Mainstream Media Coverage of the Syrian Conflict: Blind Spots and Vulnerabilities

Mainstream Media Coverage of the Syrian Conflict: Blind Spots and Vulnerabilities

MAAS 587-01: War and Terrorism in the Arab World: The Human Dimension

Amanda Jessen, M.A. Candidate (Conflict Resolution)Final Paper

December 19, 2013

Georgetown UniversityMainstream Media Coverage of the Syrian Conflict: Blind Spots and Vulnerabilities

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Introduction

The Arab Spring ushered in a period of time in participating Middle East countries that

promised both great change and great uncertainty. As largely non-violent protests swept through

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and a host of other Middle Eastern countries, actors both internal

and external to the sites of mass, public demonstration eagerly looked to developments in each

country – and within the region at large – to foretell if and when regime change would lead to

democratic futures. At the tail end of the Arab Spring uprisings, Syrians signaled their

willingness to brave the perils of Assad’s police state to stake their claim in Syria’s future.

Beginning in Dara’a, where the imprisonment and torture of 15 boys in March 2011 generated

organized public outcry, Syrian civilians (and later military officers) gathered to demand the

resignation of President Bashar al-Assad.1 With this very public and deeply subversive rejection

of the regime, the stage was set for what would become a protracted conflict that is yet to be

resolved in Syria.

From the onset of the Arab Spring, the Western media wasted no time in building out

narratives and frames to convey the complexity and dynamism of the social and political forces

on the ground; these narratives “serve[d] as a natural reaction to surplus and abundant

information... [in an attempt to] order, interpret and simplify”2 the diversity of viewpoints and

voices seeking to clarify the issues. Early on, commentators viewed the Syrian uprising within

the general context of the Arab Spring; that is, the mainstream interpretation held that mobilized

Syrians “publicly gathered to cast off that yoke by calling for greater freedoms.”3 But when the

1 Joe Sterling. “Dara’a: The spark that lit the Syrian flame.” CNN. March 1, 2012. Accessed online at http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/01/world/meast/syria-crisis-beginnings/. 2 Michael Bhatia. “Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits, Rebels and Other Violent Actors.” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2005, p. 9. 3 Rania Abouzeid. “Arab Spring: Is a Revolution Starting Up in Syria?” Time Magazine. March 19, 2011. Accessed online at http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2060398,00.html.


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government’s response grew violent quickly, Western media outlets scrambled to create more

appropriate prisms through which to view the Syrian case.

It is these active and influential prisms that this paper seeks to better understand.

Specifically, this analysis will review three major themes that run throughout mainstream media

accounts of the Syrian conflict. The review and analysis will assess squarely the following

themes:

1. The conflict inherently is violent;

2. The conflict inherently is sectarian; and,

3. The conflict has provided an environment for a male-dominated, “jihadist playground”4.

By doing so, this paper intends to think through where overemphasis on any or all of these

themes may obscure, overinflate or otherwise ignore more marginalized undercurrents of truth –

and, how those undercurrents may work to complicate current policy options moving forward. In

short, the intention is not to verify whether these themes are valid, as that would require much

more information than is available to the public, but rather to map out what gets lost when these

themes are emphasized and prioritized above competing narratives.

Scope of Inquiry and Methodology

This paper will aid in carefully considering how three common themes have framed the

Syrian conflict within Western media reports. By investigating the conflict’s thematic

dimensions, which include the inevitable violence of the conflict, sectarianism, and the upsurge

in violent extremism, this paper will map out how these frames and narratives have become

4 Christoph Reuter. “Video Games and Cigarettes: Syria’s Disneyland for Jihadists”, Der Spiegel, September 27, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/foreign-jihadists-in-syria-favor-liberal-transit-towns-over-front-a-910092.html.


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truisms as well as whether and how alternative explanations or realities should be considered

against the backdrop of policy decisions.

