Assad's playing America for a fool: His regime is just as bad as ISIS

On a moral level, the regime’s crimes are just as bad as jihadis’. The difference is that they are not bragged about on video or in pictures like ISIS’ crimes. However, torture videos are leaked by the regime to purposely spread fear locally. There is ample evidence of Assad’s crimes against humanity since 2011. Snipers, who were placed on rooftops, were ordered to target childrens’ eyes and heads. Protests broke out in Daraa as a result of detention and torture of fifteen children who wrote freedom chants inspired by events in Egypt on their school walls.  Atef Najib, political secutiy chief of the city and Assad’s cousin, took pleasure in hearing the screams of children tortured during their arrest; their fingernails were pulled out and their bodies and faces were burnt with cigarettes.

According to the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), by June 2011 more than seventy children were killed in demonstrations and under torture. On May 25th 2011, the corpse of Hamza al-Khateeb, a 13 year-old from Daraa, was sent to his family after being tortured to death by electric shock devices; his genitals were cut off, his bones and neck were broken, and cigarette burns covered his body. Ibrahim Qashoush, a poet from Hama who mocked Assad and the Baath Party in his songs and led huge protests, was found dead in July 2011 in the Orontes river with his vocal cords ripped out. In September 2011, Ghiath Matar, a symbol of peaceful resistance who led a campaign that gave roses to soldiers in his town of Daraya, was killed by security forces and his body was also sent to his family with severe torture scars.

A Syrian defector known as “Caesar” leaked images that are merely a small sample of what goes on inside of Assad’s prisoners and torture camps. Testifying before Congress last July, Caesar said that there are 150,000 civilians in custody in Assad’s prisons. Assad also continues to gas his own people even after the major Ghouta chemical attack in August 2013 that killed nearly 1,800 civilians and left 3,600 injured. Around twenty-five to thirty chemical attacks have been reported since.