hope as I know there is more to life than bodily experiences, and in the end this more, my soul consciousness, forever reshapes, and transcends, these experiences.
As someone accultured by Christianity I take responsibility for the vast needless pain and suffering the belief system that birthed my foundational outlooks has spread around with faux, mistaken passion and abandon, steeped in incorrect beliefs about what underpins and constitutes life, spreading harm from its stubborn fallacies.
And this is what I expect from you. If you are Muslim it is not your primary task to scrutinize what Christians like GWB or BHO do or don't, but to take responsibility for the suffering that misconceptions coagulated to misdeeds in your own belief family caused. Saddam was a torturer, rooted firmly in Sunni thought.
Islam is the root to blame for what Muslim Assad or Saddam's former secret service and army rank turned Isis do, or the Saudi to critics and Shia Yemenites.
1
Sadly I have no belief that the other side or sides in this awful conflict would be any better.
As to torture, Bush II and Cheney normalized torture and now we see the result. It’s not that others wouldn’t torture but we have now lost the high ground and disturbingly some Americans believe that torture is ok if we do it!
Syria was not our business. We never had any chance of fixing anything but it did make weapon manufactures a lot of money and it killed a lot of innocent people.
8
@Justice Holmes
How many people did the US torture and what torture was involved?
2
@Justice Holmes
This has little to do with Bush and Cheney. Do not instrumentalize the tragedy that is Syria.
.
4
Torture was not invented by Americans. Its been part of the human condition for thousands of years, unfortunately. We're animals.
This is an amazing and shocking piece of reporting, excellent work by Ms. Barnard and the other reporters; this is an unfathomable horror story and we cannot become inured to the violence these people are subjected to. Not sure what concerned people should do as our government will do nothing, has never done enough, and the West in general looks on passively and the conflict is no longer in the news as long as ISIS seems to be a waning threat. That the prison survivors can go on and continue to help their fellows is astonishing. That Assad is being accepted back into the international fold is beyond sickening. Great work NYT,
6
It's clear that humans use physical abuse to retain power in the absence of adequate justice systems. It seems to be one of the many flaws in a large percentage of human characters. They do it locally (spouse abuse), nationally (Syria, South Africa before apartheid, many others), and supranationally (Guantanamo etc). Once the abuse process starts, the abuser and the abused are locked into a special relationship that indelibly marks the rest of their lives. The abuser constantly explaining, the abusee constantly remembering.
The only way to reduce the recurring cycle of abuse at each level is to block it from starting by resisting the corruption that makes it possible, and once started, the only thing that seems to work is justice and reconciliation after the fact, as happened to some extent in South Africa, Rwanda, Germany, and is just starting to happen in the U.S. post slavery.
If states want to engage Assad now in a sustainable rebuilding of Syria, they, including Russia, should insist on a process of truth and reconciliation, with implementation of a strong, U.N. supported justice system that respects the local context but does not allow religious extremists a foothold. There is no other solution...more violence will not solve this, and just keeping Assad in power as abuser in chief is not in anyone's interest, including Assad. He has to know that what he allowed to happen is horribly wrong, but he is stuck in the cycle.
1
We should not forget that our western governments have done NOTHING but empty threats to prevent this. We have been told that fighting ISIS was more important to fight al assad. We have been told lies. Fighting one does not prevent to fight the other. The truth is that we have been - once again - completely manipulated by Russia.
4
@Nicolas
You advocated our invasion of Syria and the US killing of Assad?
Goodness gracious, are we to blame ourselves for everything? Who here would not mind sending their son to save the Syrians? As the Israeli say the Middle East is a tough neighborhood. We now understand what mean
1
@HArriet KatzLet’s send the response would be the Donald’s own words and behavior.
No need to blame ourselves; though we should blame our politicians who decided al assad was the "least worse" option in Syria.
Sounds like the sorts of torture that CIA Director Gina Haspel used to oversee. Earlier (2002-2003) through the extraordinary rendition program, the US sent terror suspects to Syria to be tortured so that we wouldn't have to bloody our hands. The Syrian born Canadian, Maher Arar was sent there and tortured. Jimmy Carter wrote about his case in his book "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis." Jason Trask wrote about extraordinary rendition in his book titled I'm Not Muhammad. There were at least two movies about rendition: "Rendition" and "Extraordinary Rendition." From this article, you would think the Syrians had invented torture.
7
This is what journalism does: it prevents human beings in the most dire of situations from being forgotten and holds their tormentors accountable. This is the latest chapter in Ellie Wiesel's Night. How these survivor's endured the unimaginable horror of these conditions is beyond my comprehension. I only hope we reverse course to welcome those who need refuge and work to hold Assad accountable for his crimes against humanity.
4
Reading this article reminded me of the first time I read “Night”. When reading about the Holocaust, I couldn’t fathom why the Allies let it go on for so many years, until it was resolved simply as a byproduct of winning the war. The camps were only shut down when the front lines happened to pass through them. How could we sit by and watch this happen?
Now I’m again watching hundreds of thousands of people being tortured and killed, for years, and it keeps going on because fixing it simply isn’t a political priority for our government.
America has also supported dictators as well as torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. But it’s a false equivalency to say “America is just as bad”. We are not Syria, or Nazi Germany, or Stalin’s USSR, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Our leaders are not dictators. The majority of Americans are horrified by all torture and would support taking steps to end brutal regimes, even if our current leaders don’t seem to share that philosophy. We’re the only country in the world that can force a resolution to this human rights apocalypse and I’m sorry that we lack the political will to do so.
2
Every country in the world should cease all relations with the Syrian regime as well as the countries that support Al-Assad and company. It is inconceivable that any human being can excuse what has happened and continues to occur in Syria.
This is not just geo-politics. As Mr. Darwish noted, "this will not stay in Syria...justice is not a Syrian luxury...it's the world's problem". I cannot begin to fathom how anyone could view this any other way.
I admire the courage of those who have suffered and are struggling to survive. I hope for a better future for all and I hope that after reading this article, readers will send it to friends and family and everyone will ponder the implications of what they've read. Are we decent human beings or vicious beasts? Do we have compassion and believe in our common humanity?
Thank you to Anne Barnard and her team of reporters and writers and to the NY Times for this important piece.
Thank you to all those who were interviewed and shared your experiences. Your testimony is crucial and your courage deeply admired. My hope is that you all have happier tomorrows.
5
It’s hard not to feel like more could and should have been done to prevent this. ‘Red line’ notwithstanding.
It happened under Obama’s watch, along with the rise of Russian aggression under an increasingly arrogant Putin. I’m sure this is Obama’s biggest regret, but perhaps the desire to secure the Iran deal left him with little choice than to let Assad go.
2
Sadly, this is human behaviour at its most base level, when its gossamer thin veneer of civilisation is disrupted by divisive, autocratic governments.
Beware for what you wish Republicans.
2
The current Assad government has finally managed to eclipse the previous Assad government in its mistreatment of its own citizens. Although the article made for truly horrifying reading, the United States should do absolutely nothing. I worked as a DOD intelligence officer for over 20 years covering the Middle East. I speak Farsi and am well familiar with the region's history. No matter what the US does, the region's populace will be angry and bitter about it. So, let's save the blood and treasure and let the Syrians and their ridiculously rich Arab/Muslim neighbor states fix the problem.
2
This article was so disturbing, painful, amazing
and so completely encouraging. I will carry these stories with me forever. And as an activist, whenever I think the struggle is too hard, I will think of Mr. Ghabbash and all of the others that never gave up the fight, no matter what!
2
This horrific story is only a part of the price of Mr. Obama's failure to act when his infamous red-line was crossed by Assad and Assad used poison gas on his own people.
Another part of the price is the on-going immigration crises in the EU and how that will change the entire continent, for the worse. Everything Christian or Jewish is under assault, most especially churches and synagogues in France.
America and the West in general have consistently failed at confronting dictatorships from WW II (Germany, Japan, Italy), Korea, China, Russia, Venezuela, etc. We seem to think dictatorships can be dealt with through diplomacy in the long term. They cannot.
In the long term many more millions and millions die horrible deaths from our failure to act. And we are still doing it. We are still failing to act.
Who can forget "Peace in our time"? Neville Chamberlain's words still echo down the decades as we continue to fail at a great cost later on. I am wondering what the cost is going to be next.
1
The regimes, and ultimately the cultures, in most of the Middle East are tyrannical, intolerant of dissent and too eager to use brutal violence on innocents who cannot fight back. However, people everywhere are the same, and with technology and ideas we have changed the Western democracies over the decades (pre 1945 things were not very sweet in most of the West either, and if you are a woman or minority things have been difficult even in the West since then)
It is easy to blame Trump and his fondness of tyrants, or Obama and his unwillingness to send soldiers into Syria, etc... but the real problem we as Americans must contend with is a State Department and Defense Department which lack the understanding and wisdom it would take to reform the state of affairs in these nations. Our "top diplomats" sent a letter to Obama asking for bombing Syria, while our military leaders were cautioning against it. The Republican Congress was yelling at Obama for being a weak coward and not honoring his "red line", but when he asked them for the resolution to declare war on Syria they chickened out in both houses afraid to put their signature on anything.
We have a failed foreign policy because we have a failed foreign policy establishment. They are in the thrall of making money with the Chinese and other globalist merchants than they are in forming and implementing a sensible American foreign policy. We built the modern world post-1945, then have been selling ourselves out since 1981.
1
The solution is simple. Assad can not be toppled without creating Iraq #2. Get the people out. Every Syrian I've met has been kind, funny, hardworking, and family oriented. I'd be happy to have them as neighbors.
1
Donald Trump and far-right nationalists would love to put a secret prison system in place for political dissidents here in the US.
3
I called my Senator's office to tell them that people want to see some protections for our journalists. Including the ones Trump is baiting in little press pens at his ego-fests.
It is hard to read this information from Syria - I cant imagine discovering how hideous it is as a journalist because they obviously do not want people to have this information. You all are incredibly brave.
2
Trump allowed Putin and Iran to dominate in Syria with a disregard to human rights.
4
A dear, dear Arab friend, born Syrian, now a loyal Israeli citizen married and raising a second family, was imprisoned and tortured by Assad for 13 years. He never learned why. When freed he moved to Israel and became a fixer for WSJ. We were introduced by a reporter now working for a lead bank in Singapore after five years with Goldman. My friend knows his way around Gaza and the West Bank. When Morsi rose in Egypt, he was direct: he said he preferred Assad to Morsi. I was stunned. We who do not live there cannot know. The region seems awful, inexplicably messed up. And it is. But, strangely, some of the world’s kindest live there. I know many. We Americans must take care. The line between good and evil is thin. With ignorance, indifference and inaction we can doom a region. Or ourselves. Today we are flirting with trouble. We must not take our freedom and form of government for granted. Awaken to our own dysfunction, American.
Needed: wisdom. Judgement. Love for our neighbor.
4
When I read articles like this, it gets me angry that Israel is singled out for condemnation at the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the BDS movement -- when it is a democracy that holds every single misdeed accountable.
If these organisations weren't hijacked for political purposes and focused their efforts on abuse and torture where it actually exists, the world would be a better place.
7
Why should one being worse cancel out that the other is bad too. Isreal is better than the rest of the middle east but still does terrible, indefensible things. There are zero good countries in the middle east. They all are run in horrible ways and are human tragedies. It isn't the holy land, it is cursed earth.
4
This just brings to mind the insane allegiance that Mr. Trump has for dictators. I could see him supporting this kind of butcherous behaviour. Putin is not below that. He prefers poison, however.
21
This has little to do with Trump. The Syrian war raged since 2011 and Russia stepped in while Obama was president. Two different administrations with the same policy: bury your head in the sand.
3
@Pat Enjan Neither Obama nor George W. admired and fawned over dictators and murderous thugs, with the exception of the Saudis. Putin? Are you kidding me? Donald practically licks his boots!
1
Where is the call for BDS against Syria ?
26
@G
Syria has been under heavy sanctions for 9 years now.
2
Assad is evil, no serious US press coverage for years. Since Trump has been president. It’s funny how the bad leaders, the megalomaniacal narcissistic autocrats eat up all the new while thousands perish.
13
Kinda hard for Americans to take the moral high ground here when the head of the CIA ran a secret torture prison herself.
28
This is what sociopath Donald Trump would like to do with we never-Trumpers (as we are the least gullible United States citizens.) But, you'll have to go ahead and torture and murder me too as I will always hate Trump and his band of white nationalist Republicans.
17
Articles like this is why we need to continue to support organizations like the NYT, Guardian and the Intercept.
Thank you
61
@J Thank you very much; for sure this is an example of the kind of in-depth reporting that cannot be done without the support of subscribers and owners who are willing to invest in journalism.
30
@Anne Barnard
Anne, I second the thank you by J, above.
We are in a rough time right now, but truth will always prevail in the long run.
1
Let me add my thanks for an excellent article that I have read 3 times now - with a feeling of awe at the bravery and determination of those who are persecuted thus and still try and make a difference for their fellow human beings . A feeling of admiration for how skilfully this has been written and appreciation for the effort that had gone behind the scenes preparing this article.
And a feeling of shock that man can be so cruel - so cruel towards others who have a different opinion. My heart breaks ... as I realise that even children have been detained and tortured and killed this way.
Thank you . May we never forget what is happening .
2
The Syria options are Assad or (foreign-backed) religious fundamentalists. Increasingly the option is just Assad. Wake me up when they figure out the foreign intervention helps the locals. Or really: wake me up when they are interested in the calculus of the intervention that helps the locals, instead of the arithmetic of the intervention that helps get their de-facto employers money.
6
Autocratic rule, intolerance for the other, corruption, cruelty... Let this be a lesson for Americans who believe that checks and balances don’t mean anything and strongmen are somehow good for a nation.
19
Our CIA director ran a secret torture prison, we should remind ourselves.
24
@Franco51
Unlikely at this scale - and in any case - what does it matter?
2
Syria has been torturing prisoners for decades. In Israel it was well known that if you fall into the hands of Syria as a soldier - as a prisoner of war - you will be tortured. It is systematic. All Israeli prisoners of war after the 1973 Yom Kippur war were tortured - some driven insane. The Syrian regime is evil and countries who support them - especially Russia are no better.
55
So we’re talking about these now that Assad isn’t useful any more? Convincing.
7
One of the best thing’s that Americans can do to fight these crimes is to get rid of Trump. Then maybe moral leadership and even direct action maybe force the tinpot despots to wear the consequences of their crimes. With the despot’s friend in charge it is problem. Reading this who can forget that Torture was one of Bush’s misguided strategies to solve a problem. No gain for great damage of US’s moral stature.
21
Excuse me? These were happening under Obama’s first and second terms.
1
The article is about Assad and Obama couldn’t do a thing except draw red lines and not follow through.
1
And we're supposed to be appalled, shocked, surprised, aghast, outraged and overcome with emotion? Really? Is anyone surprised?
I'm not. I'd bet few of us are. Of course I'm upset and disgusted to read of these heinous crimes. But I'm not surprised or shocked. In fact I expected that sooner or later the horrors of the Assad regime would sooner or later come to light.
It's not the brutality of Assad that upsets me the most though. It was the obliviousness and naivete of Obama and his totally un-understandable reasons for not destroying Assad and his forces when he had the opportunity and the means.
When Assad gassed his own people and rained barrel bombs on thousands of innocents Obama was all but silent. Obama made a deal with Russians. When he did so he diminished the power of the United States to end the monstrous acts of inhumanity by Assad and his forces.
Obama, not a student of history and overly cautious, if not totally afraid of making an incorrect political decision about military intervention, failed not only the United States. Obama failed the masses of innocent Syrians, men, women and children who would go on to be slaughtered by Assad.
Obama, afraid to fail to keep his promises to his political base decided that votes were more important than human lives. Assad should have been bombed into oblivion. Instead a Nazi-like madman was turned loose without fear of reprisal.
My disgust is for Obama. His fear allowed and encouraged Assad to lead a slaughter.
23
@Jay So it is Obama's fault, not Assad's? And if bombing didn't work (as it often doesn't) and then led to intervention on the ground (as it often does),would that have helped?
9
I remember a very different set of events. Obama was determined that we should make strikes into Syria after the gassing at a school, killing numerous young people. He went to Congress, they would not vote to go in. He went to the UN and they turned him down. Obama wanted to go into battle on a moral, democratic footing and not like Bush’s war that was undertaken with a lie and, so, not a real consensus. No, blame the folks who were “disappointed” with Obama and didn’t go out and vote him a Congress that supported him.
