The West must not look away from what’s happening in Syria

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has many talents. But his understanding of Middle Eastern politics leaves much to be desired. Last month he welcomed Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on to the podcast he hosts with the former Conservative minister Rory Stewart. Reflecting on the encounter afterwards in a newspaper column, Campbell was anxious to give the ‘gently smiling President’ the benefit of the doubt. He was ‘definitely saying a lot of the right things’. There was, Campbell acknowledged – ‘one big blot on the Syrian landscape’ – the ubiquity of men smoking. But otherwise everything seemed in order. It was the case, he said, that ‘virtually everyone you meet says that they feel happier than they did under [Bashar al] Assad’. 

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Today, perhaps, not so much. Last week, al-Sharaa’s jihadist supporters unleashed a two-day killing spree in western Syria. They torched houses and filmed themselves moving from home to home, hunting for victims. As Paul Wood reports in the magazine, hundreds of innocents from the minority Alawite community were slaughtered. The man most likely to be responsible for ordering the massacre, Abu Amsha, was an ally of al-Sharaa and was with the new Syrian leader when he proclaimed victory in Damascus last year. Abu Amsha was not simply there to bask in the warmth of the leader’s gentle smile. He was rewarded with the post of brigadier-general in the new Syrian army. 

The al-Sharaa regime proclaims, officially, that it will investigate the killings and points to fighting from Alawites loyal to Assad as a destabilising factor. But the killing of the Alawites is not the only cause for concern in Syria.