A PRIEST criticised for meeting the Syrian President, Bashar Assad, has defended the trip, arguing that Western reports of the conflict are one-sided and that the voices of Syrians, including Christians, are going unheard.
The Revd Andrew Ashdown, a priest in the diocese of Winchester, returned to the UK on Wednesday, after leading a week-long delegation to Syria. Peers criticised the trip, after a picture appeared on the Syrian state news agency website, showing the group sitting down to talk with President Assad.
Baroness Hussein-Ece posted on Twitter: “Sitting down to talks with a mass murderer, barrel bombing & dropping chemical weapons on civilians. Shameful.”
The morning after his return, Mr Ashdown defended the trip.
“The people within Syria, of all faiths and all sectarian backgrounds, are appalled at the narrowness of Western media reporting and one-sidedness,” he said. “We went to hear their voices.”
During the trip the group met also met the government ministers for reconciliation and tourism.
“There are very good people in the Syrian government, and also some very bad,” Mr Ashdown said. “But no conflict can be resolved without talking to the key parties involved. . . Whether we like it or not, we need to be talking to the Syrian government.”
He continued: “I think it’s obscene, actually, that our Government allies with brutal dictatorships, where human-rights abuses have been far greater even than those that might have happened in Syria . . . yet refuses to talk to a country where faiths have lived freely together, where women have had the best rights of almost anywhere in the region.”
The group accepted an invitation from the President to meet him, Mr Ashdown confirmed. On arrival, the President had said: “I appreciate you coming here to see a monster,” and told them that they were free to put any questions to him. They had confronted him with questions about gassing, barrel bombs, and torture. Mr Ashdown confirmed that President Assad had provided answers during the “two hours of frank, open discussion and dialogue”, but declined to quote them, until he had reviewed his notes.
“It was a huge privilege,” Mr Ashdown said, “and it was open and honest.”
The UK has suspended all services of the British Embassy in Damascus, and all diplomatic personnel have been withdrawn from the country. The British Government has repeatedly condemned the “brutal violence” of the Assad regime and supports the High Negotiations Committee of the Syrian Opposition (HNC), which it describes as “an organisation representing the moderate opposition”. It expelled Syrian diplomats in 2012, in protest at the killing of civilians in Houla (News, 1 June 2012).
Asked about reports of torture and death in state-run security facilities, including a 2015 report by Human Rights Watch which concluded that the use of torture in Syria was “so widespread and systematic that they indicate a clear state policy, meaning they constitute crimes against humanity”, Mr Ashdown said that the group had “confronted the President directly” about the issue.
Some reports had been “proven to be either fabricated or simply are not true”, Mr Ashdown argued. “We cannot rely on any information as definitive and absolutely correct. I think that we have to recognise that the sources for lots of information are not necessary reliable.”
He accused the West of a “huge hypocrisy” because of its alliance with “so many allies and regimes which equally have awful records”.
There was, he said, a “tremendous amount of support for Assad” among all communities in Syria. “They say, whether we like the regime or not, the alternative is utter mayhem. That is the reality, and it’s proved by the actions of people we are supporting. . . The [British] Government may not like what is there, but what we are supporting is far, far worse.”
The UN Human Rights Council has accused the Syrian government of violating international humanitarian law in its targeting of civilians with barrel bombs.
Asked about barrel-bombing, Mr Ashdown said that he had met people in Damascus whose villages and towns had been barrel-bombed.
“Their response was, ‘Go ahead. If its helps get rid of terrorists, do it,’” he said. “Many people fled rebel-controlled areas partly because of the heavy government response but first because of the brutality of the rebels.”
“I am not denying atrocities,” he said. “But what I am saying is that our media presentation is so biased and one-sided it does not reflect reality.”
The word “hypocrisy” was used by many Syrians whom the group met, in relation to the West, he said. “Why is the West so hypocritical in its condemnation of one and in alliance with another? They can’t understand why the West appears to want to destroy a secular society. . .
“Nobody is saying that the Assad government is good. This is not black and white. Nobody is innocent in this conflict, but the alternative is, and will be, without doubt, an Islamist regime. There is no question that there would be so-called democracy in place if the external opposition won. All people were absolutely 100 per cent saying that whatever moderates might have existed early on do not exist any more, and most are Islamist extremists. This was said by Muslim leaders and by Muslim people on the street. They are terrified of them.”
This week, London hosted the Syrian High Negotiations Committee (HNC), described by the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, as “the broadest-based opposition grouping in Syria”.
President Assad “can have no part in the future government of a new Syria”, Mr Johnson wrote in The Times on Wednesday. “The entire international community is committed, at least in principle, to getting rid of the Syrian dictator.”