1
@SB That's correct but Obama, fearful again of political reprisal, could have acted as commander in chief but abdicated his responsibility and instead asked Congress. A courageous, determined, fearless president would have acted in spite of Congress. He should have taken the risk and taken the heat from acting. He was a moral and ethical coward and a fearful, overly cautious president who lacked the skills to lead. A real leader, someone with understanding of the consequences of not acting would have stood tall and given the order to strike and destroy Assad's capability to deliver gas and barrel bombs. He should have faced down the Russians and prevented their foothold in Syria. The outcome of all events of that era could have been vastly different. Obama turned tail and ran. The result is tens of thousands dead, and tens of thousands more wounded, tortured, displaced, homeless, starving and subjugated peoples of Sryia.
Obama is totally responsible.
Isnt Mr. Trump's friend Putin a fan of Assad?
Why isnt that asked of him at every press conference- this is a genocide. Hideous cruelty.
21
Why didn't we do more? Why don't we do more? This is a stain on us all! Not the US, not Europe, not Asia, but all of us...year after year we ignored what we knew to be happening in Syria these atrocities. And now Assad stays and nothing happens to him and these monsters that perpetrated these acts? All because there are no natural resources, oil and otherwise, to care enough about...only for geopolitical reasons - now what happens, Russia, Iran and Syria continue to wreck havoc.....what future do our kids have in a world that enables these things to go unpunished and worse continue to function....
16
World leaders and governments who possess the power to stop or at least harass such atrocities, but who merely turn the other way or do little, need to be named as complicit in these crimes of war.
Clearly it is naive to expect that the call of human decency is a sufficient motivator.
8
In the 1950s, when the Syrian dictatorship received military support from Russia, the Russians also set up in Syria Soviet-style secret police and torture prisons.
Like in Russia or East Germany, the government recruited civilians to report to authorities anyone who thought differently and spoke with new ideas. Once fingered by tattletales, the offenders were kidnapped and disappeared into the torture prisons.
That Soviet-style police state has vanished from most of the world, but it is intact within the Syrian dictatorship.
It was in protest against that police state that the Syrian people rose in rebellion in 2011. Now any of them, who have not fled the country, will be rounded up and tortured to death.
9
Assad should not be allowed entry anywhere.Let nobody speak his name with respect. He went through medical school though I understand he was at best a middling eye surgeon.
Let his wife buy her gorgeous clothes online, no doubt horrendous suffering for her. May his children enjoy spending their lives in Syria and learn to hate him.
10
I wouldn't be surprised if these were run by Erik Prince's outfit...at a profit.
12
I can't help but to be skeptical of Anne Barnard writings. Virtually everything emanating from her writings of Syria has been about Assad atrocities yet France and our complicity at the eruption of the Syria conflicts has never been noted. Based in Lebanon, one has to wonder about her contacts and levels of biases - CIA? White Helmets? Saudis? Who knows!
10
Right up Trump alley , given who he consorts with!!
1
Another reason to cut off diplomatic relations with Russia, the protector of Assad.
12
Those who criticise Obama here should re-read the NYT summary of those in Congress who supported Obama's request to authorize a strike on Syria and those who didn't:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/07/us/politics/congress-quotes-on-syria-airstrikes.html
Of course, by 2013 things had already got out of hand and Obama's delaying of intervention due to bad advice and his own style of leadership meant that options were reducing.
The failure of the US Government - executive and legislative branches, both parties - to act upon the recommendations of experienced diplomats like Ford and the way the CIA abandoned the Syrians who dared to oppose Assad should not be forgotten.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33997408
10
Yes, and the United Nations also turned him down.
1
Putin is an ally to Syria and Assad. Trump is siding with Putin and ignoring this genicide. Now our religious organizations are siding with Trump who is turning their heads to this anti life behavior. The churches cannot be for life supporting Trump and are a fake religion by not speaking up.
10
Think this couldn't happen here? Think again.
7
@Somewhere
Well of course our CIA director ran a torture prison herself,so she’s got the proper experience.
7
The so called 8 years of revolt is a de facto civil war, instigated by possibly well meaning foreign actors. It would be useful to compare the results of the foreign intervention in Syria.
Assad was no democrat, nice guy or saint. Prior to the insurrection he killed hundreds, imprisoned thousands and ten thousends
1
@Pressburger continue:tens of thousands fled the country. The situation after the foreign improvement brigade involvement is the following: hundreds of thousands killed and millions fled. The only improvement was in the number of prisoners. They were not taken but shot.
1
What do you think did the 30- or 50 000 bombs to the Libyan people, delivered by the humane western countries with all the best wishes? (2011) Was that likewise ugly or uglier? How does one look like hit by a bomb 2, 10, or 50 yards away. Handsome?
3
Stories like this are all the more reason Trump and his alternative-reality creepers need to crawl back to the phoney lives they manufactured. Honest democracy is all we have that separates us between the horrible truth of Assad and his Russian supporters and a good society of great men and women seeking to speak the truth at all costs. Instead we are very far and getting further away from honestly these days.
Lies and spin are what motivates men like Assad and Putin, allowing control and power for very few over the very many. It allows them to torture and kill with impunity, to gain immeasurable wealth and to fake the truth until people become useful idiots for future personal gain, all whilst claiming they are protecting their people’s rights.
It’s a story that Trump plays every day, and suckers by the thousands line up to help him absorb power and ruin everything that has been gained. Trump would like nothing better than to have unlimited, unaccountable power over everything and everyone, just like these guys.
This is what Assad and Putin are today. This is the powerful playing games with the truth. There’s no hope to come from them.
Just ask, is Trump more like them or more like someone else? It’s all you need to know about how far and how fast America is falling. These are dangerous times.
15
If America is as horrible as so many commenters would have us believe, then why does every Russian here pretend to be an American?
8
What are we to do? Who wants to send their daughters and sons to overthrow Assad,and rebuild Syria? Do we have the national will to deploy the trillions of dollars,and millions of troops on the ground it would take to conquer and rebuild a country like Syria? We already have an American backed army of 75000 Kurds, freedom fighters, private contractors ,and 2000 Americans with nothing to do after defeating ISIS. What about Russia or Iran's response to a US invasion? What would turkey's reaction to us making an even stronger Kurd army? We got rid of Saddam for example How has that worked out for us? We destroyed the country and killed hundreds of thousands in the process. Starting a war to overthrow the Syrian government would create a refugee problem even more severe than it has been. I am sorry for what is happening,but without oil reserves to match Iraqs America has no interest in getting more involved
5
All the while, our fearless leader does nothing, lest he upset his man crush in Russia.
The same failure in Syria can be seen in North Korea, Venezuela and the Middle East, where all the bluster in the world won't change the President's impotence.
5
Clearly the hawks and the Military Industrial Complex plants in the Trump admin & Congress (not Trump/Putin but Pence, Pompeo, Burr) want to go to war with Shiite Iran and its satellite Syria while helping destroy its influence spheres in Yemen, Lebanon. This is in the interest of Israel & Saudi Arabia, who tactically coalesce around the goal to destroy the Shia regions while worrying about each other later. That's a strategic US and Israeli blunder and they'd done a cleverer job supporting and protecting Shia influence spheres as once these countries and populations are decimated, the Sunnis only got them left as their deadly enemy by dumb primitive religious presumption, and Israel and the
Christian West are much better off with a triad of reciprocal hostility as with a binary situation Sunni Islam versus Judaism / Christianity. It's a very short-sighted long-term strategy apart from the always disastrous fall-out of any war. A problem with religious extremism is that mutually assured destruction does not work out, as the infected with this belief system steeped in hardly reflected primitive dogma see it as getting imaginarily saved in their projected afterlife. The US should therefore do exactly the different thing from what they do: minimize its warring efforts, maximize incentives to cooperate peacefully and conviction efforts of the yuge advantages of peace and of embracing a more enlightened way to deal with one's cultural roots.
Instead we witness a disaster course.
6
This comment is a spin-off of a response on another meanwhile deleted comment. That's why it leaves the content of the article alone, the easy thing to do as it is hard to find words amidst the pain, sorrow, and disgust. Of course you'd want to take action to help stop such extreme mass torture practices but regime change would most probably only change the victims, as it would be as much a near-impossible task to prevent the new regime from targeting Alawites including innocent ones with retaliatory torture as it is today to prevent Assad from his twisted ways, in view of the precedents relevant Sunni actors set in this respect.
It doesn't make sense that Trump is both an ally of Putin and hellbent on destroying Iran. At some point the latter path will cross his allegiance to his biggest benefactor. Another optional explanation is that Putin is only a pretend ally of Syria and Iran for gaining war practice and picking up his part of the joint tab cynically keeping all involved combatant's arms profits soaring, and the GOP, Netanyahu, and MBS are in with Putin in a covert coalition of cynical opportunism to either entirely annihilate Shia rule or suppress Iran's oil sales while driving prices and dividing the oil profit cake among the US, the Saudi, and Russia. It's the one theory that perfectly explains everyone's moves and fits the mold of the GOP-NRA collusion.
It even factors in unleashing Shia terrorism on par with Al Qaeda and Isis: yay, more gun and security profits!
And the Assad's opposition is full of human rights activists? Give me a break. They use the same methods.
6
You know, I never used to think "If I write something particularly critical of the president in a comment page like this, should I worry? Will I face retaliation?"
Such a thought would have seemed silly.
Well now it is beginning to feel less silly.
Sure, we're not Syria, but in my honest opinion,
Trump has the moral scruples of Assad, Kim Jong-un,
Duterte...In other words, he has none. Zero.
So what's keeping me from the slippery slope that leads to being hung by my wrists? Our constitution, my fellow citizens, and the moral spine of our legislative and judicial branches. With those branches in increasing disarray, is it so silly to worry that typing what you feel may lead to something ugly down the road?
The only answer I can find is that NOT typing--not saying, not voting-- the truths you hold dear will only hasten the slide.
So, call my concerns silly, but please continue to type while you still can, with both wrists free.
A dark basement somewhere is no the place to start standing up for your basic human rights.
31
What can I do? What can we do? So disturbing, so hateful and I don't know how to end it. Are we helpless?
5
The cruelty of humans seems to be limitless and unimaginable. Such a sad indictment of our species. Over and over and over again, throughout history, the same thing. Do we ever evolve beyond it?
11
Cruelty is hardly the limit of our bestiality as naked apes. What of the displacement of rational thinking by blind faith? the rejection of science in favor of superstition and primitive religiosity?; the subversion of a diverse, pluralistic society by rank tribalism?; the ascendancy of hatred and fear over compassion and tolerance?
We are not so far removed from our brethren in Syria as we might wish; and nothing exemplifies the contrast between our greater and lesser selves--between the sublime and the brutish--as poignantly as the contrast between the previous occupants of the White House and the current ones. Admittedly, there's a substantial difference in scaling, but the basic aspects of our humanity are essentially the same. And there, but for the grace of fortune go us all.
U.N. Human Rights Commission? A world condemnation is appropriate even if members would not go for punitive measures.
How naïve a suggestion!
2
People complain that these perpetrators will not be punished.
You can thank the United States for that--it has refused to ratify the convention for the International Criminal Court.
Mainly because a lot of American war criminals would end up there.
Instead, Congress adopted "The Hague Invasion Act" to liberate any American war criminals brought before the ICC.
Nothing like standing up for honor, the law, human rights.
It's a lot easier to vituperate about it.
15
Isn't that one of the places that the CIA set up their secret prisons for interrogation and torture post 911?
We semi-outsourced a lot of that to people like this, and so while, yes, it is horrid, and it is a part of warfare, which is why warfare needs to be eliminated as a Business (national and international weapons, arms, armor and munitions manufacture sales should all be banned, practicioners treated as war criminals).
But WE, the USA did the same thing under Cheney/Bush so we cannot go crowing about our own Human Rights Record, as even China has pointed out, sadly rightfully so. And when China chides you correctly, then you need to sit up and really take notice.
This is looking more and more like a Chickenhawk warmongering rush to get us into a war to take the pressure off from the Republican Party for their criminal activity in supporting a President who has Visibly, Willfully and Knowingly broken the law, bragged about it, and has gotten a pass from the Senate just because it is controlled by a hyperpartisan of his own party.
Even Nixon was taken down by his Own Party, but that was when Republicans in Office still had Progressive Social mores and Conservative Financial mores as well as actual consciences and worked to follow the Law, rather than work as hard as possible to ignore, obstruct of break not only the Law, but proper actions of Governing in general.
These prisons are via Dick Cheney's CIA interventions in the region: Pot, meet Kettle.
15
I would be interested in a critical comparison between Anna Barnard’s condemnation of Syria as a torture state and the book „The Dirty War on Syria“ by Australian political scientist Tim Anderson who claims that the West, while massively arming opposition groups in Syria, has demonized Assad with horror stories in order to acchieve regime change.
16
This was a very difficult article to read as was the one about the war in Yemen. Thanks for reporting it. I wonder about humans. This capacity for savagery that seems unabated over time despite all the progress we have made and our understanding of the natural world. I though that the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda were modern day aberrations. Sadly it seems to me that we have to accept this violence as part of the human condition on this planet.
12
Where is the U.S. on leadership in this? We're utterly lost.
4
@David: Our "leadership" has mostly consisted of supporting Salafist terrorists in fomenting civil war, in hopes of regime change. It hasn't worked.
What, exactly, would you prefer to see?
4
Wake up! What a surprise! There is a Muslim country in the middle east that is run by ruthless dictators, just like all of the rest of them. After Turkey went down ill, I lost all hope for the Arab Spring. I a a Vietnam veteran and I can say without reservation that the idea of changing a government in the area by using military force is absolute folly. The proof is in the history of European colonization after the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1918. In the end, they all go home. Unfortunately, these decisions are increasingly made by persons who have never seen war in a foreign country.
11
This hits hard for me. I’ve been following the civil war for some time, but was particularly mindful of it as the Kurdish forces battled the Islamic state. Through it all I was constantly reminded that the most brutal of the factions was the Assad regime. Thousands of barrels bombings, starving out their own civilians, and the torture. The torture was nothing new, anyone who pays attention knows just how brutal Assad was behaving.
And to my point, Tulsi Gabbard. She went on a secret mission to meet with Assad several years ago behind the backs of the Dem leadership. She labeled all of Assad’s opponents as terrorists and stated that Assad should remain in power. I cannot even look at her without feeling disgust. And this is coming from someone who agrees with most of her policies.
Assad has terrorized his people for 8 years now. We should not ever negotiate with terrotists.
10
If you think it can't happen here, think again. It doesn't take much to transform a very flawed democracy into an authoritarian nightmare, especially when government officials view journalists as "enemies of the people," demonize political opponents, show no respect for the law or judicial precedent, and encourage ethnic and racial hatreds.
47
Obama did this. Remember his red line ?
3
@Neil B Obama wasn't trying to turn the US into a dictatorship. His "red line" speech has nothing to do with what I wrote above.
1
Alas, if we truly had a “smart” weapon, or an effective international criminal court, Assad could have either been blown to to pieces or sitting in a Den Hague jail cell. Despots the world over and the wannabes are watching closely.
6
This is a difficult article to read but one very important to read. As far as priority President Obama should have placed the torture of innocent victims first on his list. He drew a red line in the sand. Assad crossed it. And Obama did nothing. Communicating that the U.S. gave the monsters free reign. A complex problem, yes, fraught with geopolitical dangers, but a civilized nation ought never to allow it. This planet of ours is far too small to turn our backs on man's inhumanity to man wherever we may find it.
8
If you recall, Russia intervened and convinced the world that Assad would dump his chemical weapons. it appeared that Russian intervention had worked. Do you advocate bombing Syria for agreeing to dispose of the weapons?
2
Nadler has demanded that the entire report be provided without any redaction and that he will hold someone in contempt if that doesn't happen within the next three hours.
3
The United States government has maintained a consentration camp in the Eastern Cuba for years where the personnel torture inmates.
20
Torture ended at Guantanamo some time ago.
1
Well, hooray then.
1
"Torture" is a broad spectrum. Sleep deprivation and noise torture, for example, are acceptable under current treaties. What Assad engages in is unacceptable under any treaty. Also, the inmates at Guantanamo are enemy combatants, not our own citizens.
1
The" peacefull demonstrations" purpose was to overthrough the Shite administrationand replace it by a Sunnite one.
The Shiite governement ( Assad) was not about to abandon power and if that required violence, war and persecutions, so be it was his reply.
As pointed out in another comment, replacing Assad by Isis which was the plan, would not have brought peace and happines to the Syrians
No more than eliminating and killing Khadafi, who also tortures oponents, has made the Lybians better off.
Same thing for Sadam Hussein. We" got him", so what.
Criticizing these dictatorial regimes is easy; Replacing them is not.
Unless we are ready to wage a kind of colonial war to bring "peace" by military force.
Any volonteers?
16
How do these Syrian prisons and torture chambers compare to the ones run by W, Cheney and Gina Haspel, our current leader of the CIA?
155
@Bascom Hill
I expect they fare very badly in the comparison. But that comparison would require an open mind and willingness to look beyond facile, tendentious analogies.
56
Why?