An operative assumption of this inquiry is that media accounts, in some way, shape or

form, influence policy decisions. Whether media accounts influence public opinion, which then

feeds directly into the agendas of elected officials, or media accounts help to prioritize policy

interests at high levels of leadership, an acknowledgement that television, print and online media

are somehow interwoven with the policy decisions they help inform is paramount to the

discussion of how current depictions of the Syrian conflict may produce adverse or inaccurate

foreign policy.

As much of the current debate derives from information culled by mainstream, Western

media sources such as CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Time

Magazine, and Der Spiegel, articles from these sources will be analyzed in terms of their various

perspectives on the three themes in question. While Al-Jazeera may not enjoy mainstream

readership in the United States (yet), any discussion of happenings in the Middle East would be

incomplete without reporting from journalists working with this particular news outlet. In

addition to articles lodged in large-scale news and policy analysis publications like The Atlantic,

Foreign Policy, and The Economist, op-ed pieces and blog posts will also factor into the material

analyzed in this paper.

In highlighting narrative blind spots, the goal is to better position academics and

policymakers to anticipate surprising developments on the ground that, perhaps, should not be

surprising at all. For example, where the media are focused myopically on the uptick of Al

Qaeda fighters flocking to Northern Syria, questions around the potential for radicalization of

young boys and girls in refugee camp and urban settings in neighboring countries are not being


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asked. It is this type of creative thinking outside of media-endorsed boxes that offers the best

hope for achieving an informed understanding of the current situation as well as in what

direction the current situation could shift.

Dominant Themes and Their Blind Spots

Theme #1: The Conflict Inherently Is Violent – An Overview

Much of what enthralled Western observers about the Arab Spring revolved around the

degree to which popular protest remained non-violent. In a region rife with persistent

authoritarianism and a history of violent state repression, the change of regime in the wake of

(mostly) non-violent protest in both Egypt and Tunisia startled the entire world. Writing about

the impact of the Arab Spring on Al Qaeda, Bruce Hoffman agrees that the “mostly nonviolent,

mast protests of the ‘Arab Spring’ were successful in overturning hated despots”5, so much so

that the violent pathways to improved governance promulgated by Al Qaeda propagandists

seemed to have been rejected outright by the masses.

In terms of Syria, though, the media have taken to discussing internal dynamics in an

entirely different way. Writing about the uprising roughly two years after the Dara’a skirmishes,

Marc Lynch states simply that Syria “ruined” the Arab Spring with its “unstoppable spiral of

militarization”. In his view, “the Syrian nightmare has destroyed the spirit of fun, hope, and

positive change of the early Arab uprisings” in such a way that

the promise of the Arab Spring has given way to Syria’s highly visible and protracted violence, divisive identity politics, focus on international intervention, crushing of expectations, fragmentation of the media landscape, state failure, and strategic proxy warfare.6

5 Bruce Hoffman. “Al Qaeda’s Uncertain Future”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 36. Taylor and Francis Group, LLC, p. 642.6 Marc Lynch. “How Syria Ruined the Arab Spring.” Foreign Policy. May 3, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/03/how_syria_ruined_the_arab_spring.


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Sounding almost personally insulted that the Syrian revolution veered off the beaten path of

other Arab Spring moments, Lynch historicizes the revolution as inherently and immediately

prone to violence, as if the wheels of the revolution were locked into a violent trajectory from the

beginning.

When media reports do not overlook the fact that many of the initial anti-government

actions were non-violent with intention, another troubling bias pops up in other mainstream news

articles: that violence was inevitable. A New York Times article from September 2011 calculates

that the survivability of the Assad regime enjoys a direct relationship with an increase in street

violence; in other words, the longer Bashar remains in power, the more violent the country will

become. Anthony Shadid quotes an International Crisis Group analyst directly as saying, “‘It is

quite simply a trap that the protestors will fall in.’”7 Inherent in this line of thinking is the casual

assumption that the Syrian conflict is constituted by an inevitable and unidirectional thread of

violence. Most troubling, of course, is the inattention to the agency of the protestors themselves.

