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Listen to Syria’s non-violent activists: stop the bombs

Konstantinos Tsakalidis/Demotix. All rights reserved.

“Should I spread my family out
through the house so if a barrel bomb hits we won’t all die together? Or should
we all stay in the same room so we can die together? Should I sleep in the
basement in case a barrel bomb hits, or on the top floor so I don’t suffocate
if it turns out to contain poison gas?”

These are not rhetorical
questions, nor an exaggeration designed to show you how difficult life is for us Syrians as a result of the bombardment we are subjected to on an almost daily
basis. These are questions a Syrian mother asked my friend after a
recent poison gas attack by the regime on the town of Sarmin.

My hometown of Atarab is only
a few kilometers away from where the chemical attack took place. Days before my
last visit home, a regime jet bombed our town centre, killing more than thirty
people, all of them civilians. My sense of impending death grew after I arrived
and heard the details of what had happened from my mother, who lives only one
street away from the explosion site. This only increased my obsessive worrying
over where the best place to take shelter might be in case of aerial
bombardment—and what the probability of my dying was wherever I found myself.

The regime is well aware of the impact of fear of death due to random
bombardment, on the lifestyle of Syrians in areas outside its control.
Everyone is too preoccupied with minute-to-minute survival to think of the
future. Regime jets can be heard a number of times in a
single day, just to spread
fear.

A few months ago, a few Syrian
grassroots groups surveyed 277 prominent non-violent activists to find out what
they thought needed to happen in order for the violence and extremism to end.
There was overwhelming consensus on two issues: first, the urgent need to stop
barrel bombs and other weapons of indiscriminate killing, and second, the
importance of engaging in genuine peace talks to reach a just political
agreement.

This consensus turned into a
rallying cry. Eighty-five groups, representing 17,000 peaceful Syrians, are backing these demands under a new campaign named Planet Syria, and I am one of them. We want an end to the
bombs and real peace talks.

These barrel bombs are
responsible for the majority of civilian deaths right now. They’ve displaced
vast numbers of Syrians from their homes and destroyed schools and
infrastructure. The UN Security Council banned
them last year with a unanimous resolution, which even the regime's allies
Russia and China voted for. Yet still Bashar al-Assad denies the existence of
barrel bombs, as recently as last month, in a brazen interview with
the BBC.

Leaders around the world, from
Cameron to Obama, need to uphold these UN resolutions and stop the barrel bombs
for four reasons:

First, their silence on barrel
bombs actually emboldens the regime to use them. Their silence is killing
Syrian civilians.

Second, the lack of any
attempt to implement the UN resolution stopping the barrel bombs empties all UN
resolutions of their value, rendering them just ink on paper. One clear example
of this was the chemical
attack on Sarmin in northern Syria last week. Poison gas was used on
civilians just days after another unanimous resolution that bans
the use of chlorine and makes a promise for action should attacks continue.

Stopping the bombs does not necessarily involve the use of military force.

Third, allowing the barrel
bombs to continue helps ISIS promote its propaganda. The group portrays itself as
the only actor concerned with defending Islam and capable of bringing an end to
the crimes of the Syrian regime.

Fourth, stopping barrel bombs
will help strengthen non-violent activism. It will curb displacement and exile, help in the fight against extremism and speed up the process of finding a
political solution.

Stopping the bombs does not necessarily
involve the direct use of military force. The Syrian regime has shown on more
than one occasion that it is prepared to abandon its strategies when it senses true pressure. A good example is Bashar al-Assad
relinquishing of his chemical weapons stockpile in 2013, when the Americans
threatened military action.

And it wasn’t the first time. In 1998, Hafez
al-Assad exiled Abdullah Ocalan, head of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), when
Turkey threatened the use of military force against Syria. In 2005, Bashar
al-Assad withdrew the Syrian army from Lebanon when pressure mounted following the assassination of Rafik Hariri.

International pressure is what
we need—it is what we non-violent activists are calling for. Our campaign is named Planet Syria because of the feelings of
isolation and solitude the majority of us Syrians feel. Many treat our demands
for peace and democracy as if they are alien.

Silent sympathy is not enough on
its own. We all, inside and outside Syria, have a moral and ethical
responsibility to put pressure on all parties to bring a halt to the use of
barrel bombs and other indiscriminate weapons. We need to find a just political
solution, and to ensure that those of us living on Planet Syria no longer feel
alone.