While the West is consumed by ISIL, Assad continues to slaughter Syrians

The sinister policy in Damascus is clear: every time the world looks away, Bashar Al Assad's massacres get worse, writes Faisal Al Yafai

Bashar Al Assad grins while delivering a speech, with a Syrian flag made of pictures of people allegedly killed during the uprising (EPA/SANA)

While the rest of the world has been staring, with justifiable horror, at the slaughter by ISIL, Bashar Al Assad has been quietly killing his own people.

Actually, quietly is the wrong word: the massacres by the Assad regime have not been conducted in the dark, but in broad daylight. In the past few days, as for weeks and months past, Mr Al Assad’s fighter jets have struck buildings and bodies all across Syria.

At the weekend, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a monitoring group based in the UK, reported that the death toll after four years has now passed 200,000, with hundreds of thousands more wounded and millions more internally and externally displaced.

The murders that ISIL has perpetrated have been carried out in the full glare of the media – filmed by their own propagandists and reported on and reprinted by media around the world. But the systematic, industrial-scale slaughter of Syrians has dropped off the front pages of the world.

That is because, as yet, there is no answer to the Syrian crisis. No grand strategy, no obvious solution, nor even the prospect of a military or diplomatic breakthrough.

The Syrian strategy of the international community is non-existent. And just as the squabbling and division of Iraq allowed ISIL to gain a foothold and then conquer territory, so the conflicting agendas of the international community have allowed Mr Al Assad to continue killing. Confusion and inaction remain Mr Al Assad’s best friends.

The figures from the SOHR explain one aspect of the confusion on the part of the international community. The recent delivery of US arms to Lebanon explains another.

Put simply, there are too many participants on the ground, and too many conflicting political agendas abroad, for a coherent strategy to be agreed.

The Syria civil war has become both a full-blown proxy war and an internationalised conflict. The analogy with Lebanon’s civil war is imperfect: although that war did become a proxy battle for regional and international acts – as Syria is today – it did not attract foreign fighters to the same degree. In that, Syria shows elements of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union.

A detailed look at the casualties listed by SOHR reveals this. The report lists at least 12 different battalions and armed groups, either fighting alongside the regime or against them.

Adding to this confusion are conflicting political priorities.

The US has delivered a small shipment of arms to Lebanon, worth US$25m, in order to support the Lebanese army fighting incursions along its long border with Syria.

ISIL fighters are massing on the border, occasionally making incursions into Lebanese territory. They are faced by both the Lebanese army and Hizbollah.

The US, therefore, wishes to bolster the Lebanese army but not help Hizbollah – yet by reducing the strain on Hizbollah, the militant group will be able to dedicate more resources to fighting anti-Assad fighters inside Syria.

The lack of a coherent strategy on the macro level means there is also a lack of a clear strategy at a local level.

It is well-established that ISIL have dug themselves into Syria and Iraq by first establishing links at the very local level, with families, tribes and towns. By starting there, they have managed to infiltrate, threaten, co-opt and ultimately control vast parts of both countries.

Those dynamics remain an essential part of the story of the civil war. The international community still has so little understanding of these dynamics that it is unable to chart a path, whether to offer funding, weapons or even support a political programme. Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army is being sidelined.

All of this confusion has cleared the way for two groups to grow stronger: the Assad regime and ISIL. A political realist would say it is a tragedy that they are not fighting each other. But the truth is that any war between them would simply lead to more civilian deaths.

Political realism would also say that if these are the last two groups standing, then the international community must talk to them. But ISIL cannot be debated with; their ideology does not lend itself to compromise or discussion.

That leaves the regime in Damascus. The days when the decapitation of the Assad regime was a possibility are over. Mr Al Assad, for better or worse, has a role to play in this part of Syria’s story.

On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai