Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: Guilty but Free

Because Syria’s government had not signed onto the Rome Statute, which renders governments and their respective officials subject to the International Criminal Court, including its arrest warrants and verdicts, Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother, Mahar, who were then in absentia under Putin’s protection in Russia, were not subject to the ICC when a Syrian court found the two brothers guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes on August 11, 2026. The two men could evade the death sentences issued by their own country’s judiciary as long as they could be protected by the Russian president in Russia. Although an Israeli court had tried and convicted the Nazi Eichmann of crimes against humanity, so a precedent existed for national courts adjudicating that crime, the fact that Israel had to illegally kidnap Eichmann in Argentina and the al-Assad brothers could evade being held accountable for their horrendous crimes in Syria suggests that the right, proper, and effective court to hear cases on crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes, is international, such as the ICC. That court’s weakness, however, as in Syria, Russia, and Israel not being subject to that court’s jurisdiction, points to a hole in jurisprudence on crimes against humanity, assuming that the proper and necessary jurisdiction is rightly international rather than national. With the U.S. having recently announced a full-on attack on the ICC (and its prosecutors) at the behest of the indicted suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, it could be asked whether the ICC was in a position to “fill the hole” in the jurisprudence of crimes against humanity (and war crimes), or whether a coalition of the willing of national governments would have to start from scratch to construct a new international criminal court (and block diplomacy and trade with any country not willing to be bound by the new international jurisprudence). The judicial case against the al-Assad brothers (and their maternal cousin, who was in the courtroom and thus could be held accountable by the national court for having led the 2011 Daraa crackdown) demonstrates the value in shoring up international jurisprudence on crimes against humanity (and war crimes).

The Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus, Syria, found the country’s former dictator guilty of having ordered “the murder of civilians including children, as well as torture and unlawful detention.”[1] Although the senior director of the Soufan Center said at the time of the verdict and sentencing of death, “The ruling we saw today on the al-Assad brothers and their cousin, Atef Najib, marks a new chapter in Syria’s post-regime accountability landscape,” such accountability was severely limited because neither of the brothers were in Syria, and thus could not be touched by the ruling and sentence.[2] In fact, the ruling on and sentencing of the two brothers even as they were in absentia showcases the limitations of a global order in which accountability in regard to crimes against humanity is subject to national sovereignty rather than international jurisprudence. Caroline Rose, the director at Soufan, admitted, “Bashar and Maher remain in Russia and likely will not be handed over by Moscow.”[3] It is indeed tenuous at best for accountability for the guilty of crimes against humanity to hinge on the political discretion of Russia’s president Putin, who was then wanted by the ICC for having abducted Ukrainian children and having them send to Russia to indoctrinate them to be ethnic Russians rather than Ukrainians.

So even though Rose said of the Syrian court’s verdict and sentencing, “It is a decision that seeks to satisfy millions of Syrians who seek accountability and justice after war crimes committed by the regime, seeking closure,” the “result” was anything but closure.[4] This is significant because the “al-Assad regime’s documented atrocities over 14 years include the use of chemical weapons, most notably a sarin attack on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus in August 2013 that killed an estimated 1,400 people, according to US intelligence reports” and “confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”[5] Additionally, the Syrian Network for Human Rights reports that the “regime also dropped more than 80,000 barrel bombs on civilian areas,” and photographs smuggled out by a military police photographer confirm that 11,000 detainees died “from torture, starvation or execution in Syrian government facilities.”[6] 

The severity of such crimes in Syria can be said to transcend national sovereignty and the related reach of national judiciaries, and thus to properly belong to international jurisprudence in line with the Nuremberg Trials wherein several Nazi officials were tried between 1945 and 1949 by an international, albeit of the Allied powers, tribunal. It was there that “crimes against humanity” was coined and first tried, and with success. In fact, that not every defendant was found guilty added to the credibility of the Trials as being something more than the vengeance of the victors on a vanquished regime. Even the Israeli trial of Eichmann turned out to be credible, as the verdict hinged on Eichmann’s violation of Himmler’s order not to march Hungarian Jews to far-away death-camps; Eichmann could not say that he was just following orders, and thus he could be found guilty of having committed a crime against humanity. Even so, both the added credibility that an international court would have had and it not having to necessarily resort in illegal abduction argue in favor of having an international rather than a national court adjudicate on crimes against humanity (and war crimes), rather than leaving these crimes only to national tribunals, especially as military technology, including on chemical weapons, has magnified the possible scale of the crimes. 

