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FOREIGN MEDIA PORTRAYALS OF THE CONFLICT IN SYRIA ARE DANGEROUSLY INACCURATE
World View: It is naive not to accept that both sides are capable of
manipulating the facts to serve their own interests
By Patrick Cockburn
June 30, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "The Independent"---
Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation
is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The
foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate
and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First
World War. I can't think of any other war or crisis I have covered
in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so
readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.
A result of these distortions is that politicians and casual newspaper
or television viewers alike have never had a clear idea over the
last two years of what is happening inside Syria. Worse, long-term
plans are based on these misconceptions. A report on Syria published
last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that
"once confident of swift victory, the opposition's foreign allies
shifted to a paradigm dangerously divorced from reality".
Slogans replace policies: the rebels are pictured as white hats and the
government supporters as black hats; given more weapons, the opposition
can supposedly win a decisive victory; put under enough military
pressure, President Bashar al-Assad will agree to negotiations for
which a pre-condition is capitulation by his side in the conflict. One
of the many drawbacks of the demonising rhetoric indulged in by the
incoming US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and William Hague,
is that it rules out serious negotiations and compromise with the
powers-that-be in Damascus. And since Assad controls most of Syria,
Rice and Hague have devised a recipe for endless war while pretending
humanitarian concern for the Syrian people.
It is difficult to prove the truth or falsehood of any generalisation
about Syria. But, going by my experience this month travelling in
central Syria between Damascus, Homs and the Mediterranean coast,
it is possible to show how far media reports differ markedly what is
really happening. Only by understanding and dealing with the actual
balance of forces on the ground can any progress be made towards a
cessation of violence.
On Tuesday I travelled to Tal Kalakh, a town of 55,000 people just
north of the border with Lebanon, which was once an opposition
bastion. Three days previously, government troops had taken over
the town and 39 Free Syrian Army (FSA) leaders had laid down their
weapons. Talking to Syrian army commanders, an FSA defector and local
people, it was evident there was no straight switch from war to peace.
It was rather that there had been a series of truces and ceasefires
arranged by leading citizens of Tal Kalakh over the previous year.
But at the very time I was in the town, Al Jazeera Arabic was reporting
fighting there between the Syrian army and the opposition.
Smoke was supposedly rising from Tal Kalakh as the rebels fought
to defend their stronghold. Fortunately, this appears to have been
fantasy and, during the several hours I was in the town, there was
no shooting, no sign that fighting had taken place and no smoke.
Of course, all sides in a war pretend that no position is lost without
a heroic defence against overwhelming numbers of the enemy. But
obscured in the media's accounts of what happened in Tal Kalakh was an
important point: the opposition in Syria is fluid in its allegiances.
The US, Britain and the so-called 11-member "Friends of Syria", who met
in Doha last weekend, are to arm non-Islamic fundamentalist rebels,
but there is no great chasm between them and those not linked to
al-Qa'ida. One fighter with the al-Qa'ida-affiliated al-Nusra Front
was reported to have defected to a more moderate group because he
could not do without cigarettes. The fundamentalists pay more and,
given the total impoverishment of so many Syrian families, the rebels
will always be able to win more recruits. "Money counts for more than
ideology," a diplomat in Damascus told me.
While I was in Homs I had an example of why the rebel version of
events is so frequently accepted by the foreign media in preference
to that of the Syrian government. It may be biased towards the rebels,
but often there is no government version of events, leaving a vacuum to
be filled by the rebels. For instance, I had asked to go to a military
hospital in the al-Waar district of Homs and was granted permission,
but when I got there I was refused entrance. Now, soldiers wounded
fighting the rebels are likely to be eloquent and convincing advocates
for the government side (I had visited a military hospital in Damascus
and spoken to injured soldiers there). But the government's obsessive
secrecy means that the opposition will always run rings around it
when it comes to making a convincing case.
Back in the Christian quarter of the Old City of Damascus, where I am
staying, there was an explosion near my hotel on Thursday. I went to
the scene and what occurred next shows that there can be no replacement
for unbiased eyewitness reporting. State television was claiming that
it was a suicide bomb, possibly directed at the Greek Orthodox Church
or a Shia hospital that is even closer. Four people had been killed.
I could see a small indentation in the pavement which looked to me
very much like the impact of a mortar bomb. There was little blood in
the immediate vicinity, though there was about 10 yards away. While I
was looking around, a second mortar bomb came down on top of a house,
killing a woman.
The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, so often
used as a source by foreign journalists, later said that its own
investigations showed the explosion to have been from a bomb left in
the street. In fact, for once, it was possible to know definitively
what had happened, because the Shia hospital has CCTV that showed
the mortar bomb in the air just before it landed - outlined for a
split-second against the white shirt of a passer-by who was killed
by the blast. What had probably happened was part of the usual random
shelling by mortars from rebels in the nearby district of Jobar.
In the middle of a ferocious civil war it is self-serving credulity on
the part of journalists to assume that either side in the conflict,
government or rebel, is not going to concoct or manipulate facts to
serve its own interests. Yet much foreign media coverage is based on
just such an assumption.
The plan of the CIA and the Friends of Syria to somehow seek an end
to the war by increasing the flow of weapons is equally absurd. War
will only produce more war. John Milton's sonnet, written during the
English civil war in 1648 in praise of the Parliamentary General Sir
Thomas Fairfax, who had just stormed Colchester, shows a much deeper
understanding of what civil wars are really like than anything said
by David Cameron or William Hague. He wrote:
For what can war but endless war still breed?
Till truth and right from violence be freed,
And public faith clear'd from the shameful brand
Of public fraud. In vain doth valour bleed
While avarice and rapine share the land.
