Behind the Syrian Network for Human Rights: An Opposition Front Group is a
Go-to Monitor for Western Media
June 17, 2019
Corporate media relies on the Syrian Network for Human Rights for figures on
deaths and detentions, never noting the groups seamless connection to
Syrias opposition, and its public lobbying for U.S. military intervention.
Max Blumenthal reports for The Grayzone.
This is part one in an investigation into government-funded,
opposition-linked NGOs that pose as impartial monitors and investigators of
the Syrian conflict.
By Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) portrays itself as a neutral
monitor of Syrias bloody war. In recent years, the group has become a
go-to source for corporate media outlets.
Major U.S. newspapers, human rights organizations, and even governments have
credulously echoed its dubious reports. But not once have these institutions
questioned what exactly the organization is, who funds it, and what its
relationship is to Syrias armed opposition.
An investigation by The Grayzone reveals that the Syrian Network for Human
Rights is far from the impartial arbiter that it has been sold as. In
reality, it is a key player in the Syrian opposition. Currently based in
Qatar, the SNHR is funded by foreign governments and staffed by top
opposition leaders.
This monitoring group has even openly lobbied for immediate intervention
in Syria by an international coalition, citing NATOs 1999 bombing of
Yugoslavia as a model. These explicit calls for foreign military
intervention have been repeated for years by the Syrian Network for Human
Rights itself, as well as by the organizations leaders.
Yet one would never know this side of the SNHRs activities from corporate
media reporting.
An Independent Monitoring Group
Run by the Syrian Opposition
On May 11, The New York Times published an exposé claiming to provide new
details of a secret, industrial-scale system of arbitrary arrests and
torture prisons in Syria. Filed from Turkey by reporter Anne Barnard, this
article centered around the eyebrow-raising claim that 128,000 people have
never emerged from Syrian prisons, and are presumed to be either dead or
still in custody.
The Times source for this shocking statistic was the Syrian Network for
Human Rights, which Barnard described as an independent monitoring group
that keeps the most rigorous tally.
It also supplied key data for a June 2 report by Washington Post reporter
Louisa Loveluck on the arrests of Syrian refugees who have returned home.
The group insisted that 2,000 people have been detained after returning to
Syria during the past two years.
In the past few years, the SNHR has been uncritically cited by major news
outlets, from The Guardian to The Intercept to The Daily Beast. Western
journalists have unquestioningly regurgitated its data to provide
statistical heft to gut-wrenching reports on the Syrian governments alleged
abuses.
Even Amnesty International turned to the group for help on a widely promoted
report on Syrias Sednayah Prison. On its website, it boasts that it was the
second-most cited source in the U.S. State Departments 2018 report on the
human rights situation in Syria.
When it is cited in mainstream media, the Syrian Network for Human Rights is
almost invariably characterized as a neutral observer without any agenda
beyond documenting death and abuse. In Barnards article, the group was
described as independent, absurdly implying that it was not affiliated in
any way with governments or individuals that have participated in the Syrian
conflict.
While there may be little doubt that the Syrian government presides over a
harsh police state apparatus, it has also been the target of one of the most
expensive and sophisticated disinformation campaigns in recent history.
Seeking to stimulate support among a war-weary Western public for U.S.
military intervention, a collection of billionaires and foreign governments
has leveraged hundreds of millions of dollars into a high-tech information
war waged by NGOs, insurgent-linked civil society groups, and mainstream
corporate media.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has emerged as one of the most important
cogs in this operation. Posing as a professional human rights organization,
it has functioned as a publicity arm of the Syrian opposition, operating out
of Doha, Qatar and collaborating with the oppositions embassy there under
the direction of Syrian opposition leaders.
On SNHRs board of directors sits Burhan Ghalioun, the longtime leader of
the Western, and Gulf-backed Syrian National Council, which was founded as
an opposition government-in-exile.