As in the case of nuclear weapons and even carbon-emissions, the weapons that technology, or science, already made possible when the al-Assad brothers were killing and torturing Syrian civilians for 14 years, can justify a situs for justice at the global level—as jurisprudence in a global order, and thus not held back by absolutist interpretations of national sovereignty which had arguably already been antiquated when Nazi Germany enforced nationalism throughout Europe in the mid-20^th century. In other words, the limitations on the Syrian court being the enforcer of justice against two brothers found guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity could ween nationalists around the world from the addiction to national sovereignty as the exclusive default for any sort of global arrangement and international relations.

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1. Aleksandar Brezar, “Syria Sentences Bashar al-Assad to Death in Absentia for War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity,” Euronews.com, 11 August, 2026.
2.Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Protests in Belarus: Raw Violence Versus Moral Power

Once Syria’s Assad regime folded, Travis Timmerman, an American who had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage, was freed from a prison after seven months there. A border guard had thrown him into prison. That Timmerman is Christian may have had something to do with it. Austin Tice, an American journalist who had been missing since his abduction in Syria 12 years earlier, was still unaccounted for days after the fall of the Assad regime. Incredibly, Timmerman said of his prison experience, “I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom.”[1] Timmerman’s experience can be used to calibrate just how violently police handled Belarusians who protested the rigged election in 2020 in Belarus, and the quick, unexpected fall of Assad can remind us of the plight that could be in store for Lukashenko. For as soon as enough state “riot” police decide not to follow orders to beat, falsely imprison, and even torture non-violent protesters, what seems like a solid dictatorship could unravel surprisingly quickly. This is especially so because, like Assad, Lukashenko has used violence solely for the same of retaining power, rather than to further an ideology. This renders the violence committed on the orders of Assad and Lukashenko as even more shameless than Mao, Stalin, and even Hitler, all of whom sought to radically reshape society in the broad sense, including the economic and political systems, and thus could be countered ideologically as a wsy of stopping the repression and murders. The shameless, naked power-aggrandizing, non-ideological violence against non-violent individuals evinces power as an end in itself. It is especially ripe for a Gandhian approach of resistance wherein moral power is intentionally set against the raw power of violence.

Around the time of the 2020 election in Belarus, a woman accused of insulting Lukashenko was sentenced to 3 years at a penal colony, an entrepreneur was sentenced to 3.5 years for rioting (i.e., attending a peaceful political protest), an engineer who merely went to a polling station to view the results was detained and beaten by riot troopers, and a poet was detained for having walked his dog on the day before the 2020 election.

The entrepreneur later reflected on his experience by asking, “How can you imprison an entire nation?” The engineer remarked, “When people stop obeying [the president’s] orders, the system will collapse.” The poet pointed out that if no factory workers had shown up for work for three days following the election, the regime would have collapsed. The thread here is essentially about the collective action problem. An IT contractor who had been arrested subsequently pointed out that virtually none of the people who depend on the state for a job would risk being fired by joining in even peaceful protests on the rigged election. It could even be said that the problem of collective action inhibited the numbers that would be necessary for Gandhi’s kind of non-violent moral resistance to work. It seems that not even the use of social media like Facebook to notify residents of a mass protest can facilitate enough additional people to come out that the problem would be solved. Hence, violent dictators around the world could continue to count on the problem of collective action to keep the size of protests down to a manageable number of people who can be beaten and taken away to be imprisoned. After all, this cannot be done to an entire people.

The moral contrast between a Belarusian policeman saying to prisoners that he would burn them all alive if he got the order even though he was presumably not enraged by the non-ideological protestors and the prisoner who subsequently said that he would not bear a grudge or take revenge on that riot trooper is just the sort of contrast between good and evil that Gandhi’s non-violent passive resistance fits.  So too, the moral contrast between the young women handing out flowers to riot troopers in military vehicles while knowing that the police could get an order, which they would obey, to beat, detain, and even torture the non-violent women. Handing out the flowers is something Gandhi would certainly do, even while being beaten. Were the problem of collective action not such an obstacle, perhaps the sheer number of followers of Gandhi’s method of political resistance would be such that dictators could no longer take advantage of the problem by knocking off individual protestors with impunity. With sheer numbers, the moral shock of people around the world would not have to be relied on for pressure to build internationally against a given dictator. A whole people cannot be arrested; the system would come to a halt. Ultimately, courage would have spread while the problem of collective action is alleviated somehow. Until then, a world without brutal dictators will be possible, though not probable.

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1. Mohamad El Chamaa, Abbie Cheeseman, and John Hudson, “U.S. Citizen Found in Syria Says He Was Imprisoned for Months,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2024.