Theme #1: The Conflict Inherently Is Violent – Blind Spots

The operative discourse around the Syrian conflict as inherently and inevitably violent

completely overlooks the great pains many Syrians took to avoid violence during the early period

of the uprising. A simple Google search for non-violent resistance in Syria does not yield any

dedicated inquiries into the subject through mainstream, Western press channels. Instead, one

finds reports filed by Rania Khalek with Al Jazeera, as well as several articles hosted by Open

Democracy. The Open Democracy articles look directly at the deep currents of non-violent

organizing and strategy early in the uprising and call the impact of non-violence in Syria

7 Anthony Shadid. “Syria’s Protestors, Long Mostly Peaceful, Starting to Resort to Violence”, The New York Times. September 16, 2011. Accessed online at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/world/middleeast/at-least-six-protesters-killed-in-syria.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.


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“tremendous”.8 According to these reports, as momentum in the cities began to snowball,

protesters relied on dodge-and-feint tactics to lure security forces to fake locations while they

captured street protests through film at the same time. The intentionality of pursuing non-

violence, even as protesters were being detained, tortured, and killed, helped generate key

defections from the Syrian army. Bartkowski and Kahf write that the regime’s escalation of

violent attacks on non-violent protesters was viewed by some journalists as an indication that the

non-violent strategy was inherently flawed9, but Sharpe would point out that this mainstream

perception fails to account for the potential of the strategy of political jiu-jitsu, wherein

the non-violent resisters can use the asymmetry of nonviolent means versus violent action in order to apply to their opponents a political operation... [that] throws the opponents off balance politically, causing their repression to rebound against their own power position.10

Contrary to the media’s assumption that non-violence failed because the regime’s violent

response necessitated an inevitable violent counter-response, Bartkowski and Kahf point out that

it was both the mixture of non-violent and violent tactics as well as an absence of an overarching

strategy11 that pushed voices for non-violence to the margins.

Khalek’s article unapologetically criticizes the media for overlooking the fact that non-

violence is not dead in Syria, despite the pervasive narrative that Syrians are either involved in

violent resistance or eager for an external power like the United States to support violent

resistance or become involved militarily itself. Simply put,

8 Macie Bartkowski and Mohja Kahf. “The Syrian resistance: a tale of two struggles”, Open Democracy, September 23, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.opendemocracy.net/civilresistance/maciej-bartkowski-mohja-kahf/syrian-resistance-tale-of-two-struggles. 9 Bartkowski and Kahf, “The Syrian resistance: a tale of two struggles”.10 Gene Sharpe. “There Are Realistic Alternatives”, The Albert Einstein Institution, 2003, p. 11.11 Barkowksi and Kahf, “The Syrian resistance: a tale of two struggles”.


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she and others argue that making sense of Syria, today more than ever, demands that more attention be paid to the opposition voices of Syrian civil society whose voices have been increasingly drowned out by the sounds of war.12

In addition, maps that illustrate rebel control (see Appendix A) can be found on virtually

every major news site or publication. Mainstream media sources routinely and obsessively post

updated maps indicating which areas are under rebel control and which areas are still managed

by the government as if to suggest that all activity within Syria is both militarized and neatly

organized within a pro-/anti-government binary. Conversely, maps that show the persistence and

prevalence of non-violent organizing (see Appendix B) are much more rarely featured in

mainstream news accounts.

In looking at how narratives of inevitable violence stack up next to narratives of non-

violence, Western media sources overwhelmingly favor painting the Syrian conflict as deeply

and unidirectionally violent, which intuitively gives way to support for violent interventions, like

the one briefly considered by the United States and France in October of 2013. In silencing the

civil society groups and individual actors deeply committed to fighting the regime “not by

violence, but – by psychological, social, economic or political methods, or a combination of

these”13 the Western media have marginalized the non-violent movement and pared down the

complexity of involved actors in order to transmit an uncomplicated account of Syrian

opposition tactics, motivations and goals. By equating the Syrian opposition to armed violence,

the Western media have framed solutions to the conflict in such a way that prioritizes a

militarized intervention over an alternative, non-violent intervention, thereby privileging a

violent response to a violent scenario and limiting the overall solution-set available to outside

actors.

