Picture from “The Banners of Occupied Kfar Nabel” page on Facebook. Amnesty International’s report on mass hangings is a harrowing reminder of Assad’s tyranny. Torture, sexual violence, attacks on medical facilities, and murder and atrocities are all components of a calculated brutality that has killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, and caused untold misery.
The decade leading up to the outbreak of war in Syria saw progress in market liberalisation and growth. Though lagging behind most other Arab nations, economic freedom and human development improved and per capita income grew by 15%, with income levels higher than many neighbouring states (New Maddison Project Database). Per capita wealth doubled from $1,601 USD in 2000 to $3,283 USD in 2010 (Credit Suisse, 2016). Overall income inequality and the income share of the top 10% fell (UNU-WIDER). None of this delivered welfare and political liberalization. Millions lived in poverty.
As argued by Ronald Wintrobe in Rational Extremism, dictators hold power by a combination of loyalty to the regime and repression. Rising incomes and crony capitalism helped Assad to purchase the loyalty of some, whilst repressing the many. Civil liberties and political rights flatlined. CIRI human rights data show increased torture, extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and disappearances in the years building up to 2011. This deterioration arose from a sequence of conscious decisions instigated by the Syrian state. For example, the Damascus Declaration, a united platform of various opposition groups demanding peaceful democratic reform, sent alarm bells ringing. A call for democracy posed a major threat to Syria’s ruling elites. Assad responded with repression. The brutality accelerated exponentially with the Arab spring. In Wintrobe’s terminology, Assad’s goals are indivisible: all or nothing, “Assad or we burn the country”. As discussed by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami (e.g. in Burning Country), brutality was employed to provoke a response; a political settlement would work against the regime, so Assad opted for military confrontation and civil war.
