Strife

The Academic Blog of the Department of War Studies, King's College London

You are here: Home / Archives for 2013

Archives for 2013

‘O Hush the Noise Ye Men of Strife’

by Thomas Colley

Untitled-1

As the centenary of the start of the First World War approaches (2014), thoughts will likely turn this holiday season to the uplifting Christmas football match that supposedly occurred during a truce between Germany and the Allies on the Western front. Such a heart-warming episode provided a symbolic reminder that humanity could stand morally above the awful conflict in which Western civilisation was embroiled. That sworn enemies agreed a truce and celebrated a mutual religious festival together is one of the most emotive mythologies of war at Christmas.

Perhaps surprisingly, honouring the religious festivals of others is not as commonplace as one might think. For centuries, the Jews across the Christian world experienced persecution at Easter. Half a century before the First World War, the American Civil War saw continued fighting over Christmas, with the festival used for a major propaganda battle. At this time of joy, happiness and perhaps a little sober reflection for those who are less fortunate it may not readily occur to us that, for some, religious festivals are not sacrosanct. Instead, they are a strategic opportunity to press their agenda, be it ideological indoctrination, the incitement of fear or military victory.

Wars are fought on a physical and a symbolic level.  On a physical level, religious festivals provide a strategic military opportunity to take advantage of the distraction of one’s opponent with a surprise attack. That may sound controversial. But if moral considerations are removed from the equation in line with strategic theory, the use of a religious festival to attack opponents at their moment of greatest distraction is a rational decision. The Yom Kippur War was one such example, when an Arab coalition used the holiest Jewish day of the year to launch an attack against Israel in 1973. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was another notable example, when the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong used New Year celebrations to launch surprise attacks against the US and their allies during the Vietnam War.  Militarily, whilst both offensives eventually faltered, they achieved strategic surprise, and both attackers made significant early gains that had previously eluded them. In Vietnam of course, the Tet offensive was seen as the pivotal catalyst for US public opinion to turn against the war, a spectacular success for North Vietnam in the long term.

However, it is on the symbolic level that using religious festivals for strategic gain is most significant. Of all strategies concerning the use of force to achieve political objectives, terrorism relies most on the effects of symbolism. US embassies in Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world were closed this year due to the threat of Islamist terrorist attacks on Eid. Some commentators in the US excoriated the terrorists being so immoral as to choose their own holy day to launch attacks. Yet clearly such an attack could have great symbolic impact, potentially galvanising the support of those sympathetic to the terrorist cause. Though one speculates whether other Muslims would feel the same way about the use of their day of celebration for such ends. An Eid attack might minimise Muslim casualties as more people may be at home with their families. On the symbolic level though it might backfire, alienating more Muslims than it would attract.

As well as military and terrorist acts, Christmas has also been instrumentalised for the projection of soft power. In 2011, North Korea was fuming at South Korea’s construction of several giant Christmas trees along the border with the demilitarised zone. A Christmas tree could symbolise welcoming, celebration, family, an invitation. Yet to the North it could be seen as a cultural threat; a Christmas tree could also symbolise plenty, feasting, religious freedom (let alone a consistent power supply), all things that are rarely experienced by the people of North Korea. Indeed the North Korean government was so upset as to threaten to shoot the trees down, such were their symbolic power. Actually this could perversely be seen as cause for optimism. If North Korean elites feel that threatened by the propaganda effect of a Christmas tree, then North Korea’s cultural borders must be more open than one might think.

This sense of optimism is important at Christmas. Much of the world is not free from strife. Peace on Earth remains an ideal rather than a reality. But let us hope that, regardless of faith, this holiday season brings as many people together as possible in togetherness rather than suffering. We should not have to look back a hundred years for poignant examples of when enemies come together, even briefly, in peace and goodwill. As the popular Christmas Carol ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’ proclaims: ‘O hush the noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing.’