Ghaliouns bio at Syrian Network for Human Rights website (above) fails to
acknowledge his role as a leader of the opposition SNC
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has a reputation for warping numbers to
support its ulterior regime change agenda, while relentlessly downplaying
the crimes of Salafi-jihadist militias, including ISIS and al-Qaedas local
affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.
Whats more, the groups leadership has openly clamored for Western military
intervention, most recently after it issued a dubious report in May on
alleged Syrian government chemical attacks that turned out to be sourced to
an al-Qaeda affiliate comprised entirely of foreign fighters.
In a report on its website, SNHR acknowledges that it is funded by states,
though it does not disclose which ones those are.
Given the ideological composition of its leadership and their basing in
Qatar, it is easy to deduce that those government funders are the same ones
that have bankrolled an Islamist insurgency in Syria to the tune of several
billion dollars, costing many thousands of lives and helping to fuel a
refugee crisis of titanic proportions.
So why have so many journalists who depended on Syrian Network for Human
Rights omitted vital context like this while attempting to pass the group
off as independent? Perhaps because providing readers with the full truth
about the organization would raise questions in their minds about its
credibility or lack thereof and expose yet another journalistic
narrative designed to trigger Western military intervention.
Citing the SNHR as an independent and credible source is the journalistic
equivalent of sourcing statistics on head trauma to a research front created
by the National Football League, or turning to tobacco industry lobbyists
for information on the connection between smoking and lung cancer. And yet
this has been standard practice among correspondents covering the Syrian
conflict.
Indeed, Western press has engaged for years in an insidious sleight of hand,
basing reams of shock journalism around claims by a single, highly suspect
source that is deeply embedded within the Syrian opposition and hoped that
no one would notice.
A Partisan Monitor Like Few Other
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has spent years systematically
whitewashing and downplaying the crimes of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other
extremist groups while inflating the numbers of those killed by government
forces.
In a typically slanted report in 2017, it claimed that the Syrian government
was responsible for over 92 percent of all deaths during the conflict.
Meanwhile, the group reported that extremist Islamic groups like ISIS and
al-Qaedas local franchise were responsible for less than 2 percent of those
killed. As usual, the organization provided nothing to back up its absurd
numbers other than a cartoon graph.
Syrian Network for Human Rights death tolls stand in stark contrast with
those of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), another widely
cited organization dedicated to tracking casualties in the Syrian conflict.
Based in Coventry, England and run by a single pro-opposition figure, Rami
Abdulrahman, the SOHR has received funding from the British Foreign Office
to monitor deaths in Syria.
But unlike Syrian Network for Human Rights, SOHR has asserted that the death
toll among government forces has been almost equal to that of opposition
fighters, with over 60,000 dying to beat back a foreign-backed insurgency.
Because numbers like these undermine the one-sided narrative fashioned by
Western media and NGOs dedicated to regime change, many have turned to
Syrian Network for Human Rights instead for more politically convenient
statistics spun out through graphics simple enough for a child to digest.
SOHR is more reliable than Syrian Network for Human Right, which is closely
associated with the Syrian opposition, explained Joshua Landis, professor
of international and area studies at the University of Oklahoma and a
leading expert on Syrian affairs, in an interview with The Grayzone.
SOHR is also associated with the opposition, but the head is sympathetic to
the Kurdish opposition which perhaps makes him a bit more even handed than
either of the main antagonists, who have been known to play fast and loose
with the facts, he said.
Landis emphasized that Syrian Network for Human Rights is more partisan and
less objective than the pro-opposition SOHR, adding that it is impossible
to know what the real statistics are for the obvious reasons.
Indeed, the United Nations stopped tabulating deaths in the Syrian conflict
in 2014, citing the difficulty it had in obtaining even remotely accurate
numbers.
Another chemical red line deception?
Not only has the Syrian Network for Human Rights conjured up ridiculously
slanted death toll numbers, it recently made suspicious claims of chemical
weapons use by the Syrian government in an overt bid to trigger U.S.
military intervention.
On March 27, as Syrian forces closed in on the province of Idlib, the home
of the rebranded al-Qaeda affiliate known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),
Syrian Network for Human Right claimed that the Syrian government used a
missile launcher to fire poison gas at an HTS position in the eastern
suburbs of Latakia. The attack caused breathing difficulty, redness of the
eyes and tearing among the targets, according to Syrian Network for Human
Rights.
The U.S. State Department seemed to echo the suspicious information reported
by SNHR to claim without concrete evidence on March 19 that it had received
indications of
new use of chemical weapons by the regime.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a report of its own, however,
that undercut the claims by Syrian Network for Human Right and the U.S.
According to SOHR, the Turkestani [Islamic] party is the source and basis
of the news adopted by the United States of America about the shelling by
the regime forces using chlorine gas. The SOHR noted that one Turkestani
Islamic Party fighter who claimed to have been attacked by chemical gas had
asthma.
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is comprised largely of Uyghur Muslim
militants from Chinas Xinjiang region who are allied with HTS in Syria and
Al Qaeda on a global level. TIP leadership has called on foreign Muslims to
wage jihad in Syria, publishing an online recruitment video in 2018 that
celebrated the 9/11 attacks as holy retaliation against a decadent United
States awash in homosexuality and sin.
Children of the Turkistan Islamic Party, the apparent source for Syrian
Network for Human Right and the State Departments dubious claim of a
chemical attack in Idlib.
Fadel Abdul Ghani, the chairman of the opposition-linked Syrian Network for
Human Rights, suggested openly in his groups dubious report of chemical
weapons use that his intention was to see the U.S. intervene in support of
Islamist extremist militias like HTS and TIP.
The U.S. president, the French president and the British Prime Minister
have threatened the Syrian regime that if chemical weapons are used again,
there will be a decisive response, Abdul Ghani stated. Syrian society is
still waiting for these leaders to fulfill the promises made, and to hold
the Syrian regime to account in a serious and effective way.
Abdul Ghani has openly advocated for U.S. military intervention for years,
telling The Atlantic in 2013 that any civilian deaths by American airstrikes
were preferable to the preservation of Assads rule. If Assad continues
without any intervention, everyday we will keep losing 100 to 120 people,
Abdul Ghani said. We have no choice. If we dont try to take out Assads
missiles and tanks, he will continue using them against civilians.
In May 2019,the Syrian Network for Human Rights once again made a public
call for foreign military intervention, based on dubious claims of a
chemical weapons attack.
On May 27, the ostensible monitoring group published a report subtly
entitled The Syrian Regime Uses Chemical Weapons Again in Latakia and the
United States, France, Britain and the Civilized Countries of the World Must
Fulfill Their Promises.
The intention of the report was made as explicit as it could be. The
subtitle read, Immediate Intervention Must Be Made Through an International
Coalition to Protect Civilians in Syria Like the NATO Intervention in
Kosovo.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights disposed of any pretense of being an
impartial observer and clearly invoked NATOs 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia,
which ultimately balkanized and destroyed the state, as an example that
should be repeated in Syria.
A Pro-Tory and Qatar-Based
Wael Aleji, the Syrian Network for Human Rights; spokesperson, has not been
shy with his views either. On Twitter, Aleji has likened the UK Labour Party
of anti-war leftist Jeremy Corbyn to Adolf Hitlers National Socialist
Party, and praised a vitriolic piece by neoconservative pundit Nick Cohen
branding Corbyn as Hezbollahs man in London.
Aleji not only endorsed UK Prime Minister Theresa Mays decision to support
U.S. airstrikes on Syrian in 2018, he has explicitly identified himself as a
member of the UKs Conservative Party.
While the Syrian Network for Human Rights previously identified its location
as England, its office there is currently listed as dormant. Little is
known about who supports the group although, again, it acknowledges on its
own about page that it is funded by states.