6
@Bascom Hill
why are some Americans( you sir) so shallow that they view EVERYTHING through the goggles of American politics?
Must everything be used as a political bludgeon?
30
What do you think how a civil war is fought, instigated by foreign countries? Civilized? Dream on. The fighters, who were trained and armed and supported by foreign countries are always seen as the worst traitors and get, what they deserve in the minds of their enemies. How civilized would you treat your fellow citizens, who are fighting and killing you with Chinese and Russian, or may be Venezuelan arms, to bring you a new kind of government?
10
This is not our problem and we should not get involved. The US is not without sin when it comes to the treatment of political prisoners. Fewer people would have died if everyone wasn't assisting in toppling Assad. There once was a valid opposition but unfortunately, they were infiltrated by various other Muslim factions with various agendas, which caused a civil war which has killed more people than Assad has. Let the Syrians battle this out themselves.
11
With generous help from the Russians, right? No one who is against US intervention seems to be calling for them to step out of Syria. Why is that?
8
>>> "No one who is against US intervention seems to be calling for [the Russians] to step out of Syria. Why is that?"
I know this is hard for most Americans to understand, but Russians are in Syria by invitation of the internationally-recognized government. Syria has been a member of the UN since 1945.
You may not like or approve of the Assad regime -- it's not a very attractive bunch -- but it is the government of a sovereign nation and has every right to decide whom it want to invite into its territory.
10
@Douglas
"Sovereign nation" is pushing it. The Syrian "government" represents Alawites and some Christians, perhaps 20% of the population.
Obama's decision not to enforce the 'red line' was one of the most egregious strategic miscalculations of his presidency. Led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, and long-term destabilization of Middle East and Europe.
5
While this was going on the world was busy screaming at Syria's neighbor, Israel, for "war crimes," the crime being fighting Hamas that acts exactly the same way. Queue the excuses, whataboutisms, and double standards...
18
And absurdly criticizeIsrael for holding the Golan Heights.
6
This sounds like a bad action movie, but it's real.
When will we learn?
1
We already knew the Syrian state is not a beacon of freedom and democracy. That doesn't give the United States an excuse to foment insurrection, arm Islamic extremists, impose sanctions (economic terrorism) and otherwise destroy an entire nation.
The photos of torture victims and others who suffered under Assad while his regime was hanging on by a fingernail (pun intended) against U.S. aggression is another insidious attempt at "manufacturing consent" to finish the original objective of Regime Change.
10
Huge mistake by NATO & President Obama not to work with Syrian revolutionaries to oust Assad. Putin & Iran have seized the initiative to Israel's and the West's detriment. A huge cost to the Syrian people.
15
Why does an important newspaper like the NYT not have correspondents on the ground in Syria but need to rely on third-party accounts from "humanitarian" organizations based elsewhere? I learned not to believe stories like after my experience in Iraq. The formula is always the same. Either it's "babies torn away from incubators", "Weapons of Mass Destruction", "Torture & Poison Gas", etc...Do you actually believe that Assad would imprison objective Western journalists & cause a backlash & more military intervention? So far the only journalists murdered over there have been in the hands of Jihadists trained by & armed by Saudi Arabia & our Western intelligence services.
19
I grew up in Syria, your assessment is not accurate, the story is very real, reflective of facts on the ground
13
The title should also read, “ How Assad continues to crush dissent.” The aftermath of such horror continues to effect the silencing of any criticism in an authoritarian world. We, onlookers, become silenced by our fear of stepping on an IED of involvement which kills our military, our own sensibilities, our compartmentalizing our world, and our expecting to be able to control the rest of the world’s conflicts. The UN only do so much if any justice is disabled by vetoes on the Security Council, as ineffective as the League of Nations were in preventing World War 2. Are we afraid of the entanglement of intervention would cause WW3?
2
@Boston Born
The US is morally/ethically compromised in this situation.
After all, the US has sent people to Syria to be tortured.
The head of the CIA oversaw US torture.
If the US set a better example, the world would be better.
6
A morally convicting piece. For years, I reluctantly defended Assad as the best of a series of bad possible choices. No more. This article reveals systematic torture rivaling that of the Gulag. Many thanks for publishing this!
8
Nothing emboldend Assad like the Obama red line blunder. The entire Mideast was in shock when the US, at the time the worlds greatest power, threatened to intervene if the slaughter got to the point of Assad gassing people. When it happened, Obama asked congress what do! What to do? You just told the world there would be grave consequences and you amassed a ready military force. The grave consequence was asking congress? Game over. Talk to anyone who was over there at the time. It was like and earthquake of silence. Russia moved in and Assad kicked the killing into high gear. The american press has done its best to minimize and rationalize this event but in the Mideast, where Obama did not benefit from this buffer, this event remains an historic abandonment. Like seeing a mugging/assault on the subway of a helpless child and you keep walking. I am so proud of Barack.
10
@DJ Uhhh... You and a lot of others seem to forget in your "Obama red line gas story". Russia stepped in and stopped the consequences Obama had threatened by brokering a deal between Assad and the U.S. to move the bio/gas weapons out of the country. Of course we all know there still seems to be some gas still there....
3
It is tragic that dictators have to torture people to maintain their grip on power. This story should make us in the West thankful that we don't have to experience such horrors because we disagree with our government. China seems to be doing these same types of tortures to the Muslims and house church Christians of their nation. There is no one to tell Xi what he can't do.
5
It probably doesn't matter that the timing of this expose is that of the cusp of the Syrian government's put down of the aggression which has severely compromised the infrastructure of the country. This aggression has been fomented by the U.S. and the Zionists. Mind you, the severity described is not to be condoned, albeit the setting gives the impression of requiring harsh measures. The attempt at overthrowing the government was appalling in itself. Hands off Syria should be observed from now on. The government will begin to benefit the Syrian people, once the political economic system is stabilized and reconstruction aid begins to flow into the country.
7
We can have ISIS or Assad. It is a terrible choice that the people of Syria face but it is their decision to make. I am going to treat them like the autonomous human beings they are and simply wish them luck and a bright future whatever they end up deciding.
9
Syria is in a war, and there are rebels threatening to topple the government and sow chaos. In these circumstances, of course people allied with rebels need to be arrested and treated as enemy combatants. It’s the most basic of government that uprisings need to be crushed.
9
When I see video of Trump and his rally mobs I know there are among them men and women who would do these things to other human beings.
They don't know it now even of themselves but they are there just as they have been there in Syria, have been there in every despotic regime from the Nazi to the Soviet to the South African Apartheid regime, to every lesser despotism.
It would be naive to think such people do not live among us. They always have, they always do.
53
@Carl Zeitz
his rally mobs I know there are among them men and women who would do these things to other human beings.
________
A preposterous insult, and merely stating that such are "among them" does not exculpate you. This is a beautiful example of why our civic discourse is cratering.
7
@Wine Country Dude Uh Huh and then we read they talk at t's rallys about shooting people who come across the border.
4
It is hardly preposterous, given what Trump supporters at his rallies have cheered for. They cheered when he endorsed torture and killing terrorists' families, so it's hardly a stretch.
8
in 2015 already,
étienne huver and sophie nivelle-cardinale documented
these atrocities. they did not make headlines then. why?
we have been supporting too many dictators for too long.
we tolerate outrageous amounts of suffering worldwide.
whether in yemen, libya, the congo, afghanistan, venezuela
and other regions plagued by conflicts these days.
add all the migrants nearly starving in african refugee camps
these days and all the modern slaves who sew our clothes
in faraway places for a dollar or less a day ...
scientists keep reminding us that - overall -
living conditions have been constantly improving. GOOD.
so we have to worry less about those who fare better now.
that does not diminish by one bit all the misery
the northern/western lifestyle has been causing
millions of people in the global south.
northern comfort rests on southern backs suffering.
5
The US tortures.
The head of the CIA oversaw torture.
The US sent people to Syria to be tortured.
And the US considers itself to be "the Exceptional World Leader"... so maybe Assad is following the US example...
The point of this gruesome accounting must be to either set the stage for more US bombing, killing... or to justify the death, suffering and the wrecking of Syria.
The CIA has interfered or managed coups in Syria since 1949.
More recently, in 2012, a leaked diplomatic cable told that the US was working to destabilize Syria in order to create opposition that would overthrow Assad.
Typical US activity...
A growing share of people around the world see U.S. power and influence as a “major threat” to their country" https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/14/more-people-around-the-world-see-u-s-power-and-influence-as-a-major-threat-to-their-country/
The US could be so much better. And if the US cannot be a more decent world leader, it deserves to lose its world leader status.
16
@Lucy Cooke
Exactly!!!!
5
This is the most perverse pro-Assad argument I think I’ve ever seen.
There’s only one real question about this mass murderer and mass torturer: what can we do about him?
12
@Robert
"Perverse" is charitable.
9
Reminds me of those photos of GIs holding naked Iraqis with leashes around their necks. Couldn't tell; were they making their prisoners bark, too?
22
@Sherry
Really, we don't know how much of it is true. We have seen photos of starving children in Yemen and nothing was said by people in responsible positions.
3
@Sherry
An interesting rhetorical jab, but you ignore the difference in scale, and the difference between a rogue prison and systematic, organized, country-wide torture led from the top.
6
Make no mistake about it, the one who knew about this.. the so called liberal Obama and John Kerry. Simply they didn't care. Both sold Syrian rebels way before Isis and Nusra were in the picture, so he can take the Iranian nuclear weapons program. That is why Assad got away with using Chemical weapons that Mr. Obama called a red line. Obviously it was a green line!!
By the way, there is an Arms embargo on the rebels from day one; everybody knows that few surface to air missiles and the game is over to Assad and Putin long time ago. Even to this date.
Ironically, NY Times David Kirkpatrick wrote a whole book, but on the Egyptian Arab spring and how the Obama Administration behind the curtain helped the Sisi coup. They cared less about democracy and human rights. Hear him at NPR's Freshair here. You be the judge. As late as 2016, John Kerry was calling Mursi's party (MB) and al-Qaeda are the same.
https://t.co/qUsYLk2Sma
Therefore if the liberal behave this way (Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry), what do you expect from popular nationalists?
13
The whole world has disproportionately focused on Israel while ignoring tragedies occurring in many other Arab countries. One can understand why Arab leaders want the strife in Israel to continue indefinitely because it provides a major distraction from their own internal human rights abuses.
13
United Nations Security Council, isn't it time to say something?
8
@kagni
Are you kidding? With Russia and China as permanent members?
The UN is hopeless, and truthfully, it was never created to impose itself by force.
1
This is the regime Tulsi Gabbard, who's now running for president in the Democratic race, visited and then stated, "the regime seeks peace." Peace through torture, peace through rape maybe - but not peace as any American would know it.
15
Gabbard is as Russian-backed as Trump. I see Russian trolls promoting her all the time.
8
@Shane. Absolutely. In fact, Gabbard has enlisted the help of some of the most outrageous and repellent Assad apologists.
3
Seems we have not given up on regime change in Syria, by one means or another. Many will take these charges more seriously when our media publishes how many we have killed and maimed in our wars since 2000. Also include 3rd party jihadists supported by our tax dollars.
5
Of all people, I would think the Israelis, with their powerful military, would do something besides remain silent while their neighbors suffer and die.
3
@Hector could you be more specific? Israeli doctors have treated many victims of Syrian war, who are afraid to be identified as Israeli patients.
IMO there are no "good guys" in Syrian war, between Islamic State proponents and Assad, neither has any interest in sparing human lives.
3
Israel has repeatedly given medical help to victims of the Syrian war. What othe kind of intervention would you suggest? Neither side of the Syrian conflict would welcome Israel's involvement.
7
Thank you to The New York Times for exposing this. Let history know that humanity either sat on the sidelines (mostly due to a sociopathic "leader of the free world") or was complicit in the torture and killings - for which Iran and Russia are guilty.
5
This should have been dealt with years ago under Obama. If Trump wanted to start a war, this would be the place to do it, with great justification. However, as we know Trump is both a coward and an imbecile, squarely in the pocket of Syria's protector, Putin. Many may say America is not the protector of the world - but if we had a coherent strategy, we could be. Instead we alienate allies and break promises to countries at the whim of the imbecile-in-chief Trump.
7
Why is anyone surprised? We'd be more surprised if they did not exist. We've known about them for years and Obama certainly did nothing about it. Not sure what he could have done about anything. By the way, the purpose of torture is torture.
3
well folks, when you call Trump a dictator, it certainly detracts what a true dictatorial regime looks like. We can't even detain illegals who break our laws, yet we call Trump a dictator which gives coverage to a regime like this.
5
Are you referring to the Trump who talks about arresting his political ‘enemies’ and the press? That’s one of his big applause lines at his MAGA rallies of white folks.
2
I recommend Omar Offendum’s rap, Crying Shame. Google it and listen.
One day the muderous Assad regime will pay for what they did to our homeland and our people. Even if the courts and the international community looked on in silence, the Assad’s will pay for what they did.
2
It isn't any of our business who rules in Syria--or in Iraq or Iran or Libya for that matter. Obama's intervention in Syria is largely to blame for the civil war going on there as long as it has in all of its cruel intensity.
8
Why is Dr. Assad still breathing fresh air, when so many Syrians are not?
5
Don't look to the United States to care about a little thing like torture.
Noah Feldman gives and example:
"...take the decision by President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice not to prosecute anyone for unlawfully waterboarding al-Qaeda suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks. There was ample evidence for criminality, including the fact that the waterboarding far exceeded even the permissive guidelines issued by the Office of Legal Counsel. But the Obama administration determined that a torture prosecution of his predecessor’s administration wouldn’t be desirable."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-24/trump-won-t-face-obstruction-of-justice-charge-off-mueller-report
5
Christiane Amanpour covered this on her CNN show in 2014. I remember the program distinctly. A doctor had smuggled out Tens of Thousands of Photos of individual corpses of Syrians of all ages who had been tortured to death.
Nothing was done. Nothing. Valerie Jarrett, Special Advisor to President Obama -- who spent her early childhood in Iran while her parents ran a hospital there -- was vehemently opposed to any kind of US action, including surgical strikes that would be "like pinpricks."
This was all covered. Again and again. Always with the same result: Lavrov leading the US side around by the nose, to Putin's infinite amusement. While children were being raped, young people literally shredded in Assad's dungeons, and randomly grabbed people driven mad by their own and loved ones' tortures.
What do we see today? Not only are Iran & Russia dividing Syria between them (until the day when, inevitably, they square off against each other for the oily spoils), but there's a liar in the Oval being controlled by Moscow.
And the great FBI "Special Counsel's Report"? It neither "determined" nor "recommended" anything definitive.
Effectively giving Putin's side a pass. After all, what's the Constitution but an old piece of paper, not even written in Russian, signed by a bunch of British expats, all now dead?
Thank you for your service, Robert Mueller? Thank you?
(Are you sure you made the right call, Ms. Jarrett? In hindsight?)
5
Let us remember the Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, who the US kidnapped in New York in 2002 and sent to Assad for torture under the "Extraordinary Rendition" program in Syria. Untold thousands were kidnapped by the US and sent to be tortured by the most vile regimes around the world. Unknown numbers were murdered and disappeared. That's when Assad was the good torturer because did the bidding of the US. Like when the Shah of Iran was a good torturer. Or the Guatemalan dictatorship. Good torturers. Now Assad is a bad torturer. Bad Assad. Do what you're told and you can rejoin the ranks of the good torturers. I hope the people of Syria do get to justice to Assad. I also hope the people of Chile can do justice to Kissinger, and the long list of murderers and torturers in Washington.
9
Hmmmm this seems oddly familiar. I wonder why...?
1
My god, the evil man is capable of.
Sometimes I think if god exists, maybe he should just turn the lights out and be done with us. We're destroying the planet and each other. That a monster like al-Assad is walking around free, and no one is doing anything about it is hard to believe, yet he is. And we have our own despot in waiting, taking note.
1
How quickly you would have us forget when the US sent kidnapped prisoners to Syria to be tortured by Assad's regime. That was called "extraordinary rendition" but that was the good kind of torture. It was and is a bipartisan program. Democrats and Republicans do love their torturers, as long as they torture for and with the USA. How many dictatorships trained to torture and kill by the US Rangers and Special Ops? Remember Pinochet and the Guatemalan genocide? How about the 50,000 killed by US torturers under the CIA Phoenix Program in Vietnam? Let us recall the 500,000 Indonesians killed with the assistance and blessing of the US in 1965. Yes Assad is a mass murderer but he doesn't come up to the shoelaces of the US.
13
I would be beyond ashamed to write an article about secret torture prisons while Guantanamo still exists.
U.S. presidents don't like what other rulers do or say. The other rulers of country after country are "dissidents". And so, the U.S presidents crush them with the CIA, F-1 fighters, nukes, and of course, waterboarding. Or they just open fire on their own citizens during protests (Kent State Massacre).
