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Assad's Houla Propaganda
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Throughout the Syrian conflict, Western media
sources have accepted bait provided by Bashar al-Assad's most prodigious propagandists,
who regularly weave tales of anti-Assad, al-Qaeda-style groups' expelling or
murdering members of minority groups. These claims touch on issues that play
well for Bashar Assad's regime, especially the claim that without the regime,
the country will turn into Iraq.
The outcome of Assad's removal, assuming that
Syria or even its Sunni heartland can hold together, may well be a new Sunni
Islamist regime. However, this does not excuse the regime's attempts to
disseminate patent falsehoods.
In a
post on National Review Online, John Rosenthal quotes a June 7 article
from a German newspaper, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), that discusses the recent massacre
in Houla. Rosenthal also cites an article written by Mother Agnès-Mariam de
la-Croix, of the St. James Monastery in Syria, regarding a massacre of 50
that took place in Homs in March.
The line immediately presented by the Syrian
regime regarding the Houla massacre was that anti-Assad "armed
terrorists" carried it out. This is the same line the
regime took regarding Homs. Now, FAZ alleges that not only did
opposition-group members carry out the Houla massacre, but the victims were
principally Alawites — that is, part of Assad's religious sect — along with
some Sunni families that had converted to Shiism.
One might be tempted to think that FAZ
has got hold of a real scoop, but the truth is that these allegations have
their origins on outlandish conspiracy websites. Often, the many propaganda
purveyors with a direct interest in defending Assad have engaged in a
circular routine of feeding one another details. In turn, these narratives
find their way into legitimate outlets.
For example, in March, Agenzia
Fides, an official Vatican publication, republished (almost verbatim)
material provided by the Syrian
propaganda website "Syria Truth." The article claimed that
jihadists had expelled Christians from Homs. This information eventually
found its way into outlets such as the Los
Angeles Times. When we demonstrated the dubious veracity of these
claims, Syria Truth went
ballistic. A subsequent McClatchy
article corroborated our refutation.
In the fog surrounding the Houla massacre,
there seems to be more seepage of hazy data into mainstream outlets.
A June 5 article by
Thierry Meyssan argued the same point as the FAZ article: namely,
that the massacre arose in the context of a nearby rebel offensive against
the Syrian army, and that some of the victims were Sunni families that had
converted to Shiism. Meyssan is a well-known French 9/11 conspiracy
theorist who believes that the Beslan Massacre in Russia — an action in
which Chechen and Ingush jihadists killed hundreds of Russian schoolchildren
— was actually planned
and directed by the CIA and the U.S. government.
In turn, Meyssan cited Mother Agnes's
affiliated outlet Vox Clamantis, which on May 26 issued
a press release claiming that the Syrian army was not in the vicinity of
Houla and did not bombard the area. The outlet then offered the purported
testimony of an anonymous eyewitness from Kfar Laha, a town in the vicinity
of Houla.
This supposed eyewitness claimed that on the
night of the massacre, armed rebels first entered into a hospital at around 8
p.m., murdered all those inside, removed the corpses, and then burned the
hospital. Next, the rebels entered Tal Daw at around 10 p.m.and proceeded to
massacre some Alawite families. Then, all the corpses were gathered and taken
to a mosque in Houla to show to the U.N. observers and create the impression
of a massacre perpetrated by the Syrian army.
Like Nizar Nayouf of Syria Truth, Mother
Agnès-Mariam often assumes the slick veneer of a moderate; she even wrote an
open letter to Assad about the condition
of people affected by the fighting in Syrian hospitals. It's hard not to
conclude that Mother Agnès-Mariam is little more than another Assad
propagandist using her religious credentials to push a particular narrative.
According to the Swiss newspaper Le
Courrier, Agnès-Mariam was "comfortable among [Assad's] security
services," and she told their reporter it was hoped he could
"dismantle the propaganda of Western media."Thierry Meyssan also
conducted a revealing interview
with Mother Agnès-Mariam about Middle Eastern Christians. During the
interview, the mother superior repeated the typically farcical Assad line
that the dictator was truly trying to "reform."
Agnès-Mariam told Meyssan that she
"deplored the fact that the so-called opponents didn't accept President
Bashar Al-Assad's invitation to debate with him the series of reforms which
he is in the process of carrying out."(Of course, it would be of no
consequence to the sister (who never recanted her earlier statements) that in
leaked private e-mails Assad told
his wife, "We are going to adopt [a plan that left him in power]
instead of the rubbish laws of parties, elections, media [i.e., actual
democratic reforms].")
Mother Superior Agnès-Mariam continued by
claiming that the opposition was just a puppet in a conspiracy guided by
foreign powers. She also proffered the Assad narrative of Arabism, arguing
that Middle Eastern Christians are truly Arabs. Many Middle Eastern
Christians (including Eastern Catholics such as the Chaldeans and Maronites)
have not adopted the Arab identity, but Arabism is part
and parcel to Assad's own ideology.
Going back to Meyssan's June 5 article, the
conspiracy theorist cites a May 31 TV report from a Russian news channel
known as Vesti24. In a report reprinted on Meyssan's
site, Vesti24's Marat Musin follows the pro-Assad line, which should come
as no surprise given Musin's past
reports on Homs, which promoted claims that French military officers are
present in Syria assisting the rebels. Thus, based on interviews with
"law enforcement officials" and Syrian army soldiers, Musin
advances the claim that the victims were loyalist civilians — Sunni families
who had converted to Shiism — and portrays the entire affair as a
"provocation" by the opposition designed to trigger an intervention
by NATO countries, which according to him "directly threaten to bomb
Syria."
Though this review of the evidence might seem
tedious, it should now be apparent that FAZ is not reporting a new
theory: Rather, the outlet is simply recycling dubious claims coming from
pro-Assad propagandists and conspiracy theorists.
The claims made by Meyssan et al. are not
ignored by the mainstream media because the media want a narrative of a
heroic, popular, democratic uprising against a brutal regime. Indeed,
legitimate reports on gross
human-rights abuses by rebel forces and members of the opposition have
been widely
documented and circulated by non-governmental organizations such as Human
Rights Watch and prominent publications such as Der Spiegel. Instead,
the claims of Meyssan and his ilk are ignored because they have no basis in
reality.
Accurate reporting in Syria is difficult, and
has been made more so by the widespread violence. And despite the existence
of legitimate data furnished by Syrian citizens, there is a cottage industry
of nonsensical reports presented specifically to alter the perceptions of
observers. Autocratic regimes retain their own propagandists and have a
cordon of "useful idiots" disseminating the former's data for their
own reasons; Syria is no different. Damascus has its "Baghdad
Bobs"; they've just been taken more seriously. As the West sits on its
hands to see what may become of Syria, analysts must be circumspect in
assessing the situation.
Aymenn
Jawad Al-Tamimi is a student at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and
an adjunct fellow at the Middle East Forum. Phillip Smyth is a journalist and
researcher specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. He travels regularly to
the region.
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