12 Rania Khalek. “Syria’s nonviolent resistance is dying to be heard”, Al-Jazeera America. September 9, 2013. Accessed online at http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/9/syria-s-nonviolentresistanceisdyingtobeheard.html. 13 Sharpe, p. 4.


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Theme #2: The Conflict Inherently Is Sectarian – An Overview

Another theme that has become prominent in accounts of the ongoing conflict in Syria is

that this conflict emanates from ancient, sectarian hostilities that have exploded to the forefront

of current conflict dynamics. As early as November 2011, writers began foreshadowing the

future of the Syrian conflict using a sectarian/ethnic lens. Anthony Shadid writes “As it [Homs]

descends into sectarian hatred, Homs has emerged as a chilling window on what civil war in

Syria could look like...”14 A Washington Post article reinforces this sentiment, framing initial

violence in Homs in November 2011 as “spiraling sectarian violence”, with “many of those

killed belong[ing] to Assad’s minority Alawite sect.”15 Early on, media consumers are instructed

to view tensions and inter-communal violence as sect versus sect, ethnic group versus ethnic

group.

Two years later, columnists for major media publications have begun to discuss the

potential for partition in Syria along sectarian lines, echoing similar trends that underpinned

projections for the future of post-invasion Iraq. Robin Wright, an author and scholar at the

United States Institute for Peace, argued that Syria is one of several countries being torn asunder

by “centrifugal forces of rival beliefs, tribes and ethnicities.”16 She goes on to state unequivocally

that because Syria is religiously and ethnically diverse, it is naturally fragile, and that the

ongoing fighting has left the country in “three identifiable regions, each with its own flag and

14 Anthony Shadid. “Sectarian Strife in City Bodes Ill for All of Syria”, The New York Times, November 19, 2011. Accessed online at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/world/middleeast/in-homs-syria-sectarian-battles-stir-fears-of-civil-war.html?pagewanted=all. 15 Liz Sly. “Sectarian violence kills dozens in Syria.” The Washington Post, November 3, 2011. Accessed online at http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-11-03/world/35280901_1_arab-league-plan-homs-sunni. 16 Robin Wright. “Imagining a Remapped Middle East”, The New York Times. September 28, 2013. Accessed online at www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/imagining-a-remapped-middle-east.html?r=0.


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security forces.”17 In this view, conflict dynamics have well-positioned the country to splinter

along neat, sectarian lines.

Theme #2: The Conflict Inherently Is Sectarian – Blind Spots

By uncritically speaking about the conflict has having arisen out of historic, sectarian

divisions, primarily between the Alawite regime and its supports and the predominantly Sunni

Syrian majority, commentators are, perhaps unintentionally, naturalizing divisions that may not

exist to the extent that current narratives contend. This strategy of compartmentalizing and

categorizing difficult-to-understand dynamics reinforces “the tendency to represent the social

and cultural world as a multichrome mosaic of monochrome ethnic, racial, or cultural blocs”18,

thereby creating and reifying divisions and cleavages that may have no or little meaning at the

local level.

Writing for Democracy Now, Marwa Daoudy states clearly that while the Assad regime

is Alawi and draws support heavily from Alawites within Syria, the vast majority of the country

is not embattled along sectarian lines; in other words, it is not a Sunni country up against an

Alawi leadership because there is something inherently conflictive between Sunnis and Alawites.

“All communities, Sunnis, Christians and Alawites alike, share a fear of radicalism and a descent

to chaos as the country follows in the dreaded footsteps of neighboring Iraq.”19 Instead of

indicating a normative and insurmountable antagonism between religious or sectarian parties, the

narrative of deep-rooted and inevitable sectarianism reflects a geo-political alignment of external

actors, with “the US-Israeli-Saudi-Qatari-Turkish interests on the one hand and Syria, Russia,

17 Robin Wright, “Imagining a Remapped Middle East”. 18 Rogers Brubaker. “Ethnicity Without Groups”, Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology. Duke University Press, 2006, p. 471. 19 Marwa Daoudy. “Sectarianism in Syria: myth and reality”, Open Democracy. July 22, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.opendemocracy.net/marwa-daoudy/sectarianism-in-syria-myth-and-reality.


