It isn't often I would say this, but in this instance of Syria the war-makers -- the generals -- are presenting the real-world, provocative implications of establishing a Syria no-fly zone, while Avaaz with its stated goal of protecting Syrian civilians presents a sugar-coated, little-harm version. And its petition and related materials, with a focus on the despicable Assad government's violence against the civilian population, doesn't adequately take into account the violence against civilians by ISIS and other opponents of Assad's regime.
Near the end of each year, Avaaz (as do other on-line organizations) asks people on its email list to weigh in on a self-generated organizational list of priorities for the coming year. In no year has that list of priorities included setting up no-fly zones in, first, Libya, and now in Syria. The 2016 list of priorities, as voted on by members, includes a reference to peace in Syria, but no mention of a no-fly zone, stating: "Peace in Syria -- campaign for the Syrian regime and all warring parties to stop brutal violence on innocent Syrian families, and ensure Syrian voices are heard in international peace talks."
On its home page and in messages sent periodically to members to report on the organization's campaigns and accomplishments, the call for a no-fly zone is not included as one of its showcase items. Nevertheless, Avaaz keeps raising the issue in dramatic ways throughout the year.
In an email sent to members last June, three days after publication of its New York Times ad, Avaaz renewed its call for a no-fly zone as it reported that a humanitarian worker had informed the organization that the "Syrian air force just dropped chlorine gas bombs on children." Noting that a number of countries -- including the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey and France -- were "seriously considering a safe zone in Northern Syria," Avaaz added: "Advisors close to President Obama support it, but he is worried he won't have public support. That's where we come in"Let's tell him we don't want a world that watches as a dictator drops chemical weapons on families in the night. We want action."
Avaaz said that the unnamed humanitarian worker told it that "I wish the world could see what I have seen with my eyes. It breaks my heart forever."
Whatever the veracity of Avaaz's source -- and, again, it's just one source at that moment -- and whatever Avaaz's good intentions, there is still that notion that setting up a no-fly zone is a walk in the park, rather than a dangerous move toward a wider war. The sense of frustration in that Avaaz missive is palpable: People are being slaughtered as the world watches. Something must be done. We want action!
Journalist and Middle East expert Charles Glass reported on the war in Syria in The New York Review of Books after a September 2015 trip there. Citing the United Nations' latest "Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic," Glass said the report "paints a depressing portrait of the population's unimaginable torment at the hands of government and opposition forces alike."
Wrote Glass: "The regime drops barrel bombs in Aleppo, and the rebels respond with gas canisters of explosives and shrapnel. ISIS rapes and brutalizes Yazidi women whom it has declared slaves to be bought and sold. The regime's security forces practice torture on an industrial scale. Both sides besiege villages, and both sides commit massacres. The UN report's forty-four pages of horrific war crimes should be sufficient for the outside powers to budge and call a halt to this war. What are they waiting for?"
Unlike Avaaz's posture of diplomacy and a no-fly zone, Glass was calling strictly for diplomacy, not escalation of the violence. He was seeing the civilian population suffering "at the hands of government and opposition forces alike."
Avaaz -- unlike, for example, Human Rights Watch on occasion -- does not emphasize human rights abuses or killings of civilians by all forces involved in the Syrian fighting, concentrating instead on the abuses by Assad's forces.
In a 79-page report on Syria in March 2015, Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded: "Opposition armed groups in Syria have indiscriminately attacked civilians in government-held territory with car bombs, mortars, and rockets"The attacks have killed and maimed hundreds of civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure in violation of the laws of war"[The report] documents scores of attacks in heavily populated, government-controlled areas in Damascus and Homs between January 2012 and April 2014, and which continue into 2015. The findings are based primarily on victim and witness accounts, on-site investigations, publicly available videos, and information on social media sites."
Many of the attacks, Human Rights Watch found, were indiscriminate, were carried out in areas where there were no government forces, and "seemed primarily intended to spread terror among the civilian population."
An earlier 2013 HRW report, titled "Syria: Executions, Hostage Taking by Rebels -- Planned Attacks on Civilians Constitute Crimes Against Humanity," contained similar findings of abuses by opposition forces.
This is not about who is the worst human-rights abuser or murderer of civilians -- Assad or ISIS or the various other groupings of the opposition -- but rather about what a trusted organization such as Avaaz tells its members in getting them to sign a petition aimed at halting a humanitarian crisis that involves the killing and maiming of civilians. By its singular focus on Assad's military and its supporters as the sole killers and abusers of the civilian population, Avaaz is not being straight with its members. It is holding back key information -- information that just might make a potential signer think twice before opting for a military action that Avaaz is selling as a tactic that in its view would lessen a horrible humanitarian crisis.
Also absent in Avaaz's pitch for no-fly zone signatures is any note to members that its stated humanitarian-inspired stance puts it in the company of the neocons, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and assorted congressional and think-tank war hawks who see a no-fly zone as part of a bigger military strategy to oust Assad from power. A no-fly zone, in the interventionists' view, is a step toward this end, not an end in itself.
People like Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Clinton ally and president of the nonpartisan centrist think tank New America, who in an article last summer called -- as she has before -- for establishing a no-fly zone in Syria in order to save civilians' lives. But that's only the beginning. Slaughter, who was director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department for two years under Secretary Clinton, writes that the U.S. government had finally come to "the recognition that a new Syrian government is vital to defeat -- or even contain -- the Islamic State."
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