Religious festivals as a source of community cohesion and conflict

by Revd. A.J.D. Gilbert,
Senior Chaplain, RAF Halton

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhood’s cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4 Scene 3

It seems fashionable today in many different circles to claim that religion and religious belief are the cause of more death and suffering than anything else in the world.  Such a statement tends to mistakenly assume that basically all religions are at heart the same and it fails to acknowledge the reality of how dissimilar different religions can be from each other.  Even a cursory examination would demonstrate the truth of this. Therefore to try and explore the relationship between religious festivals and violence in all religions is unrealistic.  That being the case this article will concentrate on the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions.

the-war-on-christmasWhat is undeniably true is that religion and religious belief have been inextricably involved in many unsavoury incidents in world history but can it really be true that they have been more responsible or that they instigated more of them than has any other motivating factor? I doubt very much whether that is likely to be true.  There are many instances of violence that has had nothing to do with religion such as Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot in Cambodia or year zero in Vietnam.

What is true is that belief systems in general, which included religious and non-religious systems such as Communism, can and do impinge on the very heart of individuals’ understanding of themselves, their place in world and the society in which they live.  These systems bind societies together and define the boundaries of that society.  If individuals are lead to feel that any of this is threatened in some way then they will react against the threat, possibly violently.  Therefore it is hardly surprising to find that vested interests, political leaders, aspiring revolutionaries, power brokers etc realising the latent power available through manipulating religious belief have found ways of enlisting religion in support of their cause whatever it is.  This technique can quite clearly be seen in the speech of Pope Urban II at Cleremont in 1095 launching the 1st crusade. [1] Arguably this same mechanism of manipulating beliefs was invoked in both the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Vietnamese year zero but in a non religious context.  Interestingly Urban’s speech was not made on any particular religious festival which one might expect it to have been if such festivals were seen as motivating factors.

If religion really was the instigator of the violence in the world rather than a tool used to support it, then it would be reasonable to suppose that religious festivals would act as a focus and give focus and encouragement to that violence.  There is little evidence to be found support this contention.  In fact only in Mesoamerican cultures such as Aztec is it possible to find a direct causal link.  Aztecs needed prisoners to sacrifice on certain festivals and they appear to have gone to war to obtain them.[2]

While not advocating war there are examples in both Christianity and Islam of festival days when if a war is to be undertaken they are regarded as good days to fight.  For instance, St. James’s Day is considered auspicious in Spain. Grotius terms it, a day the Spaniards believed fortunate, and through their belief made it so.  Charles V conquered Tunis on that day.[3]  In Islam the 27th day of Ramadan is a particularly holy day for the Muslims as it is the “Night of Power,” when the first verses of the Koran were revealed to the Prophet Mohammed.  Al Qaeda’s aspiring martyrs appear to regard this as a particularly auspicious day to die.   After his victory at the Battle of Hastings, William the conqueror marched on London and received the city’s submission.  On Christmas Day, 1066, he took advantage of the festival to be crowned king of England.[4]

If anything religious festivals are more likely to be used by the enemies of a particular system rather than its advocates.  In Islam, Sunni terrorists often stage atrocities against Shi’ites during Ashura, a Shi’ite festival.  The IRA is remembered in the UK for its Christmas bombing campaigns.  Christian churches have been attacked in Sudan and Nigeria at Christmas and Easter by Islamic terrorists.  Israel was attacked on the Day of Atonement in 1973 by both Syria and Egypt, remembered today as the Yom Kippur war. This makes sense because in one blow such an attack insults your enemy’s beliefs, takes advantage of minimal security at a time when adherents want to be celebrating a festival.  From a terrorist point of view it is often a time when large numbers of people gather together making it both easier for a bomber to remain undiscovered whilst providing an opportunity for greater casualties.

Lastly there is plenty of evidence that religious festivals can have a dampening effect on conflict.  There are numerous historic tales of Christian wars ceasing over festival periods.  During the First World War much to the consternation of the Generals (particularly the French) British, German and French troops got together over Christmas in no man’s land, exchanged small presents and even played games of football.[5] Operation Desert Fox (16 – 19 Dec 1998) in which this author participated was timed not to interfere with Ramadan.  Syria tried to instigate a ceasefire during the Eid-al-Adha celebrations in Oct/Nov 2012.[6]

In conclusion, there is little evidence that Religious festivals per se encourage their followers to violence.  However, religions and belief systems are powerful tools which are therefore targets for manipulation.  There is evidence that festivals give the enemies of a particular faith group a target to fire at whilst within a faith group festivals tend to have a dampening effect on violence.