Again, I would be beyond ashamed to write an article about secret torture prisons while Guantanamo still exists.
15
"Yet Mr. al-Assad and his lieutenants remain in power, safe from arrest, protected by Russia with its military might and its veto in the United Nations Security Council. At the same time, Arab states are restoring relations with Damascus and European countries are considering following suit."
One can always count on Europe to do what is right: for Europe.
One wonders what would have happened if Mr. Obama had actually come through on this threat to react if Syria crossed certain red lines (e.g. as in Mr. Assad gassing his own people). We know what happened when he did not react or when he continued not to react to the horrors inflicted on Syria by its leader, e.g. Aleppo.
Mr. Trump can be faulted for much, but Syria in all its bloody glory, including its torture prisons is on Mr. Obama's plate.
8
No more foreign adventures.
We have our own problems to fix.
5
Obama should have declared war on Syria. We should not be afraid to do things to make the world right.
122
@Paul Schejtman
The reason people are being tortured right now is because of the wars we started in the middle east. Endless war is not the answer.
38
@Paul Schejtman
With some possible positive outcomes ? Please show examples
11
@Paul Schejtman Easy for you say. If ya had a kid, would you invest him or her, send 'em into yet unwinnable war, somewhere on a Middle minefield/desert? Anyone who thinks some quick and easy invasion in the tinderbox of the Middle East is going to rid the region of despots and dictatorships is kidding themselves. Has America's longest war ever not taught us this yet? Those who forget even recent history are gonna be condemned to repeat it. Next stop Tehran.
36
It's hard to stomach that hardly anyone of these thugs will ever be prosecuted.
118
@Christian Schultz
What is Merkle going to do about it?
3
Syria is what happens when the psychopaths win.
Beware.
274
@AG
Yes, and let us not forget what Putin is -- Putin, who made so much of what Assad has done possible.
And now Putin's installed his puppet to rule over us.
Did you watch TRMS interview James Baker, Former General Counsel to the FBI? Please watch that.
These smug, vainglorious & largely ineffectual people are "alarmed" by what they see happening to America.
Alarmed. It's May 2019, and they are still "alarmed."
22
@AG
Ditto for America.
3
@AG: Whose pyschopaths? The ones from America who destabelized the whole area?
It is hard to condemn "regime change" after learning of the atrocities committed under the regime of Assad. Nevertheless, replacing Assad with ISIS hardly seems to be the solution to the elimination of evil in places like Syria.
79
@RLW Assad actually benefited from ISIS to remain in power.
@RLW Who said the regime would be replaced with ISIS? you should check out the incredible resistance groups outside/In Syria that are secular and advocate for a rule of democracy and the rule of law. ISIS is on its last breath unless revived by some western power.
2
@Lena With the exception of some of the Kurdish groups (who are neither capable of nor interested in running Syria as a whole), every last rebel group in Syria is Islamist to some degree.
These are crimes that are too evil for forgiveness
157
@Mgaudet
Forgiveness is a matter for the next world. In this world we can only seek justice.
4
@Sendero Caribe
Of course, Assad himself agrees with you. So now perhaps you have some insight as to why he prefers to punish and/or torture. Of course he prefers to call it justice, not revenge. The spiral of violence continues.
6
@Mgaudet
The minds of the men who commit these crimes will hold the sounds, smells, and the visual memories of what they've done. While it may seem a small justice, they will never sleep peacefully. They KNOW what they've done. They will probably never forgive themselves - a fate worse even than judgment by another. Their evil lives INSIDE them and they will never be free in this world. These people have the worst disease of all - insanity.
Years ago I was getting my hair cut and I read a profile complete with beautiful pictures of Assad and his chic wife in a glossy lifestyle magazine and how thy live a comfortable friendly life surrounded by loving neighbors. I thought “wow, this is what PR for an authoritarian butcher feels like....”
Of course, the “neighbors” were likely bodyguards, and the piece was part of a deliberate, cynical strategy to mask the truth of a brutal regime.
180
@Mary McCue Barbara Walters interviews Mrs Assad and spoke in glowing terms for how cultured she was. I wanted to vomit when I read about it.
62
@Mary McCue That's horrific, don't get me wrong. I certainly hate Assad and Assad enablers. But Western media does those sort of tactics to humanize politicians with atrocious ideas. I mean, every article regarding Trump should start as, "Donald Trump, a likely sociopath, with narcissistic personality disorder, who is a pathological liar..." But media tends to humanize even the worst of tyrants. I mean, how many front-page articles have we seen about the fascistic Balsonaro keeping Lula (the man who pulled tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty and was on his way to re-election) in prison for decades? How many Sunday shows have incredibly immoral people like Pence on to humanize his abhorrent ideas? How many articles are written about the COUP happening in Venezuela? Guaido is humanized, despite trying to overthrow the government. If the same situation were happening here, Guiado would've been thrown into prison and likely given a life sentence -- if not death. "Manufacturing Consent" isn't just a name of a great book, but it's also how people like MBS get humanized. The guy ordered a journalist to be butchered, and just months before was on a publicity tour propagated up by Western media.
I hear your point, but it goes much, much deeper than Assad.
35
@Mary McCue
I remember a glowing profile in the New York Times magazine about his wife Asma, a London-educated British citizen who got her MBA from Harvard. Bashar got his MD in London. The story made them sound like a Westernized couple who were trying to modernize their country. They knew enough to hire PR firms. Kind of difficult to reconcile with the stories of torture.
But then, it's hard to reconcile JFK and his beautiful wife with Cuba and Vietnam.
15
Although this is not a complete surprise, still it is truly shocking. One has to wonder how one human being can be so cruel to another.
In Canada the barbaric torture in Syrian prisons were revealed by a government commission of inquiry investigating the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian of Syrian descent who was detained by the US authorities in 2002 at Kennedy Airport on the suspicion of being an Al Qaeda member.
Following two weeks of solitary confinement without charges, US authorities sent Mr. Arar to Syria (not to Canada!), where he was repeatedly and savagely tortured. After spending a year in Syrian prisons, thanks to Canadian and International pressure, Mr. Arar was released and declared "completely innocent".
The Commission revealed that Mr. Arar's detention and transfer to Syria was a case of "extraordinary rendition." In fact Mr. Arar was not alone and there were others sent to Syria by the US to be tortured. That raises the unsettling question: Were US rendition cites any different from Mr. Assad's prisons? Based on the accounts of the torture and prisoner abuse in Abu Gharib, it appears that not much separates the US government from the Syrian regime.
Given the criminal nature of what Assad and his top security people are doing, undoubtedly they need to be dragged to the International Court of Justice and prosecuted. But then the next unsettling question: Why the same principle should not apply to Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and all those involved in Abu Gharib?
9
Report what you may, yet I recently watched PBS special about Syrian refugees resettling within Germany and each one of them said they flight from Syria was due to fears of "rebel fighters" -whom we know are US backed.
None, at least from that report, said they fled because of Assad.
11
The survivors' accounts are hauntingly reminiscent of my current re-reading of Primo Levi's 'Survival in Auschwitz', except worse. While the US certainly stands on no moral high ground, the international community's inaction and diminishing of US power certainly bodes poorly for any semblance of an orderly world for the foreseeable future.
6
Outraged at this horror? We've no right at all.
These are the same torture prisons, run by the same Syrians, to which the US rendered prisoners including a Canadian arrested in NYC.
Canada tried to make that right for its own citizen, but still to this day the US resists any effort to make it right.
When Assad's torturers did that for the US, there were present US agents, sent from DC, and reporting back to DC what happened. With approval. That went right up to the VP himself, not hidden in some dark corner of government.
14
@Mark Thomason. Maher Arar’s torture at the behest of the CIA and RCMP was reported on from November of 2002. I know this because my partner broke the story with the help of human rights lawyers based out of Michigan & NY. The story was deeply unpopular at the time and it was a major feat for the truncated story to make air.
You will recall that German prosecutors sought the arrest of several CIA officers for their use of torture. Germany is now seeking the arrest of top regime officials & has arrested Syrians in Germany for participating in the regime’s war crimes.
Is it really impossible to condemn the CIA and Assad?
@Mark Thomason. Maher Arar’s torture at the behest of the CIA and RCMP was reported on from November of 2002. I know this because my partner broke the story with the help of human rights lawyers based out of Michigan & NY. The story was deeply unpopular at the time and it was a major feat for the truncated story to make air.
You will recall that German prosecutors sought the arrest of several CIA officers for their use of torture. Germany is now seeking the arrest of top regime officials & has arrested Syrians in Germany for participating in the regime’s war crimes.
Is it really impossible to condemn the CIA and Assad?
Having bicycled from Istanbul to Egypt in 2007, I consider myself qualified to say the the Syrians are the nicest people I've ever met. How horrible for this to happen to them. And how horrible that the perpetrators are also Syrian.
If it can happen in Syria, it can happen anywhere.
223
@Bill
Yes. Curiously it happens mostly in one very limited part of the World, in terms of geography. And in recent history, si. E say 1945, only “there”.
I wonder why ...
3
@Bill
No, it cannot happen "anywhere." Syria may be populated with "nice people," but they are accustomed to brutality and authoritarianism. The American people and other like us are most certainly not.
6
@Frank J Haydn Surely you are being ironic? Americans clearly can be just as bloodthirsty -- Gitmo, for example. What we maybe do not do is perpetrate such atrocities on our own lower 48 -- which is probably the reason the GOP did no permit detainees there to be moved to prisons, even those as bad as in Alabama, to our soil. Beware the $1 billion the Dept of Homeland Security has announced it is going to use to build "detention centers" on the southern border. Dachau started out as a detention center for political prisoners....
1
Mr. al-Assad is a cruel tyrant of the worst sort. But it is not clear what the west can do.
Blaming the horrors in Syria on President Trump, as this article does, is a simply wrong. It would be more accurate to place some blame on President Obama, who infamously told the world that the use of chemical weapons by Assad was a “red line” that al-Assad must not cross. When Mr. Assad used chemical weapons, Obama did nothing, sending a clear message about US Impotence, and probably empowering Assad to commit some of the atrocities described in this article.
Saddam Hussein was as brutal a despot when he ruled Iraq as al-Assad is today in Syria. 16 years ago, the US decided to do something about Hussein. We fought a war to remove him from power, and to allow a new government to assume power in Iraq. Mr. Hussein was tried and executed by the Iraqi people. But look at where we are today. Most liberals, very much including this newspaper, feel the decisive actions we took in Iraq, and the successful American effort to remove Hussein from power, to have been a grave mistake.
So. Most agree al-Assad is a monster. But the question remains: what can be done about it? Strong military action is likely not on table. Economic sanctions so often seem to hurt the civilian population more than the dictators at whom they are directed; witness Venezuela.
Let us not forget how lucky we all are to have what we have in the USA.
11
@Alex, Actually, under Obama, when Assad was accused of chemical weapon use, UN sent inspectors to verify usage - which the did. However citing lack of "mandate," UN team did NOT determine, nor report, which side, Assad or ISIS, deployed chemical weapons; they only verified its use - it was ISIS and US media that filled in the blank; claims pointing to Assad.
Therefore, Obama, acted correctly - for we all know how jumping to war with uncertain information turns out, i.e., Iraq.
6
@Alex
We have Guantanamo but luck had nothing to do with it.
Going to war to depose a tyrant is sort of like boinking to preserve virginity. I like the idea of international criminal courts and putting them on trial for crimes against humanity.
1
National Geographic magazine had an article on Assad a few years ago. After dinner with his wife and children, he and Assad walked through the streets of Damascus, chatting with citizens along the way, to the opera house. Afterwards, they walked back. Syria is more complicated than anything you have read in the NYT or anything you have read in the Israeli or US press.
To help out: mark one fact. Syria is composed of 40 small ethnic groups, the larger ones being Christians, Alawites, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, etc. In a couple of villages, Aramaic is spoken, the language Jesus of Nazareth spoke. All of these minorities know that if the majority Sunnis gain power (including Al Qaeda, Caliphate-types, Daesh), they will be slaughtered like sheep.
Does that help to understand why there is fighting and killing in Syria? If you want to blame someone, start by blaming the French mandate in Lebanon-Syria, blame the UK-US for their oil lust, blame the Israelis for their conquest of Palestine. There is plenty more blame to go around.
17
This article’s about something real simple: torturing and murder. It’s about reducing that “complexity,” you’re trying to use to justify Assad, diwn to something as simple as it gets:
Hanging people naked from fences, spraying them with ice water, and then shooting them in the head.
4
It is about something very complicated: how did a once peaceful land turn into a battlefield. You might ask bin Laden (deceased) or al-Baghdadi. Or, you can ask how did Rachel Corey die. Or, how many Syrians were crucified by Al-Qaeda (et al.) in the old fashioned way. Or, how many Yazidi girls were sold in slave markets. It's not simple.
The US and Syria were allies in the early days of fighting against Al-Qaeda and bin Laden. We had common interests. Bet you didn't know that, either. It's not simple and, personally, I do not justify any of this.
4
@John curious why you would blame
Israel for "conquering" Palestine. Jews lived in Middle East thousands of years, always as second class citizens. Would you prefer they move to the moon?
5
It is times like these when Americans should turn to ... Vogue, the fashion magazine that ran a puff piece on Bashar al-Assad's wife, Asma. Because the life and times of despots are the most glamorous of all. Then Vogue tried to bury the piece as the curtain was ripped away by the Syrian Civil War. Fortunately, people keep this stuff on the interwebs:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/the-only-remaining-online-copy-of-vogues-asma-al-assad-profile/250753/
7
It is the shame of America that the temporary president of this country is best friends with a man who supports Mr Assad, who is responsible for this human torture and murders of over a hundred thousands.
11
What was that about Israel giving up the”occupied” Golan Heights to Syria again? Lol
11
@Matt At least the Syrians in Golan are safe from the murderous regime and civil war.
2
@Randy F
But publicly, many Syrians in the Golan support Assad. Are they crazy or evil? No, but the Druze have to do this so that Assad doesn't harm their Druze co-religionists in Syria.
1
Where are the voices of our new progressive congresspeople calling out these horrific human rights violations against the Arab people? They are conspicuously silent when they can't blame it on Israel.
18
@Lori. There are some excellent people in Congress who HAVE called out the war crimes of Assad. I would add that many Republicans have been fierce critics of the regime.
Among the deniers, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii & Presidential candidate is by far the worst.
@Lori. There are some excellent people in Congress who HAVE called out the war crimes of Assad. I would add that many Republicans have been fierce critics of the regime.
Among the deniers, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii & Presidential candidate is by far the worst.
1
Charity starts from home. What moral authority is left for us to complain about others when we support thug MBS who murders millions of Yemenis through starvation, blockades, bombardments, assassinations and God knows what else. And what is left of us when we rip our treaties like a scrap piece of paper and denying food and medicine to 80 million Iranians. Honesty, integrity, trust, has vanished from this earth. And of course, millions and millions of Palestinians suffer over decades and decades.
11
Syria’s public and national relations campaigns were orchestrated by Putin and condoned by Trump.
8
Now do a detailed report of the horrors pro government civilians had to endure at the hands of these vermin’s masquerading as “freedom fighters” and “rebel’s”. LOL. Two sides to every story no?
Long live Bashar Al-Assad ! He’s here to stay and there is nothing anyone can do about it !
4
Ahh just like Guantamo and the prived ran prisons and campaments where children are sexuality attacked and sick are left to die all over the Southern border. Both systems have the same purpose : defeat the "enemy"
4
Take note New York Times, your readers have spoken. According to the comment section, please limit your violent repression exposés to those which can be blamed on the US (and occasionally Israel). Apparently Assad's torture of hundreds of thousands of his own people simply for opposing the government is not nearly as interesting.
10
Assad is today's Hitler.
Americans liberated the captives of Hitler's concentration camps. Who is going to liberate those held in Assad's camps?
Sadly, with trump in Putin's pocket, we will turn a blind eye. By doing nothing, we assure we will never be great again.
8
>>> "Americans liberated the captives of Hitler's concentration camps."
Some of them. Facts matter.
Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Theresienstadt were liberated by the Soviets.
Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen were liberated by Americans.
Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British.
Several camps were destroyed by the Nazis before the Allies reached them.
We Americans tend to have an unbalanced view of WWII heroics and it's a good idea to do reality checks now and again.
>>> "Sadly, with trump in Putin's pocket, we will turn a blind eye. By doing nothing, we assure we will never be great again."
One way to be great might have been not to foment the Syrian civil war in the first place, including not supporting Salafist terrorists to attack the Syrian government, not providing them with weapons and training, and not encouraging Saudi Arabia to do more of the same. But we did all of those things.
8
Didn’t we use some of those Syrian torture chambers in the so-called “war” on terror when we went, in the despicable words of the contemptible Cheney, to the dark side?