Religion and Politics: Russian Orthodox Patriarch Helped Syria’s Assad Regime

In the wake of yet another Syrian massacre of civilians, including families being shot at close-range in their own houses, the New York Times published a report in 2012 that claimed that Russian priests and theologians commiserated with diplomats from Damascus at the opening of an exhibition devoted to Syrian Christianity in a cathedral near the Kremlin. While it is understandable that the Kremlin would not want to lose its “longtime partner and last firm foothold in the Middle East,” it is perhaps less palatable for Christian prelates and doctors of the Russian Orthodox Church to essentially look the other way on atrocities so the Syrian Christians, many of whom are Orthodox, won’t be pushed under the bus in a wave of Islamic fundamentalism that could be unleashed should Assad fall from power. The Syrian Christians were reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition to Assad for fear of being persecuted by the Sunnis should they gain power.

 Together, the fear of the Syrian Christians and the “foreign policy” of the Moscow patriarchate were forestalling internal and external forces, respectively, from having achieving enough power to stop the human rights abuses in Syria. This is ironic because Jesus preached selflessness, or self-emptying love for one’s neighbor (agape seu benevolentia universalis). I suspect that the martyrs of the early Church would be shocked to find such self-serving provincialism in the sectarian groups, both in Syria and the Russian capital.

The following observation from Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is telling if not poignant. “What we see now in Syria is systemic failure—it’s brutal, it’s now an insurgency—but in the end its just systemic failure. If the Christian population and those that support it want a long-term future in the region, they’re going to have to accept that hitching their wagon to this brutal killing machine doesn’t have a long-term future.” I would add that the hitching makes the Christians and their leaders into hypocrites. That is, it contradicts Christian love as preached and lived by Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, compassion when it is least convenient was being thrown under the bus in the service of a sectarian interest.

                                              Clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church             NYT

When Russian Patriarch Kirill visited Damascus in late 2011 after 3,500 Syrians had been killed by government forces and the Arab League had suspended Syria’s membership, he “made a sympathetic appearance with [Assad], praising Syria’s treatment of Christians and making no mention of the mounting death toll,” according to the New York Times. Apparently the death of thousands of people is fine as long as one’s own kind is treated well. The good of a part outweighs the good of the whole. This point applies as well to the related opposition of Putin to efforts at the UN’s Security Council to take measures against the Syrian government. That is to say, Putin’s relationships to the patriarch and to Assad are more important than a higher good, such as stopping the slaughter of hundreds if not thousands of Syrians.

It follows that the vetoes held on the Security Council can and should be questioned because the parts holding them cannot be assumed to have any regard for the “big picture” or the common good at the global level. Even if the violent acts by Assad’s men are consistent with the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government, the international system is not served by a government that gets away with violating rather than protecting its citizens’ human rights. 

Source:

Ellen Barry, “Russian Church Is a Strong Voice Opposing Intervention in Syria,” The New York Times, June 1, 2012. 

Is Syria’s Sovereignty Absolute?

“Fundamentally, the argument over Syria reflects a deeper divide between those who would use the Security Council to confront nations over how their governments treat civilians, versus those who consider that it has no role whatsoever in settling domestic disputes.” On the one side, Sheik Hamad, the prime minister of Qatar, reported to the Security Council, “The government killing machine continues effectively unabated.”[1] The implication is that people running a government do not have legitimate authority to kill over 5,000 fellow citizens.

The Arab League taking on Syria at the Security Council.           (Mario Tami/Getty)

On the other side, the Russian envoy, Vitaly Churkin, adopted a “where will it all end” argument. The Council, he said, will start saying “what king or prime minister needs to step down. The Security Council cannot prescribe recipes for the outcome of a domestic political process.”  The Russian foreign minister added that the “Russian policy is not about asking someone to step down; regime change is not our profession.”[2] He might have well have said, It is none of our business whether Assad kills his people. He did say that “the decision should be made by Syrians, by the Syrians themselves.”[3] What he did not say is that, “Russia’s long ties to Syria generate billions of dollars in weapon sales, plus the relationship gives Moscow the entrée it needs to be at the table for Middle East peace talks. In addition, the Russian Navy deploys some ships from the Syrian port of Tartous, widening Russia’s sphere of influence into the Mediterranean.”[4] Of course, the West has a strategic interest in toppling Assad to weaken his ally, Iran, as well as Hezbollah, which backs Assad.

Strategic interests, regardless of which side they happen to be on, should not be determinative, even as the existence of the veto in the Security Council allows them to be. The fundamental issues go beyond what fascinates an analyst, and thus should not be cut short by momentary concerns. The basic question has to do with whether “the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity” of a country, including Syria, is absolute. Can human rights legitimately counter the claim of absolutism? In other words, does a ruler have the right, internationally-speaking, to use a government’s monopoly (or at the very least, advantage) of force to kill non-violent citizens? If not, should the U.N. have the right to intercede?  These were the questions before the world in 2011, and they were no closer to being resolved as 2012 got underway at the U.N.’s Security Council.

