Standing ‘bare hands’ against the Syrian regime: the turn to armed resistance and the question of civilian protection

Perhaps the most serious ethical challenge to pacifism is the argu- ment for the necessity of military action to protect civilians from violence. Whether articulated by IR scholars or armed rebels, such argumentation depends upon largely uninvestigated notions about the efficacy of violence as a tool for protection. This paper takes on this presumed link between violence and protection by examining the case of Syria, where this argument has had particular salience, and whether the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in 2011, a few months into the violent repression of anti-government pro- tests, did in fact serve to protect civilians as intended. This case points to an often overlooked distinction between the refusal of soldiers to fire on unarmed activists and the subsequent decision of these soldiers to turn their arms back on the regime to ‘protect’ unarmed activists—two courses of action that can have radically different effects on conflict dynamics involving a nonviolent move- ment. Through analysis of casualty figures, military/security force behaviour, and regime discourse, the article finds, counter-intui- tively, that the arming of the opposition did not ultimately protect civilians and may have actually made them more vulnerable than they were when the protest movement remained primary nonviolent.