15
@EJS The same thought occurred to me as well.
1
Killing fields - redux [every couple years]!
1
Assad leads a dominant minority. He uses any means to maintain power. Cruel and ruthless man.
5
McCain got this one right....Obama was a sorry no-show.
5
That's utterly inaccurate. Obama pushed for war following the 'chemical' attacks but the opposition by the American people to more bloody wars following the US defeat in Iraq was a formidable obstacle. Still Obama pressed ahead hoping to put together the usual fictional war "coalition" with the help of their British lapdog. But to the total shock and consternation of both the British and US rulers, the UK parliament voted NO, due to the total opposition of the British people. Once the Brits said no, Obama's campaign for war collapsed. Make no mistake Obama did all in his power to unleash another bloody US war and occupation, like he sent tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan (right after his Nobel 'Peace' prize!). However, he was unable to cast aside the entire "coalition" figleaf framework that has been used for all US wars following WWII. It has served for manufacturing public opinion and ensuring other countries put the bodies and foot part of the bill. Obama would been the butcher of Syria if he could have.
These slaughterhouses are not a secret. The world has known about them for years. But sadly no one in a position of power has had the will to bring the operators of these torture chambers to account for their indisputable war crimes against their own people.
9
Maybe it would have been better not to finance an uprising against the Gov't of Syria. Or to overthrow the Gov't of Iraq. And to use American power to "remake" the Middle East. When you start a fire in a powder magazine who knows where it will end? And we're still at it; Trump is trying to effect "regime change" in Iran, despite disasters in Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, etc.
11
We can't fix the world's problems nor should we be suprised at what people will do to come here.
I like to think that if prior military service was a prerequisite for the presidency, we would have leaders who understood where to draw the line. Instead, we have community organizers and celebrity golfers.
8
Why is the BDS movement silent?
Where are all those intellectuals, professors and students?
Why is the UN stagnant and silent?
Syria proves their all their hypocrisy.
9
Those are anti-Jews. The Syrian leadership is not Jewish. Hence, whatever they do is Ok!
7
@Jill - Why does the UN even exist?
3
The UN?
Well for openers and for all its corruptions and hypocrisies, it’s a big couple of steps up from Trump and Trumpism and Trumpists.
1
Torture does make people tell the torturers what they want to hear but not necessarily the truth. But the torturers see success and so they know that it works. It’s hard to convince people of things which have not happened, yet, that contradict what they believe. Sometimes contradictory evidence will not convince.
2
The neocons are working hard again at NYTimes for another war that will herald "freedom and democracy". Brought to you by the same team who published incontrovertible evidence of WMD in Iraq which resulted in the slaughter of a million civilians.
14
Sadly, same methods but on a larger scale than in Cheney/w’s Iraq war.
1
Violence cannot solve the problem of human rivalry and hate. Our nation has no moral high ground on which to judge. And our leaders have used this argument to rebuff our criticism. They have used Russia to be in power. Yet two or a thousand wrongs do not make a right. It is pause to look at non-violence as the only viable path and to revisit Gandhi the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is being taken up by Extinction Rebellion - the movement addressing climate change. Articles like thus that make us see true victim hood - they make us examine our ideologies and religious beliefs that perpetuate our own violence. New York's Dorothy Day was right - hell is when we stop loving.
3
This is unspeakably horrible. It is like what the US does with its black sites around the world.
7
Barnard says that the world is normalizing relations with Syria. This is simply not true. There are strict sanctions against Syria that are not affecting Asad but the Syrian people. For example, there is no gasoline, so you must walk wherever you want to go. Electricity, heating fuel, cooking fuel, these are hard to find. We need to ask ourselves why we keep torturing populations en masse and think that this form violence is superior to that committed by Asad.
7
When the world was sparsely populated, people that had very different views and were not able to work within an existing governing structure could just leave and start another tribe nearby.
When that isn’t possible, the only way to kill an oppositional idea was to kill the holder of that idea or chase them away.
Chasing away only works in a crowded world if there are willing receivers.
Receivers have speed limits, as we have seen when right wing governments take power as a result in Australia, the US, and Europe.
The cycle continues when right wing governments seek to kill ideas by killing their holders.
Grim future in store.
3
@Djt: The very first genocidal war was fought by tribes who had exhausted a shared ecosystem.
4
Let’s remember that our current CIA director ran a torture prison.
7
The blood of innocent Syrians is on the hands of Pres. Obama and his cabinet who would not send guns to the freedom fighters. How will Biden answer for their deaths.
5
@Julia
Really the blood is on the hands of the GOP who wouldn’t support anything Prrsident Obama attempted to do especially if he had declared war they were going to impeach him,
Stop being racist and know your history watch CSpan tapes and learn something.
Obama and his “red line”
8
There is no funding information for the Syria Network for Human Rights on their website. And that itself is very suspicious. We need to take media accounts about enemy nations with a large grain of salt bc of the long track record in western media of distorting or fabricating information in the service of US foreign policy goals. The NYT has a duty to ferret out this obvious kind of relevant information. Perhaps the Syria Network’s civilian harm information is accurate. But readers need to know who is funding them and why.
5
The US first encouraged the dissidents to rebel ("Assad must go" , "Do not cross red line"), then let them hang out to dry.
Finally, Putin moved in, having read the US as paper tiger
Dismal history. For the US as well.
4
Brutal behavior by tyrants has a long and sordid history. Here is yet another example. But the real point of this story, I fear, is not to illustrate the brutality of Assad but to soften us up for another neocon war of conquest. You say the Russians back this guy up. Okay, they back him up. But they're amateurs compared to the U.S. when it comes to the support of murderous tyrants. You'd run out of room on your op-ed page if you listed every dictator this country has propped up over the years, dictators who have done worse than Assad. You might run out room just listing the ones we're supporting right now.
5
And to think that Israel would ever return the Golan Heights to Syria for "peace."
How could anyone have confidence that the Syrian rulers would honor a peace deal given how they now desperately subdue anyone who questions Baathist rule.
Syria was a mistake the British made after World War I; Syria should have been re-organized into multiple mini-states based on cultural / ethnic lines.
The U.S. should encourage this, and use the Swiss model of confederated provinces for a democratic state to replace the current one.
12
I'm old enough to remember when Americans could differentiate themselves from this kind of brutality, these kinds of Godless regimes and these kind of lawless practices. That's right, I'm fifteen years old. That's when we decided to lower ourselves to the level of Syria and we have prisoners in Guantanamo Bay who need elder care because we can't prosecute them due, entirely, to the fact that we tortured them. One of the many unintended consequences of the ill-fated war in Iraq.
5
>>> "I'm old enough to remember when Americans could differentiate themselves from this kind of brutality, these kinds of Godless regimes and these kind of lawless practices."
No, you are not. No one is that old. Many, however, are sufficiently unfamiliar with the reality of our history to imagine that there was once such a time.
4
Now... pressure to reject humanitarian atrocities is needed. We need to keep the pressure on dictators, politicians, religious leaders, torturers, rapists, fellow citizens, and corporations. The pressure is through many means - protesting, tweeting, writing, voting, discussing, teaching, and purchasing. The pressure needs to be applied consistently across the globe and over time. There can be no quarter for torture, rape, or killing anywhere. Especially in ones mind. Make it clear that torture, rape, and killing is wrong - even if it works for short-term gains or carried out by “your people”. Do not allow anyone to look away. Do not let any dictator, politician, or fellow citizen off the hook. By “now”, I mean today.
1
This is the most horrible heart rending article I have ever had the sadness to read to the end. Where is our conscience? Where is our government, our morality and human dignity and respect for ourselves and others gone? Is it hopeless altogether? Obama was going to....and then what? Who will begin to STOP THIS HORROR!
4
President Obama had his chance to eliminate Assad when he drew that famous "Red Line" .. before the Russians came to Syria. He didn't act. Thank you very much, President Obama, for allowing this horror to continue.
7
Why aren't we letting these people into our country? These face persecution because of their beliefs and political activity. Immigrants at our Southern border claim gang violence and global warming and poverty to seek asylum. Yet we let in millions of them in.
Are we Islamophobic because they're different from us?
1
That one sentence about the Syrian prison system 'vacuuming' up many more people than ISIS made me sick to my stomach and also terrified. The person who approved this is a medical doctor. This government is supported in part by the Russian government, whom our president adores. No one cares.
6
Well, he’s a non medical “doctor.”
Measure of a great US president is if they stand up to Assad, shrink from him -- or praise him.
@Superf88 - A great U.S. president would not even get involved in another country's civil war. A great U.S. president would focus on bridges, roads, railroads, levees and would quit driving this country further and further into debt over military spending.
3
Thank you for highlighting this and printing it on the front page.
We should collectively stand for justice, human rights, and the dignified treatment of people in Syria as we should everywhere. Our ethics should come before our fears and biases.
3
What about Guantanamo? Are we still torturing detainees there? What about refugees detained here in the US dying due to our carelessness and inhumanity? What about the dictatorships and repressive regimes we support?
20
Zoli will now be reprimanded to the re-education camp, where he /she will repeat endlessly: America is the indispensable nation. America is the City on the Hill. America is better than every other country cause God says so. Kill those who defy us, salute the flag and All hail American exceptionalism !
3
@Zoli Are you serious. Those held at Guantanamo are terrorists. Those captured, tortured and murdered in Syria are innocent civilians.
8
Nice textbook example of the Russian disinformation technique of "whataboutism."
2
It is remarkable that both Mark, Mohammed, and so many others are able to tell their stories upon reading Anne Barnard's in depth reporting on Syria. We in America just do not understand the magnitude of the violence and hate perpetrated by Assad and other dictators of his ilk spread throughout this world and even as close to us as our other America south of our borders. While reading this piece, one can not feel but helpless and disheartened that we of of this nation is not, will not do more. And I do not mean more wars. Look where that has gotten us, and for what. Are people from Syria, Iraq, and Yemen any better off? It seems that our own interferences have perpetrated and exasperated the status quo rather than helping it. Maybe someday this country of ours which has so much to offer in the realm of humanitarianism will elect leaders with compassion and morals. If we continue to turn our backs on those desperate people of a different religion or a different skin color, we are no better than the ruthless and cruel.
14
Only Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can explain why Assad remains in power. What the Obama administration gained by allowing Russia the opening to protect the regime is a mystery.
10
@clarity007
I can explain it. Obama sought Congressional approval for increased intervention as they demanded of him; GOP-majority Congress refused.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/syria.html
6
@clarity007 True, but what has the Trump administration done to help these people?
1
As Trump continues to seek absolute power, these revelations of the profound abuses intrinsic to the maintenance of a deranged dictatorship should serve as a warning to all Americans. With a justice department evolving to serve a would be authoritarian, it is not a far cry extension of empiric understanding to one day witness American citizens who read the NY Times, watch MSNBC or recognize the impending disaster of climate change labeled as infidels, apostates and enemies of the state. The subsequent secret purge under a ruthless tyrant wannabe of millions of political rivals would look not to dissimilar to what we just read in this horrific expose on Syria. A Republican Senate would justify it as consistent with what our founding fathers would have fostered by bastardizing the interpretation of the Constitution to insure the maintenance of civil law. Anything can be rationalized by power hungry miscreants. Fox and Friends would paint a rosy-palatable picture of ethical reconstruction to serve the grand high exalted ruler.
5
What does it say about all of us that Mansour Omari's bold act of defiance - daring to remember in blood - is now enshrined at the Holocaust Memorial Museum? We can, of course, expect nothing from the current corrupt administration except silence. We have, before us, a long and difficult march to justice, but silence cannot be allowed to prevail, so thank you for this difficult and heart rending piece. Of course, we have our own travesties that have yet to be accounted for - yes, Cheney and Rumsfeld are war criminals - but it speaks to a common mission of humanity: to be able to live with some modicum of dignity, free of terror for simply being able to have one's own voice.
4
Not surprising to learn of Assad's brutality just as his father was, if not worse. Becoming an eye doctor didn't improve his humanity nor diminish his desire for torture against his own opposing people regardless of age, while his family all along lived in comfort and safety. Altogether, Syrians leaders are known for their heinous savagery. Years ago they captured a young Israeli pilot ,one of the finest, tortured him long enough before handing him back to Israel in a vegetative state. The fact that Assad still remains in power, aided by Russian ought to make us all worried.
9
So how about the Jordanian pilot put in a cage and burned by Assad's opposition, ISIS....is that an improvement? Watch the video if your stomach can handle it.
4
Hypocrisy seems endemic in the U.S. media.
While in a perfect world Assad should be tried and jailed, how many people were confined in black prisons and tortured by the US?
Maybe not hundreds of thousands but maybe tens of thousands? Will we ever know the truth.
12
The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept. Sadly now days all our standards are quite low.
6
Unfortunately, I feel we are headed for this type of future if we don't fight for Constitutional law to be followed by WH officials. That has always been our defense against an authoritarian government taking over our own country like trump and his mob of GOP loyalist are trying to do. We have never before given Murdering dictators a platform to expand their terror with such powerful recognition as the continual compliments from the WH does. Even taking their word over our own intelligence.
5
As I began to read this article, I felt the same horror as I did over 40 years ago when I read the first accounts of those who had escaped to Thai refugee camps from the killing fields of Cambodia. Unimaginable cruelty. In the USA we like to think of ourselves as "the good guys". I do not have an answer -- but can and will we be able to make that same claim in this case?
3
Getting rid of Saddam and Kadafi had poor outcomes. Along with Assad, at least they had secular views preferable to al Qaida/ISIS control and didn't facilitate terrorist attacks in the West.
'Civilized' Western rules of war don't apply here.
7
The heinous reality of Syria's prisons is well documented but until we close or torture prisons and CIA black ops sites in Bagram, Guantanamo and many other locations and until we stop supporting and contracting with prisons and torture sites in Saudi Arabia and other despotic regimes, we are in no place to criticize Syria where we too have funded and supported crimes against humanity.
8
Quick, someone tell Trump that Syria is part of Iran and maybe he'll do something. Better yet, can we convince him that Syria is socialist? Just the suggestion will get a few more American battleships moved into the Mediterranean.
1
Great investigation, so sad. Obama allowing this is the most dangerous thing any president has ever done.
3
@Michael And what has Trump done since taking over? Besides, our human rights record throughout history pales in comparison to this. We allowed human beings to be kept as slaves. We sent thousands of Jews back to Europe to be slaughtered (just as we are doing to Central Americans, today). We have a pretty shabby history on human rights, Michael.
1
Unbelievable how humans can be so cruel and ignorant but that's always been the story. No, we cannot just get along.
Looks like Climate Change and Mother Earth has a solution and it's just around the corner.
2
Can we stop for a moment and consider what happened in American prisons at Guantanamo? The first sentence of this article is bad, but not even half as bad as what the Americans did to Syrian prisoners in their care. Correct me if I’m wrong.
8
@JW
How about what Americans do in our for profit prisons. What about the horrors of Alabama and Louisiana prisons. We are exceptionally good at cover up s. Since we no longer have any morality or character we need to work on our own in depth shortcomings. We are just as good on hating as the rest of the world.
What is it in our species, presently and historically, that makes this kind of a regime so common and just leadership so rare?
1
@X Money, power and sex.....this seems to rule the world. Time to elect more women to power and hopefully we will see some change.
You can not declare "Assad must go" then do nothing, then let Putin move in to prop up Assad
Greatest failure of US humanitarian policy in the last decade,
Followed by not taking in Syrian refugees, unlike Ms. Merkel
5
Those parties responsible for the so-called Arab spring should be taking in its victims.
2
In our international rapport, the world can’t tag Putin and the Ayatollahs with their choice of allies? So that this man and his family can stay in power he can oversee the death and abuse of hundreds of thousands of its citizens? And watch as the world re-normalizes with Syria while maintaining its protest energy behind BDS and demonizing Israel. And we’ll give China a big pass, too, because we surely couldn’t boycott them for what they do to Muslims. We wouldn’t be able to buy their stuff!
2
@Alberto Abrizzi there are crippling sanctions against Syria at this moment. 19 hours to wait in line for gasoline. No heating fuel. Barnard is wrong, relations are not normalized with Syria.
2
Saydnaya Prison ranks up there with with Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belson and Dachau; where the now infamous "medical experiments" were conducted.
My father's parents escaped from what is now Vilnius, Lithuania; long before WWII. However, all their relatives (meaning mine, as well) died in some of the camps I just named. Otherwise, I would not have compared them.
Even as we read and write over our coffee or tea today, people being tortured and killed: horribly. Something should be done about this, and I do not mean "Justice in a Courtroom".
I refer to forcibly overthrowing Saydnaya Prison; Russia behind them or not. If in fact Putin is supporting this, then he is complicit as well, and more should be shown publicly first. Only then, perhaps, will the rest of the world know what Russia is supporting and they will stand down when such a venture is undertaken.