He described how the HNC would “set out its vision for a post-Assad Syria that is democratic and pluralistic”. A six-month negotiation phase between the regime and the opposition would be followed by an 18-month period of government by a transitional body, and then elections.
“There is one man who bears overwhelming responsibility for this disaster; a man whose barbaric military tactics have caused the vast majority of those 400,000 deaths,” Mr Johnson wrote. “That leader is Bashar al-Assad. It is his killing machine, his barrel bombs and, in the end, his fight for personal political survival.”
Syrians had “no respect” for the HNC, Mr Ashdown said. “They do not see them as representing Syria.” It was “not acceptable” for talks to be imposed from outside. Asked about Russian involvement, he said: “It’s hard for the West to see, but Russia is regarded as bit of a hero by many Syrians. In 2015, it [Syria] had a danger of falling, and, when the Russians stepped in, they really did save the country, in that sense, from takeover by rebels.”
Christians in Syria “cannot understand the attitude of Christian leaders in the West towards them”, he said. “If the international community wins, we have been told by everybody across the faith political spectrum that Christianity will be out of Syria. All Christians will leave.”
The consistent message from Syrians who met the group was that they wished to see an end to the involvement of foreign powers and to decide their own future, he said.
Mr Ashdown suggested that reports read in the West about chemical weapons attacks and the beginning of the conflict in Syria “all come, of course, from hugely dubious sources, and ones we solely listen to. We heard many ordinary voices from Syrians who do absolutely counter the narrative we have been given on the start on the uprising and on the perpetrators of some of the gas attacks. . . I am not trying to claim the innocence of any party here, but saying that our representation of the facts is grossly misrepresented, and our sources are totally one-sided.”
Last month, a UN inquiry concluded that two chlorine-gas attacks on civilians had been perpetrated by the Syrian air force, and that Islamic State was responsible for one mustard-gas attack.
The delegation led by Mr Ashdown included Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, Baroness Cox, and Lord Hylton. They went at the invitation of religious leaders: the Armenian Archbishop of Damascus, Armash Nalbandian; the Chaldean Bishop of Aleppo, Mar Antoine Audo; the President of the Armenian Evangelical Church in Syria, the Revd Haroutune Selimian; and the Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmed Badr al-Din al-Hassoun. Mr Ashdown described the Grand Mufti as a “spiritually profound leader . . . a person we ought to be listening to”.
Mr Ashdown emphasised that the group had met people of all faiths and sectarian backgrounds. A press release issued by the group spoke of a commitment to “impartiality and solidarity with all those who are suffering”, and described the trip as a “pastoral visit to the suffering people”, which would also “explore academic relationships relating to possible cultural and academic collaboration”. To demonstrate impartiality, the group covered their own expenses. This is Mr Ashdown’s fifth visit in two years. He left his parish post and appointment as an interfaith adviser to the diocese of Winchester last year.
In an itinerary approved by the Syrian government, they visited government-held areas: Damascus, Lattakia, Western Aleppo, and Maaloula. They were accompanied by security personnel provided by the Syrian government. Mr Ashdown said that these accompaniers “did not hang around” during visits. It was not possible to visit rebel-controlled areas, he said, because of the risk of kidnap or murder.
The release lists 13 “findings”, including “many initiatives by Government and local communities to address problems of war and poverty” and “consistently positive working relations between Christians and Muslims in Government-controlled areas in Syria”. The group was told by the Minister for Reconciliation that there were “reconciliation initiatives” in 70 cities, towns, and villages, involving 4.5 million citizens.
The release also states that the group was told by the Senior Doctors’ Council in Aleppo that there were more than 4000 doctors in Aleppo, including 3150 currently working there, and that “many hospitals in Government held areas have been bombed and damaged by Opposition forces; and that the medical needs of the vast majority of the city’s population are profoundly impacted by the refusal of the international community to engage with Government-held areas of the city.”
It accuses the media in the West of focusing on military offensives by government forces, and notes that several attacks by opposition forces, “inflicting indiscriminate death and injury”, occurred during their visit.
In 2013, the UN independent commission of inquiry investigating alleged war crimes concluded that attacks on medical facilities were being used systematically as a weapon of war by the Assad regime. Médecins Sans Frontières said this year that was no longer sharing GPS co-ordinates with Russian and Syrian authorities because of repeated attacks on medical facilities and workers.
Mr Ashdown said that he hoped that the delegation’s report would “help people to think a bit more broadly, to hear realities on the ground are different to the realities that we see. They are only part-truths.”
