Ballot Boxes Not Barrels of Gun to Determine People’s Fate | ||
By KianushKiakajuri
Three years after the start of the Syrian civil war, the so-called opposition is entangled in an infighting skirmish. The opponents of Syrian people and government have tried to depict theSyrian National Council (SNC) and National Coalition as representatives of the people. As a matter of fact some sections of the abovementioned groups represent a very tiny chunk of the population. At the same time, the takfiri and extremist groups that are fighting the Syrian people and government are not all Syrian nationals. They are hired by some Arab and Western countries and dispatched to Syria from different parts of the world. The Syrian government has provided hundreds of identity cards and passports of these mercenaries to international organizations. The so-called opposition groups have not only lost the grounds but also engaged in internal fight and skirmishes just like extremist groups. Under the influence of foreign powers, they have not been able even to set their agenda nor do they have a determined strategy on the ground, or taken decisions on critically important issues. Seemingly they receive orders from outside. They remain based in exile and lack an organizational base inside Syria because of lack of popularity. The disarray in the leadership has paralyzed them. They have not been able to establish a link with the masses inside Syria. Their relations with the terrorists and extremists vary pertaining to their short-term goals. There is no hope for them to establish a successful model of organization throughout the country. The hope of some Arab countries and United States were dashed to ground when the appointee of the National Coalition, a U.S.-based information technology expert, GhassanHitto, who was appointed on March 18, 2013 to head a provisional governmentlocated primarily in occupied areas of Syria failed to render the prescribed services. The coalition, which announced the provisional government under severe pressure from its Arab backers to do so went to great lengthsto stress its “technocratic” nature. The ten candidates competing for the post of prime minister had lived in exile for many years, almost as many had been engaged in nonpolitical white-collar professions until the 2011 civil war, and the government’s central task was defined narrowly as overseeing services in terrorists-occupied areas. The National Coalition thus created more problems and complicated the process of reconciliation if any. The vista is not open-ended. The predominant trend today is competition toward greater fragmentation,sectarian polarization, and routinization of violence. The provisional governmentdoes not exist. The onus is on the popular government of Bashar al-Assad to clear the occupied places from extremists and terrorist. Extremism is moving towards fragmenting into rival armed cantons and thedeeper terrorist transformation while the Syrian army has an upper hand and is liberating the occupied places one after another. The opponents of President Bashar al-Assad lack a ready pool of experienced members able to carry out the orders of their Arab and Western masters.The terrorist and extremist groups have no social base at all. As a result, the coalition of disparate oppositiongroups, independent figures, and those who formed the SNC in October 2011 could not gain traction on the ground, pushing it into a reactive stance from the outset. The SNC took up whatever positions seemed to have popular support among demonstrators inside Syria and was not in position to provide political leadership.The SNC failed repeatedly over the next year to anticipate development son the ground in Syria as well as in the diplomatic domain, let alone influence their direction, because it received orders from somewhere else. It moreover struggled to assert its authority over the constantly proliferating extremist and terrorist brigades, battalions,and military councils that emerged as the war against the legitimate national government gained momentum in the course of 2012. Expecting the SNC to provideeffective and unified leadership to extremist groups engaged in a civil war against a legitimate government is quite irrational. Hence, scrambling toshore up its standing, the SNC focused on securing external recognition ofits status as the principal opposition framework. At the same time, it tried to secure the flows of funding and weapons that could bolster its status among all opponents. This was the SNC’s method of choice to demonstrate its relevance to the war-stricken people inside Syria. But the warmongers were supported by the SNC and the Syrian people are quite aware of this fact. Hence, it was lashing a dead horse. But the more dependent it became on external support, the less capable the SNC was of developing effective leadership. The so-called Friends of Syria group of Nationsand organizations—including most members of the ArabLeague, the United States, the European Union, and Turkey—recognized the SNC as the principal opposition framework on April 1, 2012. Only eight months later, the so-called Friends of Syria transferred recognition to the so-called National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, anointing it the “sole legitimate representative of the Syrianpeople” on December 12. Meantime none of the members of the Coalition dare to go to Syria. At the end of January 2013 al-Khatib proposed a dialogue with the Syrian government withoutmaking the departure of Bashar al-Assad a precondition. His suggestion was welcomed for “restoring the word ‘politics’ tocirculation” and for “filling a gap, opening the way for the first time since thestart of the civil-war for a dynamic approach based on dialogue. The SNC, conversely, castigated al-Khatib for taking unilateral steps that contradicted the coalition’s founding principles without consulting its decision making bodies and warned him that further unauthorized acts and statements would deepen the internal “schism.” For good measure, it describeda meeting he held with the foreign minister of Iran as “stabbing the Syrian revolution and its martyrs.” Al-Khatib’s “restoration of politics” was probably a case of too little, too lateto transform the political fortunes of the National Coalition, which appearsmired in much the same way as the SNC before it, and for much the samereasons. The exile-based frameworks have been active in rhetoric, but their claim to provide the insurgents with political leadership is a mere illusion. Syrians have to rely on themselves to determine their future destiny. Ballot boxes in the future will have the final say in their fate. By KianushKiakajuri is a PhD student. | ||
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