Perhaps compromise can be found, such as having the International Criminal Court, rather than the Security Council, decide whether a ruler has violated human rights. An international code of human rights violations sufficient for a ruler to be vacated by the court would need to be formulated. Contributing forces to the enforcement effort would be required of any country that has signed onto the Court’s jurisdiction, so the U.N. need not be the instrument. However, as this compromise will have kept the Security Council from being in the regime change profession in terms of making the decision, perhaps Russia and China would agree to the U.N. serving in some capacity following the Court’s verdict.

Absent such a compromise, the question may be whether the U.N. or a new organization should limit national sovereignty where human rights of citizens are being sufficiently violated. The self-interest of rulers sitting on the Security Council may dictate that a precedent applying an international check on the power of current office-holders is undesirable. As with strategic interests, such a conflict of interest should not be allowed to interfere with, or obstruct, a decision on the fundamental question: Is national sovereignty absolute, and, if not, should the U.N. play a role in limiting it?

I suspect that “we’ll just have to agree to disagree” would be as far as discussions between the E.U. and Russia would get on the question. If so, then—and Europeans should recognize this from their own differences on the Union-level—members of the U.N. who are no longer willing to recognize national sovereignty as an absolute could form a separate “track” from the U.N. that would include a new United Nations. Members of it would of course be subject to that organization as a check. Additionally, that organization could decide to support efforts to defend human rights with military force in a country that is not a member.

I do not believe that the philosophical difference between the “absolutists” and the “human rights” camps in the Security Council is such that anything short of a split can answer the question. Lest this appear too pessimistic, a wider time-perspective could allow for a different perspective in both Moscow and Beijing. In the meantime, a coalition of the willing should not lose any time in setting up a new U.N. that includes “human rights-justified regime change” in its mission, because the existence of the veto means that the existing U.N. will remain stuck—which essentially means led by the few holdouts rather than the majority of the members. Rather than being stymied by a few members of the Security Council, each of whom retain a veto-right, the forces willing to act against peers who are systematically violating human rights should step up to the plate—assuming there really is an interest in putting human rights before absolute national sovereignty.

1. Neil MacFarquhar, “At U.N., Pressure Ison Russia For Refusal to Condemn Syria,” The New York Times, February 1, 2012. 
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Diplomatic Pressure and Human Rights: The Case of Assad in Syria

It is perhaps telling that the world was more or less content, as of 2011, to rely on diplomatic pressure in the idyllic hope that it is sufficient to remove a tyrant from power, even if a tyrant were unleasing the weapons of war, including chemical weapons, on his own people I have Bashar Assad of Syria.

In August 2011, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement condemning Assad’s offensive within Syria against his own people. The Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council also denounced Assad’s violence. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain withdrew their respective ambassadors. Meanwhile, the Obama administration praised the increased diplomatic pressure and urged that more was needed. Washington was looking to Turkey to use its influence. “Historically, concerted multilateral pressure and sanctions have the greatest impact on the Assad regime’s calculations,” Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said. We “know that sanctions impact the regime, given its terrible economic situation and the regime’s worsening finances,” he added.[1] Yet an expert from the International Crisis Group admits that it may not matter to the very top.

I contend that even though a “calculations” approach in response to Assad may match his tactical-oriented or strategic approach to governance, the “tit-for-tat” level is grossly insufficient not only for removing a tyrant from power, but also in terms of dealing with human rights abuses. In other words, calculated effect is too wan for a domain such as human rights in which people are literally losing their lives.

LA Times (2011)

For example, relying on Saudi Arabia to pressure Assad because he has been going after Sunni tribes with ties to the kingdom naively assumes that the dictator would simply walk away from power simply from external pressure. Even in spite of opposition from the Arab League, Gadhafi was able to hold on to power at least as of August of 2011. Even bombing Tripoli and aiding the opposition had not achieved enough external pressure to remove the tyrant from power. Was Assad to simply walk away from solely diplomatic pressure?

If Gadhifi had lost the right to rule by international agreement, then to do anything less than remove him from power by force makes the international position look weak, if not impotent. For someone such as Barak Obama to say, “Gadahi must leave,” and then for the tyrant to remain makes Obama look foolish (and impotent).  That is to say, Obama ought not over-reach. More generally, if the international consensus is that a tyrant has lost the legitimacy to rule, the parties of that consensus are obliged to remove that tyrant unless an international mechanism is set up to do remove rulers who have been “ruled” illegitimate. In other words, governmental sovereignty is not an absolute, and the world ought not reply on diplomatic pressure to enforce transgressors. The duty arises out of the declaration and because the citizens being abused are not in a position to remove their dictator themselves.

1. Borzou Daragahi, "Arab Nations Add to Pressure on Syrian Regime," LA Times, August 9, 2011.