NOTES
[1] C. Tyerman, God’s War (Penguin books, 2007), pp. 58ff; also http://www.mag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/downloads/strack_urban.pdf.
[2] http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztecs/sacrifice.htm
[3]http://www.thebookofdays.com/months/july/25.htm
[4]http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-battle-of-hastings
[5]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4123107.stm
[6] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9636915/Syria-truce-unravels-on-first-day-with-Damascus-car-bomb.html

From Syria to Spain: Lessons from History?

by Tom Colley

Iche-guernica
Guernica
(by René Iché, 1937)

The philosopher Hegel famously stated: ‘We learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.’ Others counter that since we cannot yet predict the future, it is only to the past that we can look to seek answers to the strife that we confront today. To that end, many have tried to identify the variables that cause civil wars or the conditions best suited to ending them. Their opponents caution that every conflict is unique, and any attempts to compare or generalise are doomed to failure.

It is in the context of this discussion that one is left reflecting on the future of Syria after another year of civil war. With UN talks in January imminent, interested parties may be wondering what meaningful lessons, if any, can be derived from history to resolve the Syrian conflict. There is a cornucopia of current conflict with which Syria could be compared – instability in Libya and Egypt, Syria’s neighbours Iraq and Lebanon, or the Middle East more generally. But, looking further afield, it is the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) that provides a number of striking insights into the nature of strife in Syria.

One could be immediately forgiven for asking what comparison can be meaningfully drawn from a conflict that began over 75 years ago. The geopolitical situation of the Arab Spring and beyond bears little comparison to 1930’s Europe. In Syria, for example, the incumbent Assad government battles a disunited rebel insurgency; the Spanish Civil War saw the opposite, with a disunited incumbent Republican government facing Franco’s insurgency. Despite such obvious differences, the Spanish Civil War nevertheless yields a number of worthwhile lessons for the future of Syria.

The Spanish Civil War has been viewed as the culmination of conflict between old and new, between the forces of reaction and reform. Initially, reform defeated reaction, as first the Spanish monarchy and then a military dictatorship under Primo de Rivera yielded to new democratic government in 1931. Five years of seesawing between governments of left wing reform and right wing reaction led in 1936 to the breakdown of the Republican state and an attempted military coup led by the Spanish colonial forces, for whom Franco emerged as leader. Following three years of bloody war Franco’s forces prevailed, largely due to an immense disparity in the level of international support received by the two sides.

Parallels to the Arab Spring are noteworthy. Initial optimism for the installation of Spanish democracy in 1931 was followed by years of political turmoil, as the government struggled to reform the political system stuck between the forces of popular reform and reactionary elites wishing to maintain the status quo. Libya and Egypt at present look not dissimilar as early hopes of the Arab Spring fade.

Comparison with Syria is even more striking, most acutely in terms of the international dimension of the conflict. In the Spanish Civil War, Franco received vital military support from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany whereas dithering Britain and France, concerned above all to avoid another European war, failed to support the Republican government. In Syria, the same disparity is evident. Assad’s backing by Russia and Iran has contrasted with the lack of Western support for the Syrian rebels, concerned as they are to avoid another quagmire in the Middle East.

Both conflicts also share an interesting side effect of the disparity in international support: the extensive and high profile role of international fighters. This week’s Sky news feature on a British contingent fighting amongst Syrian rebel forces has put a human face on volunteers dismissed by the West as jihadist terrorists. The fighters strongly contest this narrative, explaining that their decision to fight is profoundly moral, based on the need to protect innocent Muslims from the Assad regime in the absence of action from the international community. The Spanish Civil War saw a similar and perhaps even more extensive influx of foreign fighters. These ‘international brigades’ came from all over the world, fought bravely and died in great numbers for the left wing Republican cause. In the face of the abject failure to intervene from great powers Britain and France, they felt they had to act. It was all too easy for Franco to label such fighters as supporters of communism, just as both Assad and the West have denounced the international fighters in Syria as terrorists. Thus in both conflicts, fear-inducing propaganda campaigns served to reinforce and legitimate Western reluctance to intervene.