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Iran and Hizbollah on the other.”20 In this view, the narrative of internal sectarian antagonism is

misplaced and more accurately depicts the type of geo-politicking underway between regional

actors and the United States.

Aside from whether the current sectarian emphasis on fighting correctly situates on-the-

ground realities as they are now, there is ample support that in the early days of the fighting,

protestors and activists deliberately eschewed sectarian identities as they mobilized against

Assad, perhaps anticipating that government forces would attempt to manipulate sectarian

distinctions to their advantage. Activists in Banyas sought cooperation with Alawites by singing

“‘Peaceful, peaceful – neither Sunni nor Alawite, we want national unity’” and protestors in

Damascus marched with both a cross and crescent to underscore multi-sectarian unity.21 In fact,

the Assad regime has been charged with manipulating the West’s fascination with sectarian

discord to his advantage, depicting a Sunni versus Shiite showdown reminiscent of the United

States’ experience with Iraq in order to distract external observers from the brutality of his

responses. Playing up ethnic discord also functions to support Assad’s continued claims that

Sunni extremism vis-à-vis Al Qaeda – rather than Syrians with legitimate and sustained

grievances – bears responsibility for continued resistance.

Indeed, Western actors like the United States are all too familiar with the art of accepting

blindly the sectarian character of conflicts, like the one in Iraq. Reidar Visser takes criticism of

the United States’ interfacing with sectarian divisions to another level by alleging that the U.S.

itself has imposed a “a sectarian master narrative upon Iraqi politics”22, which circles back to the

question of whether and how Western media outlets are doing the same with respect to Syria.

20 Daoudy, “Sectarianism in Syria: myth and reality”.21 Bartkowski and Kahf, “The Syrian resistance: a tale of two struggles”.22 Reidar Visser. “The Western Imposition of Sectarianism on Iraqi Politics”, Arab Studies Journal, Fall 2007/Spring 2008, p. 84.


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Visser says that with regard to coverage of Iraqi affairs, the international media relied on

“sectarian narratives...to break news stories from Iraq into neat, digestible pieces crisp enough to

fit into the slots of satellite television newscasts and mainstream newspaper feature articles while

still making for dramatic ‘conflict’ headlines.”23 In one important way, this demands an

investigation of how ethnicized accounts of conflict make the news more interesting, more

readable, and generally more exciting. If this is true, it is very possible that the current emphasis

on the ethnic dimensions of the Syrian conflict is driven by the same sensationalizing and profit-

oriented considerations, a troubling notion to say the least. Visser also notes that the

“Iraq as three distinct states” thread in popular, journalistic accounts served to “make it just

about doable for a correspondent to complete a quick tour d’horizon of the country as a whole in

one single package”; again, there is a distinctive parallel between analyzing the future prospects

of Iraq and commentating on what is next for Syria.

In sum, where journalists have engaged the Syrian conflict with an uncritical view to

sectarian divisions, they have unthinkingly reproduced simplistic and, in some cases, inaccurate

accounts of why and how Syrians are embroiled in conflict. These monochromatic, binary

distinctions also form the underbelly of the insidious discussion that Syria could or should be

partitioned, a discussion that is largely devoid of Syrian voices themselves and reminiscent of the

kind of neo-colonial meddling policymakers toyed with in the years after the 2003 invasion of

Iraq. Overblown and fictive accounts of Sunni-on-Alawite violence distort the unity that many

Syrians sought (and continue to seek) in the early months of the war and present the conflict in

the kind of good versus evil terms that sell papers and inform bad policy, all at the same time.