World View: It is naive not to accept that both sides are capable of
manipulating the facts to serve their own interests
By Patrick Cockburn
June 30, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "The Independent"---
Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation
is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The
foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate
and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First
World War. I can't think of any other war or crisis I have covered
in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so
readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.
A result of these distortions is that politicians and casual newspaper
or television viewers alike have never had a clear idea over the
last two years of what is happening inside Syria. Worse, long-term
plans are based on these misconceptions. A report on Syria published
last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that
"once confident of swift victory, the opposition's foreign allies
shifted to a paradigm dangerously divorced from reality".
Slogans replace policies: the rebels are pictured as white hats and the
government supporters as black hats; given more weapons, the opposition
can supposedly win a decisive victory; put under enough military
pressure, President Bashar al-Assad will agree to negotiations for
which a pre-condition is capitulation by his side in the conflict. One
of the many drawbacks of the demonising rhetoric indulged in by the
incoming US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and William Hague,
is that it rules out serious negotiations and compromise with the
powers-that-be in Damascus. And since Assad controls most of Syria,
Rice and Hague have devised a recipe for endless war while pretending
humanitarian concern for the Syrian people.
It is difficult to prove the truth or falsehood of any generalisation
about Syria. But, going by my experience this month travelling in
central Syria between Damascus, Homs and the Mediterranean coast,
it is possible to show how far media reports differ markedly what is
really happening. Only by understanding and dealing with the actual
balance of forces on the ground can any progress be made towards a
cessation of violence.
On Tuesday I travelled to Tal Kalakh, a town of 55,000 people just
north of the border with Lebanon, which was once an opposition
bastion. Three days previously, government troops had taken over
the town and 39 Free Syrian Army (FSA) leaders had laid down their
weapons. Talking to Syrian army commanders, an FSA defector and local
people, it was evident there was no straight switch from war to peace.
It was rather that there had been a series of truces and ceasefires
arranged by leading citizens of Tal Kalakh over the previous year.
But at the very time I was in the town, Al Jazeera Arabic was reporting
fighting there between the Syrian army and the opposition.
Smoke was supposedly rising from Tal Kalakh as the rebels fought
to defend their stronghold. Fortunately, this appears to have been
fantasy and, during the several hours I was in the town, there was
no shooting, no sign that fighting had taken place and no smoke.
Of course, all sides in a war pretend that no position is lost without
a heroic defence against overwhelming numbers of the enemy. But
obscured in the media's accounts of what happened in Tal Kalakh was an
important point: the opposition in Syria is fluid in its allegiances.
The US, Britain and the so-called 11-member "Friends of Syria", who met
in Doha last weekend, are to arm non-Islamic fundamentalist rebels,
but there is no great chasm between them and those not linked to
al-Qa'ida. One fighter with the al-Qa'ida-affiliated al-Nusra Front
was reported to have defected to a more moderate group because he
could not do without cigarettes. The fundamentalists pay more and,
given the total impoverishment of so many Syrian families, the rebels
will always be able to win more recruits. "Money counts for more than
ideology," a diplomat in Damascus told me.
While I was in Homs I had an example of why the rebel version of
events is so frequently accepted by the foreign media in preference
to that of the Syrian government. It may be biased towards the rebels,
but often there is no government version of events, leaving a vacuum to
be filled by the rebels. For instance, I had asked to go to a military
hospital in the al-Waar district of Homs and was granted permission,
but when I got there I was refused entrance. Now, soldiers wounded
fighting the rebels are likely to be eloquent and convincing advocates
for the government side (I had visited a military hospital in Damascus
and spoken to injured soldiers there). But the government's obsessive
secrecy means that the opposition will always run rings around it
when it comes to making a convincing case.
Back in the Christian quarter of the Old City of Damascus, where I am
staying, there was an explosion near my hotel on Thursday. I went to
the scene and what occurred next shows that there can be no replacement
for unbiased eyewitness reporting. State television was claiming that
it was a suicide bomb, possibly directed at the Greek Orthodox Church
or a Shia hospital that is even closer. Four people had been killed.
I could see a small indentation in the pavement which looked to me
very much like the impact of a mortar bomb. There was little blood in
the immediate vicinity, though there was about 10 yards away. While I
was looking around, a second mortar bomb came down on top of a house,
killing a woman.
The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, so often
used as a source by foreign journalists, later said that its own
investigations showed the explosion to have been from a bomb left in
the street. In fact, for once, it was possible to know definitively
what had happened, because the Shia hospital has CCTV that showed
the mortar bomb in the air just before it landed - outlined for a
split-second against the white shirt of a passer-by who was killed
by the blast. What had probably happened was part of the usual random
shelling by mortars from rebels in the nearby district of Jobar.
In the middle of a ferocious civil war it is self-serving credulity on
the part of journalists to assume that either side in the conflict,
government or rebel, is not going to concoct or manipulate facts to
serve its own interests. Yet much foreign media coverage is based on
just such an assumption.
The plan of the CIA and the Friends of Syria to somehow seek an end
to the war by increasing the flow of weapons is equally absurd. War
will only produce more war. John Milton's sonnet, written during the
English civil war in 1648 in praise of the Parliamentary General Sir
Thomas Fairfax, who had just stormed Colchester, shows a much deeper
understanding of what civil wars are really like than anything said
by David Cameron or William Hague. He wrote:
For what can war but endless war still breed?
Till truth and right from violence be freed,
And public faith clear'd from the shameful brand
Of public fraud. In vain doth valour bleed
While avarice and rapine share the land.