So what lessons can be taken from the comparison of Spain and Syria? The most obvious is that given the unequal level of backing for the two sides in Syria, the Assad regime is the most likely victor. One-sided backing sped Franco to victory in a conflict that could have been far more prolonged. Secondly, if Assad does win, his regime will be further entrenched and, as with Franco’s Spain, repression and reprisal may well continue for decades thereafter.

Perhaps this final comparison is the most disconcerting. In failing to support the Republicans against Franco, Britain and France convinced Hitler that they would not oppose his expansionist agenda. Admittedly the West’s opponents today are vastly different. The cautionary tale though is that non-intervention is a sign of weakness that others may see as an opportunity to escalate their actions. Given the complexity of the Syrian war, intervention or even rebel support from the West is now extremely unlikely. So the West has made its bed, and collapsed into it in a state of exhaustion. As it was in Guernica, it is now in Homs. The Syrian people are still suffering, and may well continue to do so under an Assad dictatorship long after the conflict ends.  War is being ‘given a chance’. This may well end it sooner than intervention would have. But the West should note that, as with Spain, the political outcome is likely to be distasteful for years to come.

Charnel house, horses, art and conflict: Interview with Tom de Freston

Pablo de Orellana interviews artist Tom de Freston on nature of strife and conflict in his latest paintings on show at Breese Little Gallery.

I am at the Bresse Little Gallery, surrounded by twelve large canvases by the artist Tom de Freston. They are powerful political paintings which balance a staggering array of painterly approaches and iconography- horse headed figures, pot plants, nods to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, crucifixions and last judgements. Over the course of two hours of interview, we covered a breadth of subjects related to the paintings on show, which made me strikingly aware that these were not in any way didactic paintings, but rather images which open up a depth and range of dialogues. The transcript below is the edited version of this interview.

Tome de Freston - Danae
Danae
Tome de Freston

 Pablo de Orellana: Can you tell us why your latest show is called ‘The Charnel House’?

Tom de Freston: There were a few things I wanted the title to allude to. Historically, charnel houses were buildings near churches where the bones from grave digging could be stored. It has passed in to more common parlance to mean a place which houses death, and is often part of the vocabulary of horror fiction. More specifically it is a nod to the Picasso painting of the same title, which was made just after the end of WWII, in a mirror of the way Guernica was made in the build up to WWII. It is a painting which nods to the horrors of the holocaust, setting the fear and mutilation within a domestic setting. Picasso made the unimaginable scale of the suffering of the war and the holocaust specific to one family, which paradoxically and distressingly ups the level of pathos.

 The nod to Picasso is obviously overt in the work, most particularly the horses heads which are clearly borrowed from Guernica, which appear obsessively everywhere. Can you tell us more about these?

 In Guernica the horse is the central motif in a maelstrom of activity. The whole body breaks, opens up and collapses across and down the centre of the canvas, yet the head is the key, the head is this half mechanical, half animalistic scream. For me it is the most powerful single snapshot from any painting I know in regards to the horrors of war, even more visceral than anything Goya came up with. It is a scream of innocents, even more powerful than the child in the mothers arm to the left of the picture. As such it has, even in the paintings a clear metaphorical dimension. It is obviously a work which deals explicitly with the specifics of the events in Guernica on the 26th of April 1937, during the Spanish civil war. Yet it goes beyond this and talks about more universal themes. It is the power of that which drew me to lifting the motif and borrowing it from new ends.

Having said all that, I think it is important to distinguish the role of Guernica as a source from the broader iconography of horses in art history. When I think of horses I think of the long succession of ridiculous paintings of leaders parading on horses, glorified leaders into war, with the horse as a symbol of the state and the leader therefore as a figure in total command of his people. Velasquez (Prince Baltasar Carlos on Horseback 1635-36) and J. L.  David (Napoleon Crossing the Alps– 1800) are two of the most absurd examples. As such I think all the horse heads, to an extent, have echoes of this type of metaphorical content. The horse is not just a single motif, but a character, or perhaps more a whole case of horse headed characters.

