On 'Assad Remnants'

In Syria, the instinct of minorities to survive is being framed as 'loyalty' to the ousted president. Here's why this is Dehumanisation 101.

I am struggling to recall when I last heard a term as dehumanising as ‘Assad remnant.’

For those unaware, the term quickly gained traction as a shorthand for explaining the surge of violence along Syria’s coast from March 7 to March 9.

The short story is that a new armed group has formed, calling themselves the Syrian Popular Resistance (SPR), in opposition to the Syrian interim government headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly Mohammad al-Julani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). During the Syrian war, HTS was known as al-Nusra Front, a Salafi-Jihadist group that splintered from al-Qaeda in Syria. The other faction became Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS).

Over the weekend the SPR ambushed an HTS security vehicle in Latakia province. They were quickly subdued. What followed was, by all accounts, a massacre of Alawi civilians in their thousands. Also targeted were other religious minorities, namely Shia and Christian.

This piece is not an explainer or blow by blow account of what exactly happened. As always, my interest and emphasis is on discourse, narrative and representation. And what has struck me here is how rapidly the narrative of ‘Assad remnants’ took hold, a narrative presented by HTS and that has been repeated uncritically and ad nauseam by Western media outlets, which, true to form, are always looking for the most simplistic way to frame even the most complex events.

Let us put aside for a moment the implication that it suggests an inconceivability that anyone would oppose the current Syrian government as a form of resistance. Before the large scale massacres over the weekend, there had already been sporadic violence targeting minorities, in particular Alawis, the animosity to whom goes back centuries and has been exacerbated by their association with former President Bashar al-Assad, himself from the sect.

Let us put aside also that the term ‘Assad remnants’, like ‘Assad loyalists’ implies that anyone who is resisting this current Salafi-Jihadist government cannot possibly be anything other than an automaton driven by blind, unthinking, unfeeling loyalty. This is yet another iteration of the Orientalism that has characterised Western perceptions of the region for centuries.

For the terms ‘Assad remnant’ and ‘Assad loyalist’ to make sense, they have to deny that anyone might be compelled to pick up arms after seeing their family members mercilessly slaughtered with barely a peep of objection from the world. What is in a name? Well, a lot actually. When the now-government was the opposition, it launched attacks on the then-government security forces and killed civilians in terrorist attacks, yet they were given the decidedly more flattering moniker ‘rebels.’

Here are some of the violations committed by al-Nusra/HTS against civilians:

• In September 2013, al-Nusra/HTS fighters killed at least 22 Alawi civilians, including elderly men, children, and women in the village of al-Zahra, east of Homs in central Syria.

• In June 2015, al-Nusra/HTS fighters killed 20 Druze villagers in the town of Qalb Lawzah in north-western Syria, including elderly people and a child.

• In May 2016, 19 Alawi civilians were killed in their homes in a joint operation between al-Nusra/HTS and other armed groups in Hama, central Syria after the fighters took control of the town.

And this is without taking into account all the massacres and suicide bombings committed by other ‘rebel’ groups, including ISIS. With this history, is it so inconceivable that anyone might distrust or oppose the current security forces for their own reasons, including the desire to survive and protect their communities? Is it so surprising that Alawis and other non-Sunnis might simply feel physically unsafe in this new ‘free’ Syria?

The idea that anyone who feared the Islamist rebel forces could only be driven by blind loyalty rather than survival instinct or the will for freedom is dehumanisation par excellence. It is also an indictment on the stunted discourse that has characterised the entire conflict, with anyone who expressed reservations about the rebels denounced as ‘Assadists’, as if opposing one oppressive ideology automatically makes someone a fan of another oppressive ideology.

But nonetheless, let us put all that aside and focus on this: the term ‘Assad remnants’ can be freely applied to anyone without evidence and used to justify their murder. Even before the weekend massacres, in which witnesses describe Alawis being hunted down and shot at point blank range for no reason other than being Alawi, vigilantes and militias were roaming streets in Syria attacking those they accused of being ‘remnants’, stealing their cars, possessions, and even homes.

It’s a classic witch hunt - the accusation is fabricated to justify the punishment, not vice versa.

The power of the label is this: the murder of an ‘Assad remnant’ will not elicit sympathy from many people. Some, such as Celine Kasem, a Syrian activist, will even justify such murder as ‘accountability.’

Others might simply shrug because the label ‘Assad remnant’ has primed them to divorce anyone it is applied to from the human family. The first word automatically denotes unthinking, irrational evil. And the second removes any lingering perceptions of humanity altogether.

‘Assad remnant’ transfers all of the sins and crimes of Assad – both real and imagined – onto civilians, marking them for death, a death that will be celebrated as retribution, justice, and even ‘accountability.’

Have you ever heard human beings get referred to as ‘remnants’ before? What do you think of when you hear the word ‘remnant?

Do you think of a child crying out for her mother with her last breath?

Do you think of a father using his final words to plead, ‘Please, I have children’?

Do you think of a sheikh or a grandmother or an uncle or a teenage best friend?

Or do you think of an object?

A blob?

A piece of dirt?

As I write this, I have Instagram open on my phone. I watch a reel of an elderly Alawi Syrian mother. She is sitting on the ground by the side of the road. Next to her are the bodies of her two adult sons, wearing civilian trousers and shirtless. The ground is soaked in their blood. Standing over her are gunmen wearing fatigues. These men who have murdered her sons taunt the woman that being Alawi is an unforgivable sin and that they will ‘stomp on all the Alawi’.

They take photos of themselves brandishing their machine guns and smiling widely for the camera, their boots resting on the dead men’s heads. The woman watches them. The video ends.