The siege in Aleppo has reached unprecedented levels of public awareness. Many people have claimed that the destruction of the city and the testimony of the wounded survivors who used social media to communicate with the world are causing a total meltdown of humankind.
Some people have complained that the post-Holocaust cry ” Never Again” has proven meaningless and that the UN principle of Responsibility to Protect is, at best based on hollow words.
I dare to disagree. I dare to disagree. It is crucial to realize that the best thing we can do to help Syria, or any other country ravaged by war, is to strengthen and improve international standards for protecting civilians.
It is not the case that the norms, such as the duty to protect, are hollow. The problem lies in the fact that they have evolved not only through consensus but also through competition. They do not evolve just by the excitement that comes with success but also the emotional reactions to failure to protect.
The images that we saw in Aleppo have had a significant impact on both the international humanitarian perception and the political debate. These images could also play a significant role in future discussions about the duty to protect.
Baz Ratner/Reuters Baz Ratner/Reuters
Images and politics in Aleppo
Samantha Power, the author of America and the Age of Genocide, and current US ambassador to the UN, highlighted in the Security Council speech on December 13 the videos sent by Aleppo survivors.
She warned Aleppo would “join the ranks of events that define modern evil and that stain our conscience many decades later”. The events included Halabja, the 1988 massacre by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime of Kurdish civilians, Rwanda, Srebrenica and “now Aleppo”.
She ended her speech by asking Syria, Russia, and Iran if “they are truly incapable of shame” if there is anything they will not “lie or justify”.
Smoke rising over bomb-damaged Eastern Aleppo. Reuters/via ReutersTV
The Russian Ambassador responded first by questioning the validity of the videos, followed by other facts and, finally, refusing to accept moral lessons from America, which also has a dubious track record.
Politics is a contest over narratives . Images are not only informative, but they can also trigger sympathy.
Images from war zones such as Syria are still contested. The video of Canadian activist Eva Bartlett slamming the veracity of images of children being saved from the rubble of Aleppo has gone viral. Channel 4 in the UK conducted a fact-check on her claims. The ground war in Syria has been translated into a worldwide online information warfare.
In the long term, however, images of atrocities as well as the emotional reactions they evoke may have more radical consequences for politics.
A boy flashes a victory sign as he rides an evacuation bus out of a rebel-held area in eastern Aleppo. Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters
Atrocities and visibility
In the past, our failure to provide protection has led to the creation of humanitarian norms like the responsibility to protect. This experience is closely linked to the visibility and invisibility of some atrocities.
Images of the Holocaust played a key role in establishing it as an example of injustice. After the first televised conflict in Vietnam, American scholars revived ethical discussion about “just wars”.
According to my research, in the months preceding the humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, most NATO members made speeches about the need to avoid another Bosnia. They formulated this imperative explicitly by linking it to mass atrocities that were visible in both places.