Tome de Freston - Mother Wept
Mother Wept
Tome de Freston

 All of which seems to ignore the fact that we are not looking at horses, as with Picasso, but horse-headed people. Where does this anthropomorphic tendency come from and what is its function?

 Yes, quite. I wanted to create a central protagonist which was absolutely other, and then to build a world and a fragmented narrative around this character. The horse head provides an ideal model for this. The history of characters with animal heads and human bodies is obviously very rich and is present in mythologies from almost all cultures across the world. There are horse headed figures in various myths (Kinnara in some versions of the Indian myth and Tikbalang in Phillipine folklore), but they are not anything like as familiar as many other hybrid characters. This relative anonymity meant I could construct a mutated mythology around the horse-headed character.

 I want to come back later to what appears quite a literary approach, but despite being other these characters are explicitly human in many of their actions. They take baths, look after pot plants, live in houses and shit on the toilet. As to the latter, why is one of your characters having such a horrendous time in the loo?  

(Laughing) When put like that it sounds like I might be making adverts for diarrhoea or constipation relief. I’m not sure any marketing team would sanction this particular episode though. The figures on the loo are always slight nods to the Francis Bacon triptych of George Dyer on the loo, which depict the evening he committed suicide in 1971 in their Paris Hotel room. But I more broadly think of bathrooms as the most private of all domestic spaces, and the loo as the pinnacle of this. So any picture of someone on the loo feels like an invasion, a voyeuristic intrusion into someone’s life – in a way not to dissimilar to the Murdoch empires betrayal of privacy exposed by the Leveson enquiry. The figures on the loo tell us the viewer, the Tom peeping through the window, that this is a space we should not be entering.

Tome de Freston - Split
Split
Tome de Freston

Is this privacy apparent in all the paintings?

I am amazed that in Mother Wept people find the image of the man on the loo more disturbing than the image of a mother holding her screaming, perhaps dead, child. I think that says a lot about our engagement and exposure to images of grief and suffering. That said the man on the loo is distressing, clearly in the process of evacuating his bowels from two ends. I wanted to find a physical embodiment of an emotional torment, to make what was happening inside visual in the crudest of forms. It is not as if you actually see any crap or vomit, but the mere suggestion of its production seems to be enough to insight a reaction. But I am very conscious of not wanting to make work which is about sensation. Jake and Dinos Chapman do that brilliantly, as do many other artists of their generation, but it is not something I am so interested in pursuing. I am not nihilistic in that same way.

Spectacle is obviously present in some of the images of violence. I am thinking about the crucifixions scenes but also the paintings which nod to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib. Can you tell us about this political strife in the work (excuse the pun)?

I don’t want to make work which is Political with a capital “P”, and certainly have no interest in making didactic painting. But the paintings of waterboarding and the nod to the mistreatment of inmates in Abu Grabi obviously situates the work in that realm. With the waterboarding I was less interested in making a comment on the rights and wrongs of waterboarding (despite having clear personal views on this) and more interested in depicting the obvious suffering such an acts induces, regardless of whether marks are left or not. In ‘Split’ I did have the incidents at Abu Graib, involving people such as Lynndie England, in mind. But again, I was more broadly interested in depicting the type of things humans are capable of doing to each than making any explicit political comment about those incidents. ‘Pandora’ is a follow up to this, depicting what appears to be four conjoined figures emerging like a jack in a box out of the picture frame, a clear doubling of the couple conjoined in ‘Split’. I suppose my interest is less in a political agenda and more in dealing with the nature of the aesthetics of war, terror and violence in contemporary society and the manner in which we, the often detached viewer, engage in the spectacle of such images.

Tome de Freston - Pandora
Pandora
Tome de Freston

Tell us more about what you mean by this, in regards to the ‘spectacle of the images’.