23 Visser, p. 89.


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Theme #3: The Conflict as “Playground” for Jihadists – An Overview

The notion that the Syrian civil war has been hi-jacked by a colorful array of jihadists

functions as one of the most written about themes thus far. It has been well-established by both

the media and academics that the war in Syria has opened up a staging ground for jihadists eager

to stake their claim in tenuous states within the Middle East. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-

Sham (ISIS), with 8,000 foreign fighters and a “pathological obsession with enforcing Islamist

rectitude in the towns and cities its soldiers have infiltrated”24, is the group on the minds and

tongues of relevant observers. Mainstream media reports suggest that ISIS’s activities in Syria

have been so helpful to the Assad regime in terms of both shifting the world’s attention away

from his brutal tactics to the threat potential of an active Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria and

complicating foreign aid to moderate fighting forces that ISIS may even be a patron of Assad’s.25

Bruce Hoffman, in his assessment of the potential for Al Qaeda regeneration in Syria, writes that

the conflict in Syria has “potentially breathed new life into the Al Qaeda brand...[that it could]

resuscitate Core Al Qaeda’s waning fortunes, much as occurred nine years ago [in Iraq].”26

If one looks to media reports featuring the viewpoints of Al Qaeda operatives themselves,

jihadists could not be happier with the developments in Syria. CNN journalist, Nick Paton

Walsch, reports that the typical jihadist reaction to crossing the border from Hatay, Turkey into

Syria is deeply religious27, reflecting some of the ethos evident in Freedom Fighters taking to

Afghan soil to defend against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s.28 Many fighters believe that this

stage of jihad is the fabled “final battle” known as al-Sham, one that will bring about the end of

24 James Traub. “‘Everyone is Scared of ISIS’”, Foreign Policy, October 4, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/04/everyone_is_scared_of_isis_syria_rebels. 25 Traub, “‘Everyone is Scared of ISIS’”.26 Hoffman, p. 646.27 Nick Paton Walsch. “Al-Qaeda-linked group gains strength on NATO’s border”, CNN. November 5, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/04/world/europe/isis-gaining-strength-on-syria-turkey-border/. 28 See Lawrence Wright. The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Vintage Publishing, 2007.


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the world. One smuggler commented “When they [jihadists] get to the fence, they kneel and cry,

they weep, like they’ve just met something more precious to them than their own family. They

believe this land, Syria, is where God’s judgment will come to pass.”29 According to this reading

of jihadist involvement in Syria, the conflict increasingly functions as a clarion call to pious men

from all over the world to fight on behalf of what they believe is the Islamic apocalypse.

Apart from the Syrian conflict providing an environment for spiritual fulfillment, the

media continue to report that the inclusion of jihadist fighters has created a second front on

which moderate forces find themselves expending precious human and material resources. In

July 2013, a report detailing the assassination of a top rebel commander by Al Qaeda forces

includes the comment that “[the attack] was tantamount to a declaration of war, opening a new

front for the Western-backed fighters struggling against President Bashar Assad’s forces.”30

Later in the piece, the author states plainly that Al Qaeda elements stand to impede democratic

development in Syria. In the most recent articles that focus on the demographic make-up of

opposition forces, mainstream journalists frequently depict Al Qaeda elements as the single-most

threatening force present in the Syrian theater.

Theme #3: The Conflict as “Playground” for Jihadists – Blind Spots

It would be inaccurate to downplay the danger that violent extremism poses to the anti-

Assad project. However, the media’s almost obsessive focus on Al Qaeda activity in Syria works

to magnify Al Qaeda’s forces and influence beyond what is certainly the reality. There are

approximately 100,000 fighters splintered into 1,000 or more small groups engaged in open,

armed rebellion against government forces. Of these 100,000 fighters, the BBC estimates that

29 Walsch, “Al-Qaeda-linked group gains strength on NATO’s border”.30 Mariam Karouny and Oliver Holmes. “Report: Syria rebels say al Qaeda attack opens new front in war.” NBC via Reuters. July 12, 2013. Accessed online at http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/12/19437578-report-syria-rebels-say-al-qaeda-attack-opens-new-front-in-war.