The organization has openly collaborated with the opposition Syrian National
Councils embassy in Doha, Qatar to launch a traveling art exhibition
promoting its work around the country. Qatar is the Gulf monarchy that
heavily funded Islamist insurgent groups in Syria, including Jabhat
al-Nusra, the local affiliate of al-Qaeda that rebranded as HTS.
Many of the Syrian exiles on the Syrian Network for Human Rights board of
directors are based in Qatar, occupying positions at Doha University and
other government institutions.
Another leading figure on the Syrian Network for Human Rights board, former
chairman of the Syrian National Council Burhan Ghalioun, once courted the
West with promises to end Syrias relationship with Iran and Palestinian
resistance forces if it helped install him and his exiled council as the
countrys new rulers.
With figures like Ghalioun on the Syrian Network for Human Rights board, it
should be hard to dispute that the organization acts as a de facto arm of
the Syrian opposition. And yet reporters like The New York Times Anne
Barnard have overlooked these inconvenient facts to describe the group as
independent.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights did not respond to an interview request
from The Grayzone.
Regime Change Journalism
As a former Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times who now enjoys a
fellowship at the notoriously hawkish Council on Foreign Relations, Barnard
would be hard to describe as a progressive muckraker. Yet her curiously
sourced report on Syrian prisons earned her an invite nonetheless from
progressive news program Democracy Now.
Barnard told Democracy Now host Amy Goodman that the Syrian government was
vacuuming up people literally including followers of Gandhi, suggesting
that the rebellion was entirely peaceful while ignoring evidence that the
opposition engaged in lethal violence just weeks into the revolt.
In a subsequent question-and-answer session at Reddit, Barnard described a
militarized Syrian insurgency that saw the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat
al-Nusra assume a leading role in taking over large swaths of the country as
a movement for reform and democracy.
Barnard appeared upset that the United States had failed to intervene
directly to affect regime change. President Barack Obama spoke loudly,
calling for Mr. al-Assads ouster, she said, but carried a small stick. He
backed off from even symbolic enforcement of the red line he had set.
Barnards article ultimately earned an endorsement from former U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who called it a remarkable piece of
journalism.
To gather data documenting the staggering human toll of Syrias secret
prison network The New York Times reporter turned to the Syrian Network for
Human Rights, calling it an independent human rights group that keeps the
most meticulous count of prison deaths.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Barnard vouched for the credibility of
SNHR and the rigor of its research methods. Their numbers are actual counts
of reports that they get, she said. They have people on the ground and
people outside Syria, and they basically just take phone calls, and they
also have a form on their Web site that you can fill in. They go through the
detailed report to them, they verify what they can, and they take this
actual tally.
After opening her piece with bracing testimony from a Syrian who described
himself as a former prisoner, Barnard introduced a staggering statistic to
demonstrate the scope of brutality by the Syrian government: Nearly 128,000
have never emerged [from Syrian prisons], and are presumed to be either dead
or still in custody, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an
independent monitoring group that keeps the most rigorous tally.
Nearly 14,000 were killed under torture, she wrote, citing the same SNHR
report.
Again, there is little debate that the Syrian government has used brutal
methods to counter an extremist insurgency that has been funded, armed, and
trained with billions of dollars from numerous foreign nations. What is in
dispute are the actual numbers and the magnitude of deaths and victims
of these tactics. And SNHRs have been comically absurd.
It claimed in the blog post linked by The New York Times that nearly 14,000
people were tortured to death by Syrian government forces, yet it provided
no evidence or documentation beyond a single cartoon chart. At the same
time, the group claimed that only 32 people were tortured to death by the
genocidal extremists in ISIS, and just 21 by the rebranded al-Qaeda
affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The notion that ISIS and al-Qaeda tortured only 53 people to death in Syria
over eight years is risible. However, Barnard and her editors at the Times
seem to have accepted this claim as indisputable truth, regurgitating it
without a hint of skepticism.
