Death from above?
Doubts about the military college massacre 

Amid an unprecedented state of disillusionment and anger in Syria, manifested most vividly by the Suwayda protests and growing restlessness in the regime’s heartlands, a devastating attack in Homs has reminded regime loyalists that their side remains at war. On 5 October, at a graduation ceremony for military college cadets, explosions left 129 people dead and 250 injured, including many women and children. According to official sources, the cause was a suicide drone attack. As soon as news of the incident circulated, Syrians smelled a rat. It wasn’t only the usual talking heads of pro-opposition TV punditry that cast doubt over the official story, but loyalists too, some airing their suspicions on YouTube. 

Syria is not short of conspiracy theories. Without hard evidence (and there hardly ever is with incidents like this) firm conclusions are best avoided. But when the case involves the Assad regime, with all that is known about how it operates and what it is capable of, it is worth hearing out the sceptics. The first thing they ask is why the defence minister and the Homs governor and other senior invitees leave the ceremony 40 minutes before the attack? And why were Russian and Iranian officials who usually attend such ceremonies conspicuously absent? They also question why the cadets and their families were kept at the parade ground a full 40 minutes after the dignitaries had left. They query the sound of gunfire in one of the earliest videos of the attack to emerge, suggesting ground attack rather than drone strike. They also question why the ceremony was brought forward a month when the traditional date was 5 November. Of course, the sound of gunfire could have been soldiers firing at the drones, and the dignitaries leaving early a case of routine security precaution; and the last-minute date change a purely bureaucratic affair. There are always simple explanations.   

But are there? The reasons for doubting the official account on this occasion are many and varied. In addition to questions about the all-too-convenient timing, political as well as circumstantial, there is the question of who knew what and when. Days before the attack, state-run media reported statements by the deputy head of the Russian Reconciliation Centre for Syria, Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit, warning that terrorists in Idlib, Aleppo, and Latakia were preparing attacks on Syrian and Russian military sites, and naming the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) as the main culprit. The TIP is a militant Uighur Chinese Muslim group that Assad and Russia often use to bait the Chinese government into contributing more to their war effort. Clearly, Russia had prior knowledge of an attack, so why were precautionary security measures not stepped up? An open-air ceremony attended by senior military and Ba’ath Party figures carries much prestige; and the military college is located within a very important “security square” in Homs surrounded by several important military bases and installations. Since the drones were large enough to cause mass casualties, it seems odd that no Russian or Syrian radar tracked them, and that no interception attempts were made, including by the much-vaunted S-400 air defence system. The following day the Ministry of Defence issued a statement claiming it had foiled a second “terrorist attack" involving  drones, aimed at the Homs Military Hospital, and that all the drones had been  downed. The lack of effective defence one day, and a full score sheet the next, raises eyebrows. Alternatively, what happened on 5 October could just be the result of sheer incompetence. It has been known. 

What could have laid to rest any doubts about the official account was video footage clearly showing the drones slamming into the crowd. But despite the presence of hundreds on that day, many with smartphones filming the ceremony, the few pictures and video posted  online do not shed any useful light on how the attack occurred and – crucially – do not provide  information on the drones’ origins. Surely if the regime had been confident of its drones-from-Idlib story, and wanted to elicit international sympathy, it would have had no compunction about airing as much footage as possible, or at least would have showed the world drone fragments. Instead, the mukhabarat instructed all survivors not to share any footage taken that day, under threat of prosecution. 

Damascus has yet to issue any detailed statement on who exactly was responsible. Within an hour of the attack, dozens of towns in Idlib were nevertheless shelled mercilessly – despite the frontline with the rebel-held province being 130 kms from the military college. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is known to use improvised drones but only with a maximum range of 30 kms and a limited payload. It seems improbable that it could have carried out such a devastating and highly accurate strike against a heavily defended security zone. As usual, there was no official investigation and no public firings, and the regime appeared keen to bury the dead, mourn for three days, and move on. Certainly, a hardening of resolve among loyalists at this time is convenient for Assad, as is a casus belli to further reduce the Idlib pocket. 

The truth may never be firmly established, and the incident will likely enter the pantheon of Syria's great murder mysteries, alongside the 2005 “suicide” of interior minister Ghazi Kan’an, the 2012 crisis cell bombing and the 2014 killing of Ahrar al-Sham’s leadership. For now, in the words of poet Wallace Stevens, “perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake.”