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5,000 to 7,000 jihadists align with the Al-Nusra Front and 3,000 to 5,000 fighters associate with

ISIS. Based on these figures, anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 jihadists are active currently in

Syria, representing 8% to 12% of the overall fighting force. Without underestimating the

commitment and tenacity of Al Qaeda fighters (and speaking without any sort of military

training or insight), their numbers, even at the high end, do not seem overwhelming enough to

threaten the opposition in the way that the media would have its audience believe (and in the way

Al Qaeda would like the media’s audience to believe as well). 12,000 fighters may be able to

capture undefended towns and function to undermine the opposition’s focus on Assad, but it

seems premature to predict that foreign jihadists are poised to subsume the entire opposition.

In addition, the West’s fixation with embedded or adversarial Al Qaeda elements within

Syrian opposition forces plays directly into the machinations of Assad, who from the beginning

type-cast opposition elements as terrorists31 deserving of extreme, state-sponsored

countermeasures. The more Western observers spin their wheels modeling future scenarios

centered on Al Qaeda, the more the focus is drawn away from the legitimate aims and needs of

moderate fighting forces, which presumably would be a boon to Assad. In reference to the

Obama Administration’s hesitation to arm moderate rebels robustly, analysts concede that it is

too late to shape a favorable outcome in Syria. The media’s focus on the growth and influence of

Al Qaeda in Syria can only further convince lawmakers of the peril involved in dealing directly

with moderate forces. This threat, real or imagined, has been one of the strongest drivers behind

the emptying of promises to equip moderate forces, and the more the media hype the power of

jihadist elements in Syria, the more moderate rebels’ voices will be sidelined.

31 Ian Black. “Syria’s Bashar al-Assad says ‘terrorism’ must stop if he is to accept peace plan”, The Guardian, March 29, 2012. Accessed online at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/29/syria-bashar-assad-terrorism-peace-plan.


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One should also consider the bigger picture in terms of the potential for – rather than just

the presence of – radicalization toward violent extremism. With so much focus on already

radicalized fighters moving through Syria’s porous borders, no one seems interested in thinking

through how forced migration and life in vulnerable urban pockets and refugee camps in Turkey,

Lebanon and Jordan might contribute to the next generation of radical actors. A Google search

for “Syrian refugees radicalization” reveals a dearth of serious writing on the potential for

radicalization in refugee communities outside of Syria. In blogging about the potential for

radicalization in refugee locales, the Clarion Project makes this rather simplistic and casual

claim: “In a bigger sense for the nation of Syria and the region, lost identity leads to

hopelessness, which leads to radicalization which leads to terrorism and destabilization of the

entire region”32, which, in the author’s view, obfuscates rather than responsibly considers how

forced migrants and their children might be more inclined to take radical action as a result of the

war. The idea that “lost identity” plus “hopelessness” equals “terrorist”, overlooks the multi-

variable process(es) of radicalization, which, according to McCauley and Moskalenko, could

include any combination of twelve (or more) pathways toward violent, radical action.33

Where there is limited – and, politically jaded – thought around the potential for

radicalization of children, there is nothing in the public forum to suggest that Syrian women

might also move in the direction of political and violent extremism. Zainab al Suwaij, the Co-

Founder and Executive Director of the American Islamic Congress, alluded briefly to the largely-

ignored reality that Syrian women living Gaziantep, Turkey are adopting radical beliefs and

moving in the direction of radical (and violent) action, saying that Syrian women are “wanting to

32 Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. “Syria’s Refugee Children Prime Target for Radicalization”, The Clarion Project. November 21, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.clarionproject.org/blog/syria/lost-generation-syria.33 See Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko. Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us. Oxford University Press, 2011.


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fight and kill”.34 In fact, her current mandate in Gaziantep revolves around reversing processes of

radicalization for both combatants and civilians, of whom women make up a significant enough

percentage. The author could not secure an interview with Ms. Al Suwaij, but even the

whispering of female combatants merits a serious revision of the current assumptions that

underpin the potential for radicalization vis-à-vis the Syrian conflict.

