With the US and Russia being in agreement on the need to hold a Geneva Conference on Syria, there is now increased impetus to the idea of a resolution to the Syrian crisis, which may yet lead to on-the-ground consequences for the warring parties. It will not be long before the process between Moscow and Washington will lead to extensive discussions between all parties in the conflict, including not only the revolutionaries and their supporters, but the Syrian authorities. This latter group may be obliged to consider the scale of concessions they would be willing to grant to the representatives of the Syrian people in an effort to reach some form of conciliation. While the revolutionaries and the opposition may seek ways of moving from an authoritarian state to a pluralist, democratic state, previous experience suggests that the regime will attempt to hold on to its privileges and advantages. Specifically, the regime will aim to ensure that the Presidency is not a matter for discussion, and that it can maintain power over state institutions and their source of strength.
Domestic Efforts
The regime has used violence to quell peaceful protests from the outset of the Syrian revolution, when protestors' demands were limited to "reform" and "freedom". It continued to view the Revolution as a sort of conspiracy and an expression of sectarian strife, and it openly declared these views. It refused to acknowledge that the Syrian revolution even existed, nor was it willing to accept that the