Barnard did not respond to emailed questions about the Syrian Network for
Human Rights.
State, Amnesty, and The Intercept Too
The New York Times is not the only mainstream institution to have depended
heavily on dubious allegations by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. The
group brags that it came in second place for citations in the U.S. State
Departments 2018 report on the human-rights situation in Syria.
SNHRs report on human-rights violations by the Kurdish-led anti-ISIS
coalition was promoted enthusiastically by The Daily Beasts Roy Gutman, a
longtime critic of the Kurdish YPG. However, unlike virtually every other
mainstream reporter, Gutman at least hinted at the Syrian Network for Human
Rights alignment with the Syrian opposition, noting that it was a
Qatar-based human rights group, echoing the position of the Turkish
government
In September 2018, The Intercepts Murtaza Hussain and Mariam Elba relied on
Syrian Network for Human Rights for numbers of those disappeared into the
sprawling prison network maintained by the Assad government. (Oddly, the
number of secret detainees they cited was 82,000, which means that the
Syrian government would have had to have disappeared a whopping 46,000
people in an eight-month period to reach the figure Barnard quoted in The
New York Times.)
It was one of many instances in which The Intercept cited the SNHR as a
credible watchdog group without disclosing its seamless ties to the Syrian
opposition and the state backers of the Islamist insurgency.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights has also been a go-to source for The
Guardian, which relied on the group and various other opposition-tied
outfits like the Violations Documentation Center to claim that Russian
airstrikes in Syria have been more deadly than those by the U.S.-led
coalition, which is reported by those groups to have killed 1,600 civilians
in Raqqa alone. (The Guardian referred to SNHR merely as a UK-based
organization.)
In her article for The New York Times, Barnard relied on a widely discussed
2017 Amnesty International report to claim that Syrias Saydnaya Prison was
a mass execution center where thousands were hanged after summary
trials. That report, headlined with the tabloid title Human
Slaughterhouse and supplemented with CGI-style storytelling graphics, also
relied heavily on unsourced claims provided by the Syrian Network for Human
Right.
According to Amnesty, anywhere from 5,000 to 13,000 prisoners were summarily
executed at Saydnaya. However, the international NGO provided no data to
support this claim, conceding in a footnote on page 17 of its report that
its data was based entirely on hypothetical calculations.
The footnote where Amnesty admits that its Saydnayah death toll is based on
hypothetical mathematical calculations
Later, on page 40, Amnesty acknowledged that the exact number of deaths in
Saydnaya is impossible to specify. The NGO then revealed that it documented
only 375 deaths at the prison over a five-year period, and thanks to
allegations verified by Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Like virtually every other organization that depended on SNHRs claims,
Amnesty referred to it simply as a monitoring group, not noting its
intimate connection to the Syrian opposition.
In Barnards New York Times report, SNHR was cited alongside an
interconnected array of NGOs and individuals with documented ties to the
Syrian opposition. As with the Syrian Network for Human Rights, absolutely
no context was provided to inform readers about the political agenda of
these organizations, or about the direct support they received from states
that have fueled the extremist insurgency in Syria.
Through omissions like these, regime change propaganda has been carefully
repackaged as news thats fit to print.
Part Two of this investigation will examine another opposition-tied source
that has been widely cited by U.S. mainstream media in coverage of Syria. It
is the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA). With
a tightly-knit coterie of lawyers, faceless Salafi-jihadist insurgents, and
an intelligence network spanning from Washington to Doha, this group of
so-called document hunters is honing the latest tactic in the Wests
regime-change toolbox.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of books
including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day
War and The Management of Savagery, published in March 2019 by Verso. He
has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many
video reports and several documentaries including Killing Gaza and Je Ne
Suis Pas Charlie. Blumenthal founded the Grayzone in 2015 to shine a
journalistic light on Americas state of perpetual war and its dangerous
domestic repercussions.
