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FOREWORD
This report focuses on two specific war crimes and crimes against humanity committed repeatedly in certain parts of Syria since March 2011, namely the unlawful destruction and appropriation of civilian property and the forcible displacement and transfer of civilian population.
Together they constitute what appears to be a state policy of sectarian cleansing, driven by a combination of mafia-style war profiteering linked to the inner circle of the Syrian regime and a Shi’atisation programme pushed and financed by the Iranian regime and implemented with the help of Hezbollah Lebanon.
There has been a lot of talk among Syrians about these two subjects over the past two years. But not many people, to our knowledge, are working on documenting and analysing them in a systematic and legally useful way. The majority of what is published and circulated in this regard is often mere rumours, unconfirmed reports or inconsistent information.
The primary aim of this report, therefore, is to raise the alarm on what appears to be a very serious issue for the future of Syria. The report does not claim or aim to provide detailed evidence of specific instances of the crimes in question. It simply provides a few examples and indicators that would need further examination and investigation by specialised bodies. We hope that the legal framework and discussion provided will stimulate and provide some guidance for such efforts.
Executive Summary
This report argues that the grossly careless and malicious destruction and appropriation of civilian property and the forcible displacement and transfer of civilian population taking place in Syria since March 2011 amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined by international humanitarian law.
It further argues that both types of crime appear to be part of a systematic policy of sectarian cleansing being carried out in certain parts of the country.
The policy appears to be driven by a combination of mafia-style war profiteering linked to the inner circle of the Syrian régime and a Shiatisation programme pushed and financed by the Iranian régime.
The report focuses on certain parts of Syria, such as Homs and Damascus, and argues that the aim of destroying and reconstructing these areas is to create loyalist zones and strategie military corridors. The task of conquering and securing them was assigned primarily to sectarian, Irani-an-controlled militias (Hezbollah Lebanon, Iraqi and Afghan Shia militias, etc.), which were seen as more reliable and better organised than the regular Syrian army.
The ultimate aim of this scheme, which arguably amounts to sectarian cleansing and to a foreign occupation, appears to be securing the Damascus-Homs-Coast corridor along the Lebanese border in order to both provide a geographical and démographie continuity of regime-held areas and secure arms shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon, while at the same time cutting off those of the rebels coming from or through eastern Lebanon.
Indeed, the main reason behind the Iranian regime’s uncompromising détermination to save Bashar al-Assad’s régime and take over contrai at any cost is to maintain its ability to ship arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon via Syria. This will ensure maintaining a strong deterrent against any possible Israeli and/or Western attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This ‘line of defence’ is meant to secure the Iranian regime’s survival. If the Assad régime falls, Iranian arms shipments to Hezbollah are likely to stop and Hezbollah would no longer be the threatening deterrence against Israël that it is now.
The Iranian régime would therefore feel more vulnérable and would not be able to negotiate from a strong position during nuclear talks with Western powers, as it is doing now. It may even hâve to give up its nuclear dreams once and for ail. That is why Iran has been mobi-lising ail available resources (human, économie, military) to achieve the strategie aim of building nuclear bombs without fearing a massive military retaliation on its soil.
The authors review previous reports documenting the destruction in Syria, including those produced by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (Unitar), and conclude that further research is needed to contextualise the figures and maps used in such reports against reliable news reports and witness statements about what was happening at the time and in the at-tacks’ aftermath. This is necessary to establish who the perpetrators were and whether or not the destruction was justified by the ‘necessities’ of the war as defined by international law.
They also review reports on planned démolitions, including a 2014 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled "Razed to the Ground: Syria’s Unlawful Neighborhood Démolitions in 2012-2013." The authors agréé with HRW’s finding that the cases of démolition documented in the report were in violation of international humanitarian law because they either served no necessary military purpose and appeared to intention-ally punish the civilian population or caused dispropor-tionate harm to civilians.
However, the authors argue that the démolitions ex-amined by HRW and other similar cases are linked to the armed conflict in two other ways (not just collective punishment and disproportionate harm).
Firstly, the targeting and destruction of certain areas appears to hâve been intended to not only punish the communities supporting the révolution or the armed rebels, the majority of which happened to be Sunni, but also to ‘cleanse’ those areas of ail ‘unwanted éléments’ and prevent them from returning home in the future. The resuit is changing both the political alliances and the démographie composition of those areas.
Secondly, at least in some areas, it appears that the war has been utilised as an excuse or a cover to implement long-term or pre-existing plans of sectarian cleansing and démographie change.
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