3
Once again, simply outstanding reporting from the Times. Thank you.
2
And yet, over 2 million men of fighting age fled the country. If they had kicked in anted up like men the war would have been over before it began. You can be a victim or a victor. The choice is yours.
2
Because the opposition to Assad couldn't all hang together, they are hanging separately: as Benjamin Franklin put it at the time of our revolution.
The splintered disunity of that opposition, extreme even by Middle Eastern standards, was Assad's secret weapon even more than the poison gas and the Russian helpers.
3
Every person harmed or killed by assad/iran/putin in syria, and that's over 1M people, is on obama's shoulders and that of his administration for their red lines fiasco.
All of those few still enamored with obama need to read this article to ask why he and the europeans, who are so, so quick to condemn Israel for every terrorist killed, sat on their hands and did nothing while this took place.
Many of the far/anti-american left, including a large portion of this "publication's" reader base, ludicrously defend assad because he is "secular", as if that is somehow a carte blanche to mass murder. They need to be utterly ignored, and completely marginalized, exposed as the propagandists they are.
The next person who approaches me and wants to criticize Israel better have TEN TIMES that amount of anger and condemnation for assad and iran for this gigantic atrocity.
3
This is a well written article. However, after all of these years, the audience must be distrustful of the NY Times.
For example, why now?
This is not new information. This kind of thing is endemic in Arabia. It's also not really America's business. If crimes can be proven, they should be addressed in the International Criminal Court -- without the United States putting its thumb on the scales.
Maybe I shouldn't be suspicious of the motives of the media conglomerate, which includes the NY Times, and has a monopoly over communications.
In any event, the fact is that the unrest in Syria was caused by the CIA and its allies. It concerns a demand to run a gas pipeline from Qatar and north through Syria. Syria rejected this demand, and made a deal with the Iranians.
The CIA then hired Saddam's boys to do the dirty work. They were equipped with transportation and weapons, and given their instructions. Somewhere along the way, they started calling themselves ISIS and betrayed Obama. Surprise.
Furthermore, when the CIA first started meddling in Syria in the 1950's, the Soviet Union had offered to leave the Middle East a "neutral zone". The United States rejected this proposal. As a result, Syria was pushed into the arms of Russia, and has remained a "protectorate" of sorts ever since.
The answer is in the first rule of journalism: Governments Lie.
As far as I can tell, the CIA has never been right about anything, and everything they do turns to (well you know).
7
You’ll notice that underneath (but not very far underneath) the typical pseudo-leftist bit about the CIA and Mr. Burns as the root of all evil, there’s the Orientalism of identifying Syria as “Arabia,” and shoulder-shrugging about How Those People Are.
3
Where are people like Representative Omar? Why are silent when people of her own faith commit atrocities? At least I haven't heard anything from her. This story is awful. I had to stop reading halfway through. What a horrible world it can be.
7
“Syria’s war remains without a political solution. With peace talks stalled, Russia is urging the West to normalize and finance reconstruction anyway, deferring reforms.”
Trump and family have offered to donate their prestigious family name to any hotel or golf resorts being planned. Additionally Donald will be more than happy to bromance Assad.
4
Assad will continue as long as his backers are with him and look after him. The Russians (and the Iranians) are well aware of the torture inflicted on people in Syria but it is "water off the ducks back". After all, torture and indeed murder are practiced by both regimes regularly.
1
Finally, some inside detail on the Assad death regime. Remember, this murderer is fully supported by Russia and the Iranian mullahs, and is provided with war materials and funding from China. These countries are all ruled by despots. Trust any of them at your own peril.
5
For all the hypocritical blather and a few cruise missiles, the USA was for several years Assad's best ally by removing his worst enemy, ISIL, from his eastern front. For all the thousands of nice Syrian people and sad refugees, there are no serious contenders for governing the unhappy land worth worrying about or fighting for. Western Civilization's only friends there are the Kurds.
2
Given the horrors in Syria, it is clear that no fewer than 80% of the country's pre-civil war population of 26 million must be granted refuge in the US and EU.
1
If the world couldn’t crush Syria, who is backed by Iran, then what makes deplorable trump think he can take on Iran?
1
Maybe someday the world will come to the conclusion that leaders of any country, when they mistreat their own people as Assad is doing, simply become illegitimate and should be to removal by the community of nations. As it is, the UN just sits there, tacit to it all.
I think I'm coming to the notion that absolute sovereignty is a worn-out notion which allows tyrants to thrive. In a world with 7.7 billion people living on this planet (four times more than the year I was born!) nationalism is no longer viable.
1
““I was among the lucky,” said Mr. Ghabbash, 31, who survived 19 months in detention until a judge was bribed to free him.”
This is sad, but the last time I checked our best friend Saudi Arabia does not even have a judicial system, but is a dictatorship. The Saudi brutally tortured a journalist , just cut 37 peoples heads off in the street and are causing the genocide in Yemen with our weapons and air support.
The US is trying to overthrow Syria because the Saudis want a pipeline to run through it. The US CIA has financed ISIS and al Qaeda offshoots along with the Saudis in Syria. Assad was fighting a civil war against these terrorists. If Assad lost the war it would be a fundamentalist Wahhabist Sunni terrorist state, where there are not human rights and they export terrorism.
ISIS was created as a result of our invasion of Iraq. Al Qaeda was created in Afganistan during the Cold War when bin Laden was a CIA asset. The Saudis are the largest financiers of terrorism in the world, yet we are best friends. Also our governments CIA director Gina Haspel is responsible for a brutal torture program and the US still has Guantanimo and uses torture.
10
So what? Who cares?
Syria is a hostile foreign country that does not purport to adhere to nor care about American interests and values.
On the other hand Israel and Saudi Arabia are regularly and routinely engaged in ethnic sectarian cleansing terrorism as American 'allies' and ' friends' . Using American arms, money along with American diplomatic and military aid and comfort.
Moreover, with 5% of humanity America has 25% of the world's prisoners.
And although only 13% of Americans are black like Ben Carson abour 40% of the prisoners are black. Because blacks are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences.
Prison is the carefully carved colored American exception to the 13th Amendment abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.
And the American ' War on Terror' that began with kidnapping, torture and indefinite detention devolved into drone-fired missile kill lists for the President of the United States. Without any newly authorized Congressional justification for use of military force or declaration of war.
America has no moral authority nor standing to criticize and judge Syria. Particularly in the Age of Trump.
7
Trump is not America. America is a nation of people. The people should judge and criticize the torture, rape and killing in Syria. The people should also compel the leaders to judge and clearly criticize atrocities. The people should also judge and criticize America’s black incarceration and bad deeds and policies. America is not perfect but it’s ideals are still intact. The people should continue the push for liberty and human rights while acknowledging America’s imperfections. Do not wait for a perfect nation to propel progress.
4
Shame on the West allowing this to continue. Assad should have been put out of commission years ago.
1
Demonizing Assad has been an important mission for the Establishment and its media, in order to make all the horrors the US has inflicted on Syria look justified.
Citizens need to know that the CIA has been involved in Syria, interfering and staging coups since 1949.
Diplomatic cables leaked in 2012 told that the US had been working to destabilize Syria intending to depose Assad since 2006.
This does not justify torture, but, unfortunately citizens know that in defense of its "security" the US uses torture.
The US also has the highest rate of incarceration of any country.
The US could have been working to bring out the best in Assad. Instead, during the Iraq War the US sent people to Syria to be tortured.
The US has been encouraging Syrian dissidents to attack the Syrian government for decades.
Baathism is an ideology of Arab nationalism, socialism and anti-imperialism.
The US hates the socialist ideals of the governing Baath Party, the ideology shared by Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Gaddafi's Libya.
And everyone knows the US was responsible for wrecking those countries and killing hundreds of thousands.
The US just can't manage to finish off Syria.
So we get this horror story to gin up the justification for further wreckage.
6
@Lucy Cooke
Assad demonized himself.
It was his personal choice. His wife supported him in it.
He could have walked away, a much-admired gazillionaire. But no: the power to torture, gas, starve pregnant women and young kids matters so much more to this 'doctor' than mere wealth & luxury.
1
Why are we surprised? After the invasion of Afghanistan, we sent captives to Syria for rendition and torture, knowing how good Assad is at it.
7
I am fearful that soon I will be able to replace Syria with USA, and Assad for Trump.
1
That there can be such cruelty is shocking; that no one is doing anything about is worse. Bashar's henchmen make Nazis at Auschwitz seem humane. It seems power meant more to Assad than the happiness and wellbeing of his people, more than the history of his country dating back thousands of years, more than the beauty of Syrian lanscape. He valued power above all else, and now power is all that is left...the power of tyranny over rubble.
I have heard some wonderful stories of Syria before the war, such as a shop in Aleppo famous for its rose water and pistachio ice cream. Assad's zealous destruction of ancient and iconic cities, such as old Aleppo, is baffling. He talks of an urgency to rebuild, but centuries-old buildings cannot be remade. The new Syria will of Assad's design: garrish, modern, sterile. Again, what a loss.
Assad and his regime, enabled by Putin, are responsible for these atrocities. The human misery inflicted by these dictatorial regimes is beyond comprehension. Will they ever be held accountable? Hard to know. But I am saddened beyond words by all of this.
US policy and actions under the Bush administration also contributed greatly to instability and terror in the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq and subsequent failure to administer the country properly was profoundly destabilizing. Millions of Iraqis were displaced by that war. The Bush administration’s failure to include Ba’ath party members in government (the only ones with the right experience) led directly to the counter insurgency and the rise of ISIS.
The failure of the Obama to correctly gauge the extent of civilian displacement, death and torture that would ensue from the Syrian civil war I think is the must profound failure of that administration. There was plenty of historical precedent to envision what would happen. The failure to act decisively also led to the refugee crisis that Europe suffered and is destabilizing some European societies.
Force must be used on some occasions in this world to stop evil. We cannot and should not be the world’s policeman. But we succeed when we use our great power to promote democracy and human rights. Especially when it is in our strategic interest.
2
Torture must always be condemned.
That is why Guantanamo must be closed, and having someone who ran a secret torture facility as head of the CIA means the USA has no credibility on the issue, no moral authority to condemn Syria.
This is why use of extended solitary confinement and other torture methods in our prisons must end, and those who are in prison for addiction or mental health problems must be treated and released.
That is why impunity for torturers must end in the US, and their enablers such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Donald Rumsfeld and others should never again be allowed to escape justice.
That is why torture, used routinely as a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Americas must end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/17/despite-progress-torture-afghanistan-still-disturbingly-high
4
All the worst governments in history have been led by people who believe they have a divine or hereditary right to rule.
2
Thank you for shining a spotlight on the never-ending horrifying crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the barbaric Assad regime. Right now, Idlid is again being barrel-bombed by Assad and his principal benefactor Russia. Is anyone talking about the millions of the innocent civilians under constant aerial attack there without any humanitarian aid or assistance? Nope because we’re just too busy posting narcissistic selfies/tweets or ruminating about how terrible we have it here with Trump. Let’s face it, we’re all culpable for Assad’s war crimes and that includes you, former President Obama, since you had a responsibility in 2013 to help stop the carnage in Syria and you failed miserably.
2
Sorry meant to type Idlib not Idlid
What continues to freak me is that apparently you've waited all this time to publish this report. Going back to his father I'll never
forget reading Tom Friedman's account of the slaughter of
thousands from the Muslim Brotherhood in Homs and have long
been aware of what his son has been doing. You correctly blame
Trump for withdrawing our forces from Syria, but Obama, who
even lacked the guts to follow up upon his pledge to prevent
Assad from gassing scores of his own people, convinced him as well as the Russians and Iranians that they could get away with it. Yet we were the only ones who might have prevented this. Shades of the past!
It is important that this article be written but I can not read beyond the first few lines. My question is how did we, the most powerful country in the world, allow this to happen and why is this yet another example of irresponsible, ethically inexcusable behavior on the part of USA? A mixture of flip/flop, domestic political game. The fact that other actors may have been worse does not excuse us.
1
Where are all those international groups and the UN when it comes to this barbarity?
Given that the NYT is a good bellwether for where the empire is heading next, I worry about both Iran and Syria. Assad is a horrible dictator while America/Israel's motivations are to crush resistance to Israel and cut off arms supply to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria. The problem is having only 2 awful options here.
2
Man...talk about an article that makes you want to kiss the ground wherever you may be in the United States. We have a lot of problems but the one great thing left is that you can still say "The President stinks!" whether in print, on a street corner, as part of your set as a comedian, and they will not come for you and your children in the night. Yet.
2
Don't give trump any ideas.
2
I'm repulsed by all the "what-about-ism" of some of the responses to this article. "Yea, the Syrians are animals, but what about the US....." Yes, the US hasn't always acted in the most moral way possible, and it's played big power politics. But let's not confuse what the Syrians are doing with what we've done or are doing. There's a considerable moral difference between the people of the US and the laws and institutions that govern it and what is going on in Syria. Let's be grateful for the difference and let's make sure it's maintained.
6
I grew up in SYRIA and left many years ago. I can attest that this article is very accurate, and reflective of what happens there. I heard similar accounts from many people even before the civil war. These same detention centers were present in the old days. The regime didn't try in any way to hide their atrocities, on the contrary, these serve as a warning sign to anybody who don't fell in line. The only time they will deny it is in front of western media.
390
@Mark M I'm glad you got out in time, and hopefully your family there is safe -- if you still have family in Syria. But sadly, there has been a rise over the last half-decade or so of truly radical, right-wing, authoritarian states across the globe. There's at least one on every continent -- yes, I consider Trump a (wannabe) dictator. But the solution is incredibly murky. I'm glad the Times did great investigative work to unearth these documents, but there is no great answer. Like, when it comes to healthcare in the U.S., the easy answer is single-payer. Saves money, gets everyone covered. In these overseas quagmires, the best I could hope for as a leftist is to bring these war criminals to trial.
But they are an independent, sovereign state. I don't know. It's very easy to blame Trump because he does deserve a lot of backlash to giving credence to tyrants like Duterte, Assad, Balsonaro, etc. Still, if we had Bernie in the Oval Office with 100 Democrats in the Senate and 435 (or whatever the exact number is) Democrats in Congress, what is one to do here? Certainly expose it, as the Times is doing here. Other than that, it's a horrific situation. Military intervention, however, could make it even worse.
We live in a country where the popular vote doesn't determine the outcome of a presidential general election, where it's a functional oligarchy, where police act as thugs for mega-corporations. But we wouldn't want a foreign power to come in and start a deeper quagmire.
31
@Tom Cut them off and refuse to deal with them.
2
@Tom I guess Obama could have put an end to this. Love the electoral college by the way. That way New Yorkers and other Liberal urban areas can't control the entire nation.
6
This is what happens when the international order and system of laws and rules, slowly and painfully built after the two devastating World Wars of the twentieth century, stops working and is abandoned by key players such as the United States.
Not that the system ever worked sufficiently to outright stop or even prevent other genocides, atrocities and crimes against humanity. One need only reference the Rwandan genocide, the Balkan wars, Sudan and more recently the Rohingya in Myanmar, as well as other, almost too many to count, tragedies.
Yet the complete breakdown and absence of the aforementioned international order, has the potential to lead to even worse outcomes and unfathomable results.
Unfortunately history is all too ripe with such horrors as these and our collective memory's inability and failure remember or learn from the past.
88
@loco73--Let's be clear here Assad is simply following in the footsteps of his father. See some of the Baathist butchery from the 70's and 80's. To attribute this an abandonment of laws and rules by key players such as the US simply confuses correlation with causation. Assad and Company have been doing this for decades. Look up the town they gassed decades ago.
17
@loco73: This whole planet is smaller than Easter Island on the scale of this solar system.
The thing you call international order mist have disintegrated a long time ago
The perpetrators do fear they can be prosecuted in The Hague, as reported here. But US policies and past misdeeds are such that we have our own fears and the courts are very limited in scope and impact. For shame.
32
Would getting rid of Assad make things better? Did getting rid of Saddam improve Iraq? Sometimes the only change is that torturers and prisoners exchange places.
49
@cleo
Of course there would be a vicious backlash, and the Alawites, as a group, might not survive it. They are a minority backed by military might. Once that no longer protects them, they know they're toast.
2
@cleo
Well to be fair, Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein but the region fell into chaos as a result of Hussein being removed, but that is mostly because the United States is terrible at 'nation building.'
I feel sympathy for the Kurdish population (well over a 100,000 men and boys ethnically cleansed from the north following an uprising) but today the most peaceful section of Iraq is the Kurdish pocket in far north.
Sadly, because Saddam is gone and Turkey is free to build massive dams at the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris, the Shiite tribes in the south are without livelihood due to loss of water flow. I am sure Turkey would have held off on water theft if Saddam were still in power.