 I suppose I have Guy Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’ in mind, which whilst a Marxist ramble, is incredibly eloquent in describing and foreseeing the relationship between modern media and our consumption of imagery. Debord spoke about the role 24-hour news coverage had on us, desensitising and anaesthetising us to footage of suffering, through repetitive exposure. That problem has only got worse- through the mass of imagery and coverage through social media, the internet as a news feed, and general developments in technology, media and communication. It is the paradox of being so connected to all this suffering and simultaneously enacting a detachment. I suppose I am interested in making paintings that explore this process.

Is this not just the kind of nihilistic tendency you said you were not interested in pursuing? 

 I don’t think so, because I am not interested in just mirroring this process back at the viewer, but rather engaging with this process to find relevant and effective ways to re-engage a viewer. It relates to my broader interest in a question of whether Tragedy as a dramatic convention has developed processes and a lexicon which works in contemporary culture. Which is all very wishy-washy so I will try and give examples. The paintings might initially appear to be comic: odd horses, lurid colours, silly visual puns and strange cute cat -dogs. But I want this comedy and the absurdity to disarm people, which is also what I want from the clash of stylistic approaches and the staging of the scenes. So that the comedy on the surface is a device to unlock the tragedy, as if it is a key to making the viewer feel empathy. I suppose ultimately, however ridiculous the horse headed figures are, however excessive or repetitive the actions are, eventually I want them to care for the character. So that the distancing that is enacted by the process of ‘othering’ the figure, by giving it a horse head, is eventually one of the devices which makes us think, this could just as easily be me, my family, my body, my home.

_____________________

Pablo de Orellana is the founder of Strife and editor as well as relentless art lover and sometime curator.

Tom de Freston is a painter based in Oxford, represented by Breese Little Gallery (London). In September 2012 Gatehouse Press published “House of the Deaf Man” a collection of drawings and paintings by Tom and poems by Andrea Porter in response to Goya’s time in “La Quinta del Sordo”. His work can be seen at www.tomdefreston.co.uk. He has previously contributed to Strife Journal with an analysis of painting and conflict read through Goya’s paintings which you can read on Strife Journal Issue I.

Tom de Freston: The Charnel House
Breese Little Gallery
30b Great Sutton Street
London, EC1V 0DU
more details here: http://www.breeselittle.com/#/future-tom-de-freston/4580133901
Online exhibition catalogue available here: http://issuu.com/breeselittle/docs/tom_de_freston_-_e.catalogue_-_bree?e=8048082/5574462

‘There is something of the propagandist in everyone’: A Syrian Perspective

As this week sees the 1,000th day of conflict in Syria pass, Muttahir Salim reflects on the role of propaganda in the conflict.

The Editor

***

‘There is something of the propagandist in everyone’: A Syrian Perspective

by Muttahir Salim

1457463017_6569822722_o

“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname
empire, and where they make a wilderness, they call it ‘peace.”
Tacitus

You know it and I know it, ‘there is something of the propagandist in everyone’.[1] Human nature is, and always will be, bound by a jaded and prejudiced view of the world. No matter how we try, and without the proper checks and balances in place,[2] propaganda will always form an exceptional instrument of choice for galvanizing favourable public opinion, particularly in times of conflict. Indeed the notorious and brutal Syrian civil war is an exact proponent of this notion.

As was once a notion wholly utilised by 19th century anarchists,[3] select modern scholars have now coined this activity as ‘Propaganda of the Deed (POTD)’. The idea of POTD as suggested in Bolt and Betz’ 2008 Whitehall report[4] is that it is a form of mass media political marketing with the aim of forming sympathetic patronage by way of the patron’s representative client.[5]

In 21st century conflicts, POTD has shown to be an incredibly effective instrument for galvanising and mobilising public opinion. What has been especially remarkable in this rather unforgiving Syrian Civil War has been the prolific and successful use of POTD from all sides of the conflict including established media outlets. Indeed the swift media reaction and western governments’ spin, hastening affirmative military action over the chemical weapons attack on Ghouta in August of this year, was especially remarkable.  Earlier claims relating to the use of chemical weapons declared Assad had crossed the ‘red line’ and claims of his irrefutable guilt, fed directly into a rapidly escalating western government media–blitzkrieg, mostly led by the US and the UK, for a ‘justifiable’ offensive on Syria.