Conclusion: Blind Spots and the Vulnerabilities They Create

To review, mainstream, Western media outlets have focused intently on the following

themes:

1. The conflict inherently is violent;

2. The conflict inherently is sectarian; and,

3. The conflict has provided an environment for a male-dominated, “jihadist playground”.35

This paper has attempted to point out the serious flaws in each of these contentions. Where the

press has presented the conflict as inherently violent, much of the hard work and intentionality

fueling the non-violent effort has gone unnoticed. That the non-violent movement continues to

persist is almost impossible to believe given the media’s fascination with images of beheadings36

and cannibalism37. In presenting the conflict as unfolding along pre-determined sectarian lines,

the media risk reifying boundaries and human borders that may be anathema to the people on

whom those boundaries and borders impact. And finally, juxtaposed next to the sex appeal of

34 Zainab Al-Suiwaj. “A Status Report on Syrian Refugees: Beyond the Headlines”, Women’s Foreign Policy Group Panel, October 15, 2013.35 Christoph Reuter. “Video Games and Cigarettes: Syria’s Disneyland for Jihadists”, Der Spiegel, September 27, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/foreign-jihadists-in-syria-favor-liberal-transit-towns-over-front-a-910092.html. 36 See Patrick Witty. “Witness to a Syrian Execution: ‘I Saw a Scene of Utter Cruelty’”, Time Magazine. September 12, 2013. Accessed online at http://lightbox.time.com/2013/09/12/witness-to-a-syrian-execution-i-saw-a-scene-of-utter-cruelty/#1. 37 See Salma Abdelaziz and Holly Yan. “Video: Syrian rebel cuts out soldier’s heart, eats it”, CNN. May 15, 2013. Accessed online at http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/15/world/meast/syria-eaten-heart/.


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another Al Qaeda-linked conflict, the viewpoints, objectives and platform of moderate fighters

cannot keep pace with the media’s appetite for juicy narratives.

If the media has any impact at all on policymaking (and it is true that, to some extent and

in some spaces, it does38), how can policymakers smartly respond to the proliferation of these

three themes? To begin, policymakers would be wise to think about how to support non-military

engagement in all of its forms, not just through the extension of humanitarian aid and funding

through actors like the United Nations; this includes thinking about how to creatively engage the

non-violent movement in Syria. To be sure, the security situation does not allow for much direct

engagement, but the time is now to take seriously the power of social mobilization in support of

non-violence. Second – and in reference to the American practice of the lazy ethnicizing of

complex conflicts – policymakers should look to the mistakes made in Iraq before they accept

accounts that play up ethnic divides. This means exercising restraint and caution in analytical

activities as well as taking the time to understand the situation before recommending action.

Ultimately, it means thinking critically about a conflict where multiple ethnicities happen to be

involved, rather than assuming that the conflict exists because of the multiple ethnicities

themselves. Lastly, because violent extremism is on the rise and because Al Qaeda is nothing if

not innovative, policymakers have to shed gender-blind assumptions around who can radicalize

in politically extreme situations, if only to enable the re-working and fine-tuning of

counterterrorism strategies. Where the U.S. believes that only half of the population is likely to

radicalize, the take away for the remaining 50% is that the U.S. is not paying attention, and

therefore, not attuned to new and creative ways to undermine the Western agenda.

38 See Anne-Katrin Arnold’s review of Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies by John Kingdon at http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/indirect-media-effects-unknown-quantity-policy-making.


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In the end, blind spots signal an inability or unwillingness to acknowledge a broader

horizon than what is depicted by popular discourse. But it is within the parameters of that

broader horizon that unforeseen consequences have the power to undermine or otherwise derail

efforts predicated on commonly accepted knowledge. It is precisely these blind spots that require

our immediate and utmost attention moving forward.

Appendix A

“Syria: Mapping the conflict”


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Appendix B

“Non-violence Map in Syrian Uprising”

Figure 2 (from Alharak.org)

Documents

Mainstream Media Coverage of the Syrian Conflict: Blind Spots and Vulnerabilities