1
@cleo
The sad truth is that getting rid of dictators in this region only brings even more misery and chaos, as in Libya, Egypt and earlier Iraq. Should western powers try to impose democracy in regions where historically tyrants rules? There is a risk of replacing current ruler with a form of ISIS and bringing complete chaos. Only if there is a chance of gradual change implemented from within that will bring a new stable power - only then external help should be provided. Just removing a tyrant in Syria is not a solution.
3
if we dont get rid of trump fast this is coming to America. our democracy as we knew it is facing away as the fascists line up with trump and take control little by little. I under stand the 4th of July celebration is being tweaked so he will be the main show. that's a dictator. I'm glad I've lived most of my life everytime I see a pregnant woman I feel badly for the life to come if the majority dont stand up and vote the Senate and trump out
26
@rich Yes, if we don't get rid of Trump fast then we will end up with hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in dungeons being starved and tortured to death. How is this not eminently clear to everyone? How could it possibly be denied?
2
@rich
When and how will this come to America?
1
@rich: When ABH characterized the majority of comments as mediocre, which, as V.S. Naipaul wrote in "The Return of Eva Peron,"is 1 of the worst insults in Latin American cultures, I do not think I was being unfair.EB informs us that it moderates comments for civility, but how about coherence, adherence to elements of style like correct punctuation, word usage, sentence structure and coherence? What does Trump have to do with the massacre of innocent civilians in Syria?Recall that the c-in-c ordered 1 aerial attack against Assad's air force, something that Obama would not do,and O, when the demonstrations against the Mullahs took place in Iran 2 to 3 years into his presidency.refused to do anything or even say anything for fear of losing his "nuclear agreement"with the Islamic Republic.If anyone should ponder the significance of "Cogito ergo sum" of Descartes and read his "Premieres Meditations," no disrespect intended, it may be yourself. It's never too late: In "The Summing Up,"Somerset Maugham wrote that at the age of 80 he had decided to study GREEK.
1
Our nation is complicit with this inhumanity
40
@The HouseDog
Um, no. Certainly Russia is complicit, and so is Iran. But the Assad regime, which dates back to the early 1970s was aligned with the Soviets during the cold war. What's worse, it isn't at all clear that torture and mayhem and the persecution of ethnoreligious minorities or even political dissidents would be greatly alleviated if Assad were removed from power. The reality is that ISIS garnered far more support among Sunnis than any other contingent of groups fighting Assad.
34
@The HouseDogn,
No it isn't.
@Middleman MD Lol um, yes. Look at all the havoc we've sewn in Latin America, the Middle East and use exploration labor in Asia. I am certainly not an Assad, Putin or Trump apologist. I find that triumvirate especially abhorrent. Still, nothing can compare to U.S. imperialism that has wrecked so many nations. I mean, we're literally backing a coup in Venezuela. Guaido should be in prison for treachery, but Maduro knows any retaliation to Guaido would allow the media and intelligence apparatus to turn the coup into overdrive. Don't be naive, man.
Having binary thoughts of, "We're good, Russia bad" gets us nowhere. We're all humans. But make no mistake: the overwhelming majority of destruction over the last several decades has been done by one country with some of its allies in support: the United States. We killed a million Iraqis simply to steal their oil, when we knew climate change was real and fast approaching. I mean, the military was literally used as bodyguards for oil companies' workers to steal Iraq's oil in a "proper" fashion.
This story is atrocious, and we need to help the Syrian people and refugees as much as possible, but even the dense, moronic Trump got it right when he said, "Oh, we're so innocent?" That's about the only thing he's said that had any truth to it in the last... 70+ years of Trump's life.
7
my heart breaks at the account of such hineous acts. where are the souls of such men. how did their conscience become so wretched? how can we tolerate such acts after they have come to the light? Justice is screaming out!
16
@anonym,
Assad's torturers understand something that we Americans do not: if Assad lost power then every non-Sunni is Syria would have been tortured and / or raped to death.
Every non-Sunni man, woman and child.
2
What an awful situation, that of al-Assad's cruel and ruthless destruction of thousands of his own people, sometimes after a miserable time in horrid inhumane prisons to maximize the suffering of the inmates...before the kill. And all of this for having the courage to oppose a brutal and vicious regime. Blaming the jail disgrace only to Ali Mamlouk's sadism (hence, his arrest warrant) is woefully inadequate. For as long as all this human rights violation goes on, and under the full and direct supervision of Bashar al-Assad, without a global response to stop the mayhem, we all ought to be held complicit...for looking the other way! Yes, the United Nations, supposed to represent the world, included.
7
@manfred marcus
Look, they are NOT "his" people.
HIS people are Alawites and everyone else does not matter to Assad.
2
This a tough story to read, but this article gets to the gist of what happened in Syria: https://warontherocks.com/2016/08/washingtons-sunni-myth-and-the-civil-wars-in-syria-and-iraq/
Syria was hardly a Jeffersonian democracy, but for a country with nominal oil or other resources, it was a reasonably well functioning state with fairly high literacy rates and respect for religious minorities. What was a relatively small uprising (70% of the army stated loyal to Assad), morphed into an invasion by well-paid and well-armed (by whom?) jihadis. I'm sure countless people are innocent but caught up in these prisons, but I have limited sympathy for the opposition.
18
@rjh
Yeah, tough read. The Comments and links in these NYT foreign policy stories are usually better than the stories themselves.
This article argues that the Western foreign policy establishment frames the Syrian civil war as an Alawite-Sunni conflict, which "we" can exploit by supporting "moderate Sunnis." Actually, the author says that Syria is a secular state, which is supported by Alawites and Sunnis, who see themselves as Syrians first.
"You cannot blame all or even most of this on the Syrian regime’s harsh methods. Advocates of more support to so-called moderates early on forget what happens when states collapse and militias emerge. People embrace more primordial identities and extremist militias dominate."
3
Everyone who isn’t ignorant knows this became a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
2
Thanks for the tip about warontherocks: great reading.
Otherwise, the same might be said of Iraq, and that goes triple for Iran.
1
It is sad that the USA forfeited the right to be critical after being responsible for Guantanamo and Al Garib as well as numerous black sites.
39
@Rick Taves,
It is. Very sad. The US should remain silent.
2
@Rick Taves
Except that the victims were foreign enemies and the abuse was universally viewed as a shocking scandal and the Abu Graib soldiers were prosecuted and convicted. We have not forfeited anything.
2
Now a days Syria’s coverage needs such long read/ in depth stories since the daily killings of the Syrians by Assad and its allies and others are not news anymore.
I am a former Syrian detainee myself and its feels like this piece tells my personal story.
Keep it up NYT and thank you so much.
600
@Mohammad Ghannam I agree. Unspeakably sorry for what you endured. I hope you have found some sense of peace in France. My heart twists and breaks from sorrow and the profound feelings of helplessness every time I read these accounts.
22
Thank you, Mohammad.
12
@Kathy Lollock
Thank you :)
9
A sad and terrible story. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case but goes back for thousands of years of inhumanity. It's hard to distinguish Assad from similar tyrants such as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Ghaddafi, Mao Zedong. The list is actually endless. There is a spectrum where certain regimes are more terrible than others. Modern day China, for its oppression of the Uighars in the western provinces, while brutal in no way equates to Syria. The worst thing is that most of these criminals will never be brought to justice. As for Syria, there will be change. The Russians will help their Syrian puppet to make their atrocities more efficient and organized in an attempt to stifle dissent. What a world!
23
@Mike
What distinguishes these from Germany Nazi atrocities is that those were buried in a small story on page 3 of the NY Times and these are on the front page.
2
Something very evil has descended on the world. Again.
As Jews we sat “never again” - yet as this horrifying and very well researched article shows - the world is turning towards unspeakable evil and yes the USA (and other countries) have chosen to turn their backs on humanity. Our transactional President see Muslims and brown people as disposable and worthless.
President Obama was also complicit with his “red lines” in Syria, which he ultimately ignored. Sometimes humans must stand up and defend life -because if the cancer of racial cleansing is allowed to fester, it grows.
Never again. Yet here we are. Again. Now what?
108
@Brett B And how are you "Standing up and defending life," sir? By your comment? Or are you writing to the President, getting out there on the street with a sign, joining a protest, giving money, signing up for updates on the situation, cajoling your friends into giving support, money, and activism? What exactly do you mean by "Standing up?" How do you propose "Standing up?"
2
@Brett B
When looking at the Syrian conflict, the closest parallel to Europe's Jewish communities in the 1930s and 40s were the Syrian and Iraqi Yazidis, in the sense that they were a small, stateless ethno-religious group without even a militia to defend it, and no states lead by their co-religionists anywhere in the world.
An only slightly weaker argument can be made that the Mandeans, and Chaldean and Assyrian Christian communities of Iraq and Syria also have parallels to the Jewish communities in Europe in the 30s and 40s. Nevertheless, when the Trump administration proposed fast-tracking the granting of refugee status to Yazidis and Arab Christians of Iraq and Syria, congressional democrats condemned the move as bigoted and Islamophobic. This decision on the part of DNC leadership was both disgraceful and cynical, the result of gross ignorance of the demographics of the middle east (ie, Syria being a majority Sunni nation, like most Arabic speaking countries) as well as a fear that groups who perceived themselves to be rescued by Trump and Pence would show more loyalty to the Republicans in future generations that to the Democrats.
4
@Brett B
Now vhat? Blame the Obama, of course. Pass the schmalz.
3
Nazis did this. Assad is doing this now. The US did nothing during the Holocaust. Why are the US and allies doing nothing now? Shame, shame, shame on our and other governments for not forcefully doing the right thing to save tens of thousands of innocent souls.
60
@David F What would you have them "do?" "We'd all love to see the plan." Would you like the US to go in and just bomb Assad's house? Would that solve everything? Do what, please?
6
@David F
So, get out of Iraq and Afghanistan but go into Syria? There are unfortunately a lot of bad guys in the world. Either we are the world's police force or not. Can't have it both ways.
1
@David F
Um, no. When the alternative to Assad is ISIS, which was actively carrying out a genocide against Syrian and Iraqi ethnoreligious groups like the Mandeans, Chaldeans, Yazidis and Assyrian Christians, this situation becomes similar to WWII with ISIS in the role that the Nazis played. Syria is a majority Sunni Arab country, and as reported by Rukmini Callimachi in the pages of this paper, ISIS was able to gain a stronghold in no small part because they were not roundly rejected by the majority population in Syria.
2
are we supposed to be surprised at this? what was (is) our vaunted democracy doing in Guantanamo? Anyone for torture? "Humans" are the only animals that do it. There is evil afoot (men usually but the women will get there...) just as there is goodness. These idiots are evil regardless of gender. The U.S. does it! The Syrians, and Russians do it! Everyone's doing it! Seeing another "human" suffer is really fun! Better them and not me!
10
@bill sprague
When has the US tortured thousands to death?
15
@bill sprague
Who said anything about being surprised? Why the cyncism, as if that is the point?
4
@Dr. John
The Trail of Tears comes to mind. You know, Andrew Jackson, Trump’s favorite president, you might recognize his face from the twenty dollar bill.
1
Man's inhumanity to man. It's enough to make you a misandrist.
7
Never forget that these hell holes were rented out by the US of A during the war on terror. We rendered suspected, untried, often innocent detainees in the war on terror to be tortured in Syria. Black sites. Convenient. No Geneva Conventions for our devil's work.
The US is not a moral nation. It is merely a powerful one.
We are complicit in the majority of evils and atrocities committed around the world because of our power and how we have used it. We stand up for what it "right" when it is convenient and serves whatever misguided and short-sighted geopolitical strategy we have ongoing. We support dictators and atrocity when it serves our purposes. We commit our own war crimes when it serves our purposes.
Protest such words all you want. All you need to know is that we were quite happy to outsource crimes against humanity to Syrian dungeons. And in many other instances.
THAT is who we are.
141
@Justice Now
Countries are not "moral". They all act out of self interest. Considering our power, we have mostly done the right thing. And the wrong things (like rendition and torture) are called out and stopped. That is who we are. Flawed, but working on it. I'm sure your house is filled with Chinese-made products. How's their human rights record?
5
@Max
When was the last time a major foreign policy decision by the United States was the 'right' thing to do? Has the US really mostly done the right thing in our lifetimes on balance?
5
@Justice Now
It's unfortunate and sad for you that the US doesn't live up to your high standards. I'm not at all certain though what nation you think has adhered to much higher standards over the course of it's history. While I am not here to defend CIA black sites, you ignore the fact that the Assad regime came to power as a Soviet ally in the early 1970s, with the Soviets getting a Mediterranean naval base in Latakia in exchange. To this day, that is the reason that Russia (not the US) continues to support the Assad regime. Assad is a tyrant, but he isn't "our" tyrant. Far from it.
5
President Clinton sent people to these same torture dens, remember? Of course not.
From the ACLU:
**This program is commonly known as "extraordinary rendition."
The current policy traces its roots to the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, what had been a limited program expanded dramatically, with some experts estimating that 150 foreign nationals have been victims of rendition in the last few years alone. Foreign nationals suspected of terrorism have been transported to detention and interrogation facilities in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and elsewhere. In the words of former CIA agent Robert Baer: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear -- never to see them again -- you send them to Egypt."**
54
Hello, Clinton was no longer in office the day the World Trade Center was attacked. Wrong prez.
7
I think it would be an amazing story to find out how Assad has escaped assassination thus far. Is there any presidential figure more hated and despised than this most selfish man that has dragged his country into the pits of hell.
9
These are concentration-death camps.
17
Once again, it is the US that is raising the torture issues in Syria. Europe, so close to that country, is staying out of it instead preferring to criticize Trump on zillions of irrelevant issues. Cowards galore.
8
It's easy to read this shocking report and think that this atrocity is just a "Syrian" or "Middle Eastern" problem. Yet examples of state-sponsored repression are occurring around the world, including in our own country where a president orders the inhumane separation of asylum-seeking, poor families, uses "executive privilege" to silence his critics, and boasts about his friendship with the Russian autocrat who empowers the Syrian despot.
23
Is there any way to have something happen in the world without tying it back to trump? It feels like no matter the article in the times the comments are the same ‘Well if you think that’s bad look at what Trump did? Maybe just honor the stories of those people who suffered under a true tyrant.
1
Brings to mind a question: how many CIA black sites were actually such inhumane prisons such as these? And who is holding the operators of these black sites and their stakeholders accountable?
128
@Hong Oh, come on. When America does it, it's using "enhanced interrogation to stop future terrorist attacks." When Syria does it, then it becomes torture. When will CIA members at black-sites be held accountable? The same day when Trump admits he's dense, myopic, narcissistic, a pathological liar and bald. I.e., never. When the U.S., with the protection (usually, but not always) of the media apparatus does war crimes, they're always justified or condemned slightly with no meaningful consequences.
This is a great investigative piece, but as you said, there would never be anything comparable to the CIA black-sites that were (or still are) in use. "Enhanced interrogation" when we do it. "Clear cut torture" when anyone else does it. And honestly, Trump's base is so fanatical and delusional that a prospective exposé regarding CIA black sites would only enrage leftists and some liberals -- so, there would be very little material effect, even if the media had the courage to do in-depth reporting.
13
@Hong Several people were sent via "rendition" to Syria's prisons after 9/11, including Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen.
5
Torture has been part of humanity since we crawled out of the trees. It occurs in all societies and cultures that have let the sadists loose in the name of political control. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Pinochet in Chile, the colonial powers of France, Germany and England, and of course our own CIA. It is a disgusting practice. The real chilling thing is that if the US were to become a country controlled by a despot with martial law and secret prisons, some number of our population would no doubt also become torturers of their fellow Americans. Yes, it could happen in the US. We are not immune.
277
@Scott Werden
Oh I think torture existed in the trees also, Scott.
And absolutely. I agree with your assessment every time a crowd yells "Lock her up" after Individual 1 even blurts out Diane Feinstein's name. They'd do it if he said "Rachel Carson!"
We draw close.
9
@Scott Werden Mazen Darwish, quoted in our story, has been saying since 2011 that if these atrocities went on with impunity it would eventually threaten democracy in Europe. It sounded histrionic to many early on. But he tells a story of a European parliamentarian who contacted him recently and said "you were right." This person told Mazen (Mazen said) that the refugee crisis and its exploitation by the far right in Europe has threatened the foundations of the EU and boosted authoritarian tendencies. I wrote about some of these dynamics here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/sunday-review/one-countrys-war-changed-the-world.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fanne-barnard
5
Once Assad falls Syria is ripe for a takeover by another brutal group like Al-Qaeda or ISIS. There will be no minority rights under those groups.
7
“It happens here but it’s not a policy...” sounds like the kind of defense you’d have heard at Nuremberg.