While the UN has not yet established exact culpability, Syrian-allies Iran and Russia pointed the fingers at the rebels, and the US and its allies have blamed the Assad regime for the attack. Some could argue that the rebels had the motivation, the intent and plausible capability to gain the most from a POTD-related attack to mobilise favourable public opinion. However, uncertainty as to who carried out the Ghouta attacks remains.[6] What is sure though is that UN inspectors have confirmed that sarin gas was used on relatively large scale massacring hundreds of people. However, obtaining substantiated proof is fraught with difficulty, particularly when the issues of collection of verifiable hard evidence (i.e. chemical samples), human and image intelligence are complex and often gathered under ambiguous ever changing front lines.

According to UN reports, nearly 93,000 people have been killed, though current invalidated figures put the casualties much higher,[7] while millions have been driven from their homes due to the conflict. What began in March 2011 as an uprising against Bashar al-Assad that has now descended into a vicious civil war, where largely Sunni Muslim rebels are pitted against Assad’s forces (a Shi’ite Alawite). The onset of this is the potential to widen the conflict regionally (and to some degree it already has) and open up old cold war rivalries. Underneath the shadow of this forgotten Cold War contention,both sides have expertly utilised their patrons and have become connoisseurs in exploiting this rivalry to their distinct advantage.

As the civil war has gathered pace and both sides, the rebel forces in particular, have vied for international public opinion, it would seem that POTD ‘activity’ has become the mainstay tool of rebel fighters to correct deep-rooted grievances. By inference, when the resources of the protagonists differ significantly and there is no natural institutional outlet, POTD directive action looks at balancing the odds. Indeed, we know that the resources of the ‘belligerents’ differ significantly whilst both attempt to exploit each other’s weaknesses. The weaker of the two has attempted to use a strategy to offset deficiencies and given the lack of earlier unconvincing Superpower support (i.e. US Support) has arguably been left to the few ‘effective’ devices available to them, that being POTD.

There is still uncertainty as to which parties will be attending the UN-brokered Syrian conference scheduled for 22 January 2014 in Geneva, Switzerland.  However one thing is for sure: in the run up to the conference there will be an upsurge of propaganda activity. Indeed, we expect the representatives that do attend the conference will be actively looking to optimise their preliminary negotiating position by way of mobilising the masses with a view to boosting favourable international public opinion. This may sadly involve further terrorist actions aimed at gaining support through their preferred choice of media outlets. It would seem that the protagonists of POTD acknowledge and agree that in ‘today’s fast changing political landscape where social and political agendas are being interpreted and shaped by global media’[8] it has become the latest vogue that which its protagonists expect rapid response times.

We would not want to overstep the mark here in terms of advocating responsibility of the use of such horrific weapons as there is yet no substantiated evidence to the fact. However, POTD would seem to be an effective asymmetric weapon of choice for the weaker of the two and the moral boundaries in which POTD is being used may have become inauspiciously blurred.

______________

Muttahir Salim is an MA postgraduate student (War in the Modern World) at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is currently the Middle East lead for Arup’s Resilience, Security and Risk practice based out of Abu Dhabi.

___________________
NOTES

[1] Eugen Hadamovsky (1933), Propaganda und nationale Macht: Die Organisation der öffentlichen, Meinung für die nationale Politik (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling).
[2] http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Anarchism_and_violence.html
[3] Neville Bolt, David Betz & Jaz Azari (2008),  Propaganda of the Deed 2008 Understanding the Phenomenon, Whitehall report 3-08, pp. 2, (The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies)
[4] Ibid. pp. 2
[5] ‘United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic Report on the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area of Damascus on 21 August 2013’
[6] UN Report – http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45162 (accessed  on 27 November 2013,-13:17hrs)
[7] Neville Bolt, David Betz & Jaz Azari (2008),  Propaganda, pp. 1.