What is President Joe Biden doing normalising journalist Marie Colvin’s murderer brutal dictator Bashir al-Assad of Syria?
And how is that consistent with protecting journalists the theme of the opening session of his “summit for democracy”?
The opening session of President Joe Biden ‘summit for democracy’ was about the media and how to protect journalists facing torture, disappearance and death at the hands of dictators that seek to crush freedom and make democracy impossible. A good example of censorship by murder that resonates profoundly in the United States was that of leading American reporter Marie Colvin in Syria by that country’s brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad as she reported on his crimes against humanity in real time in Homs in April, 2012. So how can President Biden hold such a summit while at the same time trying to normalise or help Syria’s Assad make a come back? Surely that would make a mockery of everything the summit was supposed to stand for? And even worse a desecration of Marie Colvin’s memory, an egregious insult to her family, friends and supporters, and an assault on the US justice system with a court in Washington DC finding Assad responsible for her murder in a case brought by her family?
I feel compelled to pose these questions by an impressive piece of journalism by Josh Rogin in the Washington Post in which he showed the Biden administration despite its denials is involved in just such an egregious normalisation campaign. Indeed, the cynicism inherent in that normalisation effort, given these denials, is even more disillusioning when as Josh Rogin shows it is being pursued at the highest level with Arab leaders.
But I would really like to know how President Joe Biden could justify such complicity to the family of the late Marie Colvin who was found in an American court to have been murdered by President Assad and his forces?
How can he justify normalising one of the most brutal dictators in the Middle East when not only was Assad et al convicted of murdering Marie, with the evidence also proving in court that her assassins celebrated her premeditated murder? That fact her colleague leading photojournalist Paul Conroy told me in a interview we filmed for Bringing Assad To Justice unsurprisingly was very hard to take after he lost a very close friend and colleague, and was left near death critically wounded in which fellow photojournalist Remi Ochlik was also murdered.
But President Biden must also be aware, and something we found quite uplifting filming Bringing Assad To Justice, is that the success of Marie Colvin’s family supported by Paul Conroy in an American court was very inspiring for many Syrians because in that single verdict, even though in a civil court, they found real hope because it was the first time in any court anywhere the regime was found accountable for an egregious atrocity.
So how is betraying the hopes of Syrians who share our values, who believe in justice, accountability and the rule of law, which they see as the only hope for Syria, and are working literally day and night to achieve that going to advance democracy?
For these Syrians working against the odds seeking to bring the Syrian dictator and his henchmen to justice for some of the worst crimes since the Holocuast it must be very hard when their herculean efforts are made still more difficult because Russia and China vetoed the referral of Syria to the International Criminal Court. These courageous Syrian advocates for justice, freedom and democracy like Anwar al-Buonni and Mazen Darwish, human rights lawyers who were themselves also imprisoned and tortured in Assad’s Security Branches before they managed to escape from Syria, should have been at the top table of the Summit for Democracy because few people have sacrificed as much for the values President Biden sought to promote and celebrate at that summit?
What is even more troubling about the administration being found complicit in helping to bring Assad back is that Anthony Blinken who as a member of the Obama Administration actually condemned his former boss’s administration on Syria of which he was a member: “We failed in preventing a tragic loss of life as well as millions of people made into refugees or internally displaced, and that’s something that we all have to live with”. Hence, the last thing anyone expected was that the Biden administration would not only do nothing to address justice and accountability in Syria for some of the worst atrocity crimes since the Holocaust but would actually become involved in normalising Assad?
The veto used in the UN Security Council by Russia and China to protect Assad, a powerful tool they have also used or more correctly abused in protecting other egregious regimes, like in the case of China did sterling work to protect the Junta in Myanmar engaged in genocide against the Rohingya, is a reminder how these major world powers have been allowed to transform the UN into an institution to promote and protect authoritarian regimes engaged in horrific crimes mostly against their own people. Normalising Assad therefore is not only betraying the right of the Syrian people to justice and accountability but very directly poses a threat to so many tens and even hundreds of millions living under similarly egregious regimes in effectively normalising crimes against humanity, and reassuring tyrants they have little to worry about engaging in atrocity crimes to resist democracy in the face of mass peaceful protests like occurred in Syria.
Obviously if the Biden administration is really interested in promoting and defending democracy it must reject impunity and demand justice and accountability for the Syrian people and all of those forced to live under regimes engaged in atrocity crimes to stay in power. Reform of the Security Council is vital and in particular ending the use of the veto by the five Permanent Members — US, Russia, China, UK and France — when atrocity crimes have been committed to allow for diplomacy and justice and accountability to be made possible. A reform already advocated by P5 member France with Mexico and backed by over 100 countries.
If Syria had been referred to the International Criminal Court in 2014 and a clear message could have been sent to Assad there would be accountability for his regime’s crimes against humanity hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved, the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War averted and the near total destruction of much of Syria might have been prevented. But using multiple Security Council vetoes Russia has protected Assad, and often backed by China, leaving to date over six hundred thousand dead (the true figure probably much higher and may never be known as the UN stopped counting years ago); half the population forced to flee their homes with over six millions refugees outside the country and an equal number internally displaced; over 130,000 disappeared and many still locked in the regime’s notorious torture prisons; and still no sign of any serious international effort to end this nightmare. Except of course the apparent indefensible and cynical position of the Biden administration not only breaking election promises to seek a political solution based on justice and accountability but much worse actually seeking to prolong this hellish agony by normalising Assad?
Even more alarming is the regional plan to pipe natural gas to Lebanon via Syria which Biden officials have not opposed and actually have privately defended as Josh Rogin revealed. This project uniquely illustrates the Biden administration normalisation policy as the execution of the gas project would allow Assad to refill his financial arsenal while undermining leverage to press for a political settlement and the help secure accountability for some of the worst crimes committed in our time.
Against that background the failure of the administration to fully enforce the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act maybe any reading of which would suggest the Lebanon natural gas deal would be clearly in violation of the very tough sanctions regime envisaged as part of that legislation. The Caesar Act sanctions the Syrian regime and President Bashar al-Assad for crimes against the Syrian people. The act specifically targets major Syrian operated industries especially related to infrastructure, defence and the energy sector with a primary aim being to make reconstruction impossible without a polecat settlement and accountability. A number of leading figures and businesses who support Assad are also targeted. In short, a quite powerful tool in seeking to exert leverage but far from using it the Biden administration appears bent on lifting all pressure on the regime?
The act is named after ‘Caesar’ a code named used by a regime forensic photographer who risked his life and that of his family gathering evidence of regime crimes over a two years year period. That period was just after Syria’s peaceful uprising when the regime was literally annihilating protesters for daring to peacefully confront the most brutal regime in the Middle East. Indeed, his photographs uniquely illustrate the depravity of the Assad regime. The thousands of prisoners he photographed were murdered under torture and starvation and their scarred and emaciated bodies resonate with images from the Nazi death camps during the Holocaust. Caesar gave evidence before a congressional committee and his evidence no doubt was decisive in helping to secure the passage of the act that now bears his name.
Anthony Blinken issued a quite moving statement this year to mark the 80th anniversary of Babyn Yar in September 1941 when 33,771 Jews — men, women and children — were very brutally murdered in one of the worst massacres during the Holocaust by the Nazis. He ended that statement by vowing to honor the memory of all of those annihilated at Babyn Yar by pledging “to act everyday, so that history is not repeated.” Well history is being repeated in Syria and the Biden administration is actively facilitating that by helping to normalise Assad instead of using the tools available, especially the Caesar Act, to isolate Assad and press for a political settlement based on justice and accountability.