12
Countries start to normalize relations with Syria... What is wrong with this world? What is wrong with us that we continue a friendship of fear with he very nation which props up Assad, Russia. Assad, Kim, MBS, Putin..the list ever grows. But as I read of these atrocities, my mind insists on returning to what our own nation has become under the Trump "rule." Bret Stephens' recent opinion piece paints a picture of the oppression and abuse sustained hourly by our neighbors in Central America. Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, and Hondurans are Americans, you know, in spite of their brown skin. Yet Trump's remedy to human rights' violations is to cut off much needed aid so "they" will learn a lesson to stay away from us. Are we any better than the Assad's of this world? We use to be, but we, too, have lost our way.
9
"And so it goes .....". Kurt Vonnegut. Beneath the thin veil of civilization lies the Savage human.
Mankind stands at the brink of self annihilation while world leaders play their fiddles.
What makes people think that the Russians communist, the Chinese communist, the Trump regime, the North Korean communist (all apparent buddy's) have any respect for the rule of law or the right to the pursuit of life,liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
15
Assad is a disgusting dictator, just like his father. However, the question that the world has to ask is what is the alternative. In the rebellion, there were no “moderate rebels”, Obama’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Opposition to Assad came mainly from ISIS and related Islamist groups. Does anybody have any illusion that an ISIS-run state would be more humane? Democracy is often touted as a magic bullet to cure human rights abuses, but if democracy is understood only in terms of majority rule, it is apt to bring to power the worst of the worst. The mob has no wisdom and no conscience. Hitler was voted into power democratically. Syria is not ready for democracy and may never be, unless you want to have another terrorist theocracy in the Middle East. So perhaps the best we can hope for is that Russia puts some pressure on Assad to tone down his violent resumption of power. Realpolitik is called for in this situation instead of feel-good but useless indignation.
10
Assad made a point of killing moderate Syrians and releasing isis fighters to justify his methods.
4
@Mor
There was substantially more opposition to Assad than Isis. There was nearly the entire population of Sunni and non-Alawite muslims, the ones now perishing in Syrian-run concentration camps.
@Joe Smoking you have not read my comment. I am not justifying Assad. I am saying that there is no alternative. If you try to have free elections in Syria (assuming that you could), ISIS or some equivalent will come to power.
1
Andersonville.
America has had its examples of evil prisons serving evil in time of war.
What serves to make sure such things don't happen again is that today we have a free press, which can shine a critical light on the actions of those in power, and help hold criminal jailers to the law.
May Syria once again regain its place as a home to freedom and peace. And, by the way, just as after WWII, may the world find a way to hold those criminals who treated the incarcerated with such bloody, deadly indifference, to the law.
Hugh Massengill
8
Would this have happened if Obama had acted on his red lines?
11
The bigger picture: The USA decries these action when taking place in Syria, but when Saudi Arabia does the same, but on a smaller scale, USA leadership (regardless of political party) does nothing.
12
So unlike Abu Ghraib.
"During the war in Iraq that began in March 2003, personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These violations included physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder. The abuses came to widespread public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad, although the soldiers received support from some conservative media within the United States."
13
Given the close personal relationship between President Trump and President Putin why hasn’t Mr. Trump asked his close personal friend to persuade Russia’s client State lighten up on the reign of terror. Perhaps Mr. Trump deems Twitter and golf to be more important than stopping hundreds of thousands of people from being tortured to death. Just guessing.
9
Why doesn’t this article link to the ones about conditions in Alabama’s prison system? Or the ones about the millions of Chinese Muslims? Societies that use brutality and incarceration to enforce the status quo should all be judged by their deeds.
8
Yep. Al-Assad and his people are evil.
We knew that for years. The first clue was when his father flattened Hama in 1982 and killed thousands of innocent civilians.
We knew about his autocratic rule and repression before the civil war started.
We knew of Syria’s direct role in the assassinations of Lebanese politicians and its cruel infliction of civilian casualties and takeover of a nation.
We were well aware of the tactics of al-Assad and his clique when demonstrators were sniped.
We knew of Syria’s chemical weapons potential and use of gas.
The contempt of the al-Assad family for the people of Syria is well known.
The disappearances and cruelty to prisoners is well-known.
We also have known about Syria’s embrace of Iran and Hezbollah. Remember Hezbollah? There is an outstanding blood debt for their killing of almost 250 Marines in 1983 in Beirut.
We have the 21st Century version of “The Hun.”
We have alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel who do not like Iran.
This article tell me that the American people are being conditioned for a war with Iran. Syria is one of the battlefields.
We know that there will be a war with Iran. Will it be sooner or later?
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@Mark Dobias
Surprisingly no one remembers Hama. Fewer know about it.
In short: In February 1982, Syrian Government forces, led by the president's brother, Rifaat al-Assad, quelled A revolt in Hama. Tanks and artillery shelled neighborhoods indiscriminately, and government forces are alleged to have executed thousands of prisoners and civilian residents after subduing the revolt, which became known as the Hama massacre. The story is suppressed and regarded as highly sensitive in Syria. The Hama Massacre led to the military term "Hama Rules" meaning the complete large-scale destruction of a military objective or target.
These Assad's are not nice people.
1
"Human rights is not in the DNA of states or politicians." Sadly that is true.
As inhuman as the torture described by Syrians, I know it is a tool of other heads of state also. We Americans used waterboarding and extraordinary rendition (sending prisoners out of the country to be tortured.) MBS the head of Saudi Arabia had a dissident murdered and his body dismembered. The gulags in Soviet Russia, the disappeared of Latin America are a part of history and should be remembered, as we remember the victims of the terrible Holocaust.
Human rights is not in the DNA of terrorists either, be they white nationalists, ISIS, or disaffected youth in any country. It is our duty to try to quell the hate by bringing all parties to the negotiating table to meet their adversary as another human being like himself.
Diplomacy next time, no more war.
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I was recently driven to Houston airport by a man from Syria who is now a US citizen. His brother in law was kidnapped in Syria several years ago and no one knows what happened to him.
2
Since the USA has dirtied its hands with torture, often defended it as policy (by this and GWB's administration and many of our citizens), from what moral authority do the United States of America speak?
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Embedded in this excruciating horror story is the welcome news that people fight back. This reportage spreads word of this disgrace. The U.N. is engaged. The ex-detainees and defectors who tell their stories are very brave. Those who now work with refugees do immense good. Families big enough to consider sexual assault survivors as war wounded get it right. What Fadwa Mahmoud, whose husband and son have disappeared, says applies to us all: “We don’t have the right to get depressed. We have to keep going.”
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@Elliot Silberberg
The resilience and determination of survivors who come away from such experiences wanting to persevere to help others can be very striking.
3
This is what happens when human populations grow beyond the capacity of the environment to sustain them. There are six times as many people in Syria now as there were one lifetime(70 years) ago. Individual life is of no significance when there is such a surplus of it.
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@Marigrow
A deep look shows that we have used violence and aggression to profit by slavery, then occupation for resources and wars to maintain our supremacy.
Is there a deeper look that would reveal why?
Perhaps our global civilization is not the first, or even the second? Perhaps our birth rate is a response?
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@Marigrow
Indeed, and the original uprising occurred because of a water diversion plan, because of a sustained drought, diverting water to farms controlled by Assad supporters and away from powerless farmers who needed that water to subsist.
2
Thank you for this comment. Add drought. A lot of money might help but the Sunni oil states would rather see the money spent on Yachts, French palaces, and English and German prostitutes. If the Sunni leadership in Saudi Arabia want unbridled population growth among Sunni Muslims so they can conquer the world they ought to pay for it otherwise they are deadbeats.
1
At one time, articles like this caused me to advocate for regime change and democratization. Now, these articles make me grateful to live in a developed democracy. As much as I’d like to help these Syrians, I do not see a better Syria, without Assad or one where America leads a coalition to ‘liberate’ these poor Syrians. However, this story does make me want to encourage our lawmakers to do everything they can to protect the SDF, who dod the heavy lifting in to roll back ISIS. I do not want to see our partners end up in Assad’s prisons.
1
It is not Assad who is responsible for all that suffering, it is we as Americans bear the responsibility of trying to change the foreign regimes. Of recent, we tried our monkey business in Venezuela, the result is few deaths and the regime intact. The interference into foreign regimes is a sadistic foreign policy exercises by mentally deranged Americans in power.
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Yes. It’s not the fault of murderous regimes that they torture and murder their citizens. Who could blame them for that? Rather, it’s all our fault for sometimes supporting the people who want to overthrow those regimes.
Makes perfect sense!
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@Kodali,
I get it- we are responsible for the despots when we go in and try to stop them and we are responsible for the despots where we don't go in a don't try to stop them.
Might as well do nothing. I am completely ok with that.
3
Assad loves to torture, too? Why isn't he one of our closest allies?
Seriously, this is truly horrific stuff and the entire world should join to hold the people responsible accountable. I am disturbed by the fact that there has never been this kind of in-depth investigative reporting on the victims of the years of horrific torture committed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan or by their proxies at black sites. Not only have we covered up our crimes against humanity, we have destroyed the whistleblowers who tried to bring them to light. We have become very comfortable, as a nation, with our own hypocrisy when it comes to human rights abuses and inhumanity.
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@Joe Yes, after reading this article, it seems obvious that the Syrians are just like us... Makes perfect sense!
5
"I was among the lucky." Absolutely horrifying that a man, who went through so much, still calls himself lucky (relatively, I'm sure). All for dissenting. I do not like how American politics have pushed us into a functional oligarchy without much democracy, but I cannot imagine going through such torture for simply organizing a peaceful protest. Sure, the police at Occupy were acting thugs on the behalf of Big Banks, though, that pales in comparison to that man's horrific story. However, I can say one statement unequivocally: I want no war, no sanctions that'd hurt the Syrian people, no drone strikes, etc. Regardless of how we feel about Assad, we must try to help the Syrian people in every way possible. Liberals, I think, lose sight of that sometimes. It's a shame there isn't a neat-and-tidy solution. Even if there were, Trump would still manage a way to bungle it. Hope the man gets better, I really cannot imagine the horror.
Glad the Times called it torture and not "enhanced interrogation." Funny when the sources were from the U.S. intel apparatus, that phrase was allowed to seep into our brains via the media as a whole. Just a thought.
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@Tom Yep. The actions described in this article are just a more extreme version of the way that police handled protesters during the Occupy Wall Street movement a few years back. Seems like a perfectly fitting analogy to me!
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There is no forgiveness for such barbarism. People should leave who hate the government. We should accept them worldwide as refugees. We and all countries against Assad should not rebuild or trade with Syria. We should sanctions them. Let the Russians try and take care of the country. They have no money anyway. There is no justification to help Syria. What is left of people hating the government those people they should leave. Now. Right wing politicians should be ashamed of themselves. Anything for power. Accept refugees, all countries. Let Syria wither in the wind until justice prevails. The Russians (Putin) are evil incarnate.
5
Sorry, but this report originated in the country that incarcerates more people than any other country, by percentage of population and total inmate population. And many of those are in solitary confinement - a form of torture.
But all the corporate media knows how to do us focus on Washington’s official enemies.
6
There is a difference between the bad and the worst.
5
@Ed Watters No need to be sorry! You hit the nail on the head. The issues described in this article are completely trivial and should be ignored until such time as the corporate media focuses on Washington's unofficial enemies and the nation's prison system. Thanks for having the courage and moral clarity to bring this up!
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@Ed Watters You can't do good reporting by conflating things. This story does the reporting. Check the forthcoming editorials and analysis, Week in Review. I expect you'll find the United States' appalling and disheartening human abuses record tied in there, which is as it should be
4
Incredibly, when Mr Assad took over power from his father, the world believed he was a more western-oriented reformer. How easily we are fooled.
It seems like mr. Putin's friends are the world's most despicable rulers. In the long run that cannot be a winning strategy for the russians.
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This report is so disturbing, especially when you know that arbitrary arrests and systematic, brutal torture have always been part of the Syrian regime's policy to maintain their power and control over the people. That is what they consider their system of justice. How unfortunate that Arab nations are reestablishing relations with this vicious, evil regime, and that even European countries, who always appear so self-righteous in their criticism of others, are considering re-establishing relations. Together with Russian and Iran's malevolent military support for Assad, and the UN's failure to enforce accountability, Syria willl most likely survive intact in its continued repressive state. Unchecked by a feeble world response, minus millions of refugees who were lucky to escape, this horrific scenario sadly persists.
14
The collapse of Syria, once a civilized country, has many and complex causes and not a few of them point directly to the US. One was the obsession of war criminals Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to assign terrorist-state status to Iraq, their misreading of the religious, political, and cultural dynamics between the Shia and Sunni populations, and their investment of political capital in a war costing the blood of our troops. Though the Saudis were far more culpable for Septeber 11 than Saddam Hussein, The Bush administration launched a war, based on made-up claims of nonexistent weapons, traumatizing and destabilizing the entire region. Putin and Russia siezed on the opening to back the Assad regime with more chips than the US was willing to put on the table, and turn Syria into their proxy state. President Obama fell into another Putin trap with the chemical weapons, made a bluff he couldn't back up, and Assad and Putin renewed their scorched earth doctrine of killing and torturing and imprisoning with further impunity.
Everyone underestimated what a vile actor Putin was and is. Once he had a national leader in his pocket (Assad), it was game over. Assad doesn't so much as brush his teeth without a call to Moscow. Anyone wondering which national leader will be Putin's next partner in crime?
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@JS
Russia has had a naval base in Tartus since the 1971.
They'd support anyone who allowed them to continue to occupy that space.
2
@JS
Obama backing ISIS to overthrow Assad was a Putin trap? You give Putin too much credit.
This stuff goes on in a lot of countries. The West pays no attention to this because it's not a big deal. Oil, diamonds, other resources are more important than human life or dignity.
The UN is a joke because of the veto power of a few nations. Russia or China will veto resolutions against Assad. The US will veto resolutions against Israel. I'm not equating the two, but making a point.
People in the US, especially, have No Idea of what goes on in these countries. Europeans are more aware because of the influx of refugees with these stories. The shoulder shrug over abuses in CIA Black Sites or the little House of Horrors - Guantanamo Bay, or the "Meh" attitude to thousands of non-white men is US prisons is indicative of something not right.
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@Fred
The United Nations needs to be revamped, so it has a para-military force it can put into action when human rights violations become evident.
1
Such a depressing story of a sadistic regime which owes its survival to Trump's friend, Putin. Words fail. Why must the Middle-East live with such terror? Are these all echoes from Western imperialism in the early 20th Century?
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@Larry Bennett There's no doubt Trump and Putin had secret talks, likely about both Trump Tower Moscow and money laundering for Russian oligarchs. Trump is certainly influenced by Putin, but to insinuate our orange stooge is a Russian stooge is just a bridge too far. We can't blame the boogeyman for everything bad happening in the world. I despise Trump more than every single political junkie I know, so it's not as if I'm some Trump (or Putin, for that matter) apologist. But these situations are incredibly complex, and we don't want proxy wars being fought that could escalate even further.
The main reason Middle Easterners have to live in such terror is due to, as you mentioned, Western imperialism; but also because they have brown skin. Even if Trump and Putin weren't in cahoots, Trump couldn't care less about anyone who isn't a beauty queen or himself.
How about we, as a nation, start becoming way more receptive to accepting Middle Eastern refugees? Without a population, Assad will have no people to crush or power to be had. Of course, that's hyperbolic, but it really shouldn't be. Deep down, aside from Leftists, people tend to act immorally whenever they fear "an other" is coming too close -- whether that be in their neighborhood, in their family, etc.
Lastly, let's not forget to blame the chief problem: capitalism/neoliberalism. If we had democracy here at home and in the workplace, it'd trickle down (for all you Reagan fans) into helping people in this situation.
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@Larry Bennett
Echoes from Western imperialism? If the Ottoman Empire had not sided with the Germans in WWI then maybe Syria would be under Ottoman control. You think that would have been a good thing? What are we to make of Ottoman genocide of Armenians? You must be unaware of the history of this area. And the 16 people who recommend this either approve of Ottoman atrocities or are unaware of them.
17
Trump bombed Syrian weapons caches, while the previous administration was all talk. Where was the US from 2011-2016? Both should have done/should do more to punish Assad and his depraved regime.
11
As evident from report, in order to stabilize areas under his control, the Assad regime’s repression is reaching unprecedented levels. Unfortunately this behavior is expected to worsen due to the depletion of his military and security resources.
Furthermore, continued reliance on foreign allied forces (Iranian backed militias) will likely make matters worse. While attempting to boost its forces by raising the level of recruitment from minorities is likely to meet resistance from these communities, which will in turn precipitate more repressive measures.
In order for stabilization and reconstruction of Syria to be achieved, it will require a government which in the least can gain the support of the majority of Syrians, and under which ethnic and religious minorities can feel safe and secure. The regime however, has expended all its credits to be able to provide such essential requisites of stability, security, social harmony, and economic growth.
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