Policy Brief – Accountability for Starvation Crimes: Syria

POLICY BRIEF No. 3 JUNE 2019 This briefing paper is part of “Accountability for Starvation: Testing the Accountability for Limits of the Law,” a joint project of Global Rights Compliance (GRC) and the Starvation Crimes: Syria World Peace Foundation (WPF). The project aims to identify how OVERVIEW international law may be used to advance the prevention, prohibition and accountability for mass starvation. 1. This memorandum addresses the issue of starvation crimes committed during the war in Syria (2012-18) including the goals This paper was produced by Moham- and methods of the perpetrators, the outcomes for the victims, and mad Kanfash and Ali al-Jasem, from the possibilities for legal redress. It includes an overview of the use project partner, Damaan Humanitarian of starvation during the war and case studies of Eastern Ghouta Organization. (in the Damascus suburbs), Aleppo and Deir Alzor. Detailed legal analysis of starvation issues is addressed elsewhere.1 Damaan Humanitarian Organization is Dutch-based non-governmental 2. Before the conflict, Syria was a middle-income, food-secure organization that works to foster country. Given the techniques used by the regime in many sustainable development and areas, populations were reduced to starvation during the war. humanitarian responses in Syria. Its Additionally, wartime economic destruction means that 6.5 million mission is to make a lasting difference in people are now acutely food insecure. the lives of Syrians and to help rebuild the country. It does so by seeking local 3. The Assad regime used a ‘kneel or starve’ strategy relentlessly during solutions to the country’s challenges the war, as part of its strategy of attrition to reduce opposition-held and sowing the seeds for lasting change. urban enclaves to submission. It involved (a) sealing off besieged International advisory firm,Global areas, denying access to food and other essentials including Rights Compliance, specialises in water, health care, electricity and gas, employment and money; services associated with bringing along with (b) targeted attacks on bakeries, health facilities, accountability for violations of markets, livelihoods and agriculture; and (c) restricting or blocking international humanitarian law and humanitarian relief and attacking relief workers. international human rights law. 4. While opposition forces, notably Da’esh/ISIL, also besieged areas The World Peace Foundation, an (including using starvation as a method of war), as the only armed operating foundation affiliated solely party with recourse to aerial bombardment, the regime had with The Fletcher School, provides greater means and demonstrated a consistent will to enforce siege. intellectual leadership on issues of Moreover, numerous actions by commanders of the Syrian regime peace, justice and security. forces constitute serious and grave International Humanitarian Law (IHL) violations. Additional information and resources are available at: 5. There are no reliable statistics of the numbers of deaths due to Starvationaccountability.org starvation and related diseases, despite strong evidence that starvation tactics are implicated in the overall excess mortality since 2012. The UN reports ‘hundreds of thousands’ of overall deaths due to conflict, without specifying cause, since the war in Syria began. Background Syria’s domestic political arena, supporting differ- ent groups with funding and weaponry. The US, 6. Prior to the war, Syria was a middle-income coun- UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and try with moderate urbanization and a diversified UAE supported the opposition, while the regime economy, in which agriculture played an import- called on Russia, Iran, Hezbollah of Lebanon, and ant role. The country was a net food exporter. It Iraqi and Afghan Shiite militias. Partly through had not suffered famine since the devastations of the sponsorship of diverse external sponsors with World War I. In the early 2000s, it suffered sever- their own agendas, and partly through a regime al economic shocks that caused impoverishment strategy of destroying the democratic middle and unrest. In the north-east of the country, a ground through radicalizing the opposition and long drought and mismanagement of rural water playing divide-and-rule on a sectarian basis, the resources contributed to agricultural crisis, espe- opposition rapidly fragmented. This handed a life- cially in the irrigated sector, and food insecurity line to the regime, which although a minority actor affected farmers. Syria also hosted refugees from with limited resources, still commanded the state Iraq. Economic reforms at the same time allowed apparatus and sufficient cohesion and firepower crony capitalists close to the ruling family to gain to be able to crush its divided opponents one at a control over key sectors, from which they could ex- time. Western countries quickly became more ap- tract profits. The ‘world food crisis’ of 2008-09 and palled by the rise of Al-Qaeda-linked groups and 2011, which involved a global spike in prices for (from 2013) Da’esh/ISIL, than the atrocities of the basic cereals including wheat, which arose from a Assad regime, and diverted their main military ef- number of factors associated with the turbulent fort towards destroying Da’esh/ISIL. The tide of the global economy, coincided with the regime reduc- war decisively changed in 2015 when the Assad ing social subsidies in the country, which caused government benefitted from increased support further hardship and contributed to popular dis- from Iran and Hezbollah and Russian intervention. content. None of these factors, however, indicated Russian aircraft and artillery escalated the level of that Syrians could at any time in the near future destruction still further. come face-to-face with starvation. 10. The war has been extraordinarily complex, not 7. The main humanitarian assistance projects before just in the shifting landscape of armed groups and 2011 were targeted at Iraqi refugees through food their diverse sponsors, identities and ideologies, rations and using an electronic voucher system. but also in the military tactics used. The regime There was also a drought response programme suffered many early losses, as much of the country targeting Syrians in the eastern part of the coun- rebelled and many army officers defected to the try. opposition. It then opted to fight a war of relent- less attrition, targeting all areas under the oppo- 8. The conflict in Syria began in March 2011 as a sition, and laying siege to civilian areas where the wave of non-violent popular protests demanding opposition was able to concentrate forces. The democratic reforms. The protesters hoped that government adapted standard counter-insurgen- President Bashar al-Assad would either be forced cy methods to protracted urban warfare. It sealed from power (as had happened to the presidents off the opposition-controlled enclaves. Limited by of Egypt and Tunisia) or would spearhead reforms the fact that it did not have sufficient force for a himself. Instead, the regime entrenched itself. It ground assaults, its primary weapons were depri- violently repressed protesters. In July 2011, de- vation and fear. Hence it used the method of ‘kneel fectors from the military, including military con- (surrender) or starve’, policed by troops and mili- scripts, announced the formation of the Free Syr- tia, combined with air raids and artillery bombard- ian Army (FSA), aiming to overthrow the Assad ment. The strategy was deployed against city after regime by force. However, for some months, the city. uprising remained primarily non-violent and over- whelmingly non-sectarian. 11. During the conflict, more than half of Syria’s population (11 million people) has been displaced, with 9. Numerous external actors became engaged in slightly over 6 million internally displaced and 5.6 ACCOUNTABILITY FOR STARVATION CRIMES: SYRIA 2 million registered refugees. More than half a mil- it sought to establish areas of control along the lion have been killed. In 2018, 13.1 million people border with Lebanon, to secure vital passageways. (54% of the population) were in need of food as- For many observers, this was a part of a plan to sistance; of whom about half were acutely food link Shiite territories in Lebanon with Alawite con- insecure.2 A formerly food secure country faced a trolled areas in Syria should the regime need to situation in which a quarter of its populace was in retreat further and consolidate in an ‘Alawistan’ or urgent need of humanitarian aid. a small part of Syria. In other areas, it sought to secure important Shi’ite religious shrines by homog- enizing the sectarian identity of the surrounding Starvation During the War population. However, as the regime’s battlefield 12. The ‘kneel or starve’ strategy was applied first in successes mounted, it increasingly aimed to con- Homs, where government soldiers sprayed graffiti solidate control of both population and territory announcing these words on walls close to check- throughout the country. points. In 2011, the city experienced targeted violence along sectarian lines, which escalated in 15. To a lesser degree, sieges were also deployed 2012, when the government deployed the army by other armed groups, notably Da’esh/ISIL and against an opposition stronghold neighborhood al-Nusrah Front, with a similar range of outcomes. Baba Amr. For a month, the area was surrounded An example examined below is the city of Deir and reduced to rubble. By July 2012, a similar pat- Alzour. In other cases, for example the Aleppo tern, replete with violence, was repeated in other countryside, the sectarian nature of the conflict opposition-dominated neighborhoods. This was played a role and siege appears have had the addi- widely noticed by the local people. The ‘starve’ el- tional intent of compelling communities to aban- ement included cutting off food supplies, water, don their land. Ultimately, these actors were less electricity and gas, waste services, and medical successful in their efforts, as the war progressed, care, as well as employment and access to banks.

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