Syria – When ‘atrocity’ cannot grasp the vast amount of heinous mass violence anymore.

Fiona Knäussel
Source: Sky News

 Ever since its dawn in 2011, violence of the Syrian conflict has made the news regularly. At times, on a daily basis. The brutal killings of innocent children, the bombings of hospitals and chemical weapon attacks are just some events that have shaped a conflict that has exceeded so many limits already. ‘Atrocity’ is a term that comes to our minds immediately. However, it certainly is not sufficient to describe and grasp the extent of the conflict anymore.


 The changing nature of mass violence
Literally, an ‘atrocity’ is an “excessively wicked and cruel act”. Internationally, an ‘atrocity’ is defined as to encompass war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It’s the immense scope and severity that distinguishes an ‘atrocity’ from other wrongs.

In her paper Contextualizing mass atrocity crimes: The dynamics of ‘extremely violent societies’ Susanne Karstedt (2012) argues that the nature of atrocities has changed over the previous decades. How? Instead of one big event, violence is often expressed in regular episodes of mass violence but on a smaller scale. Perpetrators and victims change sides, and while some groups are consistently victimized, others suffer less. Compared to traditional contexts of conflicts, today we encounter numerous involved factions who hold varying reasons for committing violence: states, militaries, rebel groups, terrorists, the international community,… Also, participation is not limited to one group anymore, but blurs the lines between different groups and their (non-)involvement. To understand what is really going on when we speak of mass violence, we must re-contextualize the larger framework of conflict. One “where groups are subjected to varying types and levels of violence and where sequences of mass violence transform into other types of violence and are linked to other crimes."


 What about Syria?
The Syrian conflict fits Karstedt’s description of such a new model of accumulated violence that goes beyond our current understanding of ‘atrocity’.

So, so many different groups
The government against rebels, Iran against the US, and everybody against terrorists. Participation in the Syrian conflict is complex, confusing and ever-changing. What started as a civil war after Arab Spring riots, has evolved into an international conflict rooted in the strive for regime change, violent extremism and some states’ own national interests. 

Victims <–> Perpetrators
In many ways, it is hard to tell who embodies the ‘good’ and who is utterly ‘bad’: States claiming to support legitimate demands for regime change, bomb civilian neighbourhoods. Terrorist organisations abduct innocent children and train them as recruits to destroy their communities. Victims become perpetrators. Willingly or unwillingly. Perpetrators become victims. And everything can change in the blink of an eye. Conflict has never been more complicated.

The variety of violence does not find an end…
However small or large, regular events of mass violence in Syria have taken on horrific forms. Many incidences that would make the news if happened elsewhere, are not even mentioned by Western media anymore. The quantity and variety of the horror simply is not comprehensible:

 Airstrikes
As they are a frequent phenomenon, one can draw on numerous examples. A prominent one, however, were the airstrikes conducted by the US coalition that hit new Raqqa in March 2017 and killed dozens of civilians, including 30 children.



Displacement
A terrifying number prone to increase even further.
Sources: UNHCR, OCHA
Humanitarian Need
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) regularly discloses up-dates on the shocking situations many people in Syria are confronted with. While the need for humanitarian help is vast, sieges often prevent NGOs from delivering the vital resources to the starving and injured people that are trapped in or do not want to leave their homes.

Urban Destruction
Besides the toll on humans, the conflict has also left a vast amount of the country in ruins.
For example, by March 2018, 93% of Eastern Ghouta, a region roughly the size of Manchester, has been destroyed.
Urban Destruction by December 2017 vs further destruction in January and February 2018.
Source: BBC

Death toll
In total, the Syrian conflict has already claimed a tremendous amount of deaths, with a tendency to continue. Besides the mentioned events, particularly horrific tortures and executions, have been committed, filmed and published by terrorist groups like Da’esh (Islamic State), which in themselves embody repeated atrocities.
Dead Syrian after a massacre in Douma, August 2015.
Source: AFP/Getty Images


 Chemical Weapons use: violence of particular cruelty
Albeit strongly rejected by the international community and prohibited under international law, the use of chemical weapons is a common tool employed by some groups to the conflict.
The latest (presumed) attack happened on April 7 in Douma, killing dozens and triggering international responses by the US, UK and France. 

In order to find the truth and bring perpetrators of such crimes to justice, the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) was created: established under the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and mandated by the UN Security Council. During its existence between August 2015 and November 2017, it delivered crucial evidence on the existence and use of chemical weapons, and the factions responsible for such. However, despite ongoing investigations, it was abolished in November 2017 as a result of a Russian veto to the draft mandate renewal, largely leaving future attacks subject to impunity. 
Certain actors, including the Syrian and the Russian governments, still deny the validity of the evidence presented, as well as their involvement with the attacks. 
By virtue of their cruel effects on humans, the repeated use of chemical weapons poses one of the greatest disappointments to humanity.



Why does it matter if we find appropriate words?
Why we must re-define violence in Syria, lies in Jenny Edkins’ assumption that the trauma victims and society experience is increased by concealing crucial details about their nature. Reconciliation and recovery are only possible if we confront ourselves with the full extent of the truth. More importantly, though, if we find a way to amplify our understanding, we will prevent the deaths and the pain of the Syrian people from being“regarded as worthless, expendable.”

However, language often fails us. Sometimes it is the trauma affecting our brain that makes it impossible to describe in words the horror experienced. In contrast, at other times the words we already use “are not helping to make sense of the situation.” A good example can be found in UN Security Council (SC) briefings on Syria. For the last couple of months, the SC has covered Syria on an almost weekly basis. Briefers constantly refers to terms like ‘alarming situation’ and ‘grim hallmark’ when talking about the conflict. The fact that mass violence keeps happening and situations become more complicated, makes it quite difficult to grasp the severity, though. When we cannot form comparatives to ‘atrocity’ anymore, how can we amplify our understanding of what it is supposed to describe?

It might be that violence in Syria reflects an embodiment of the incompatibility between the realm of language and horror. A violence we simply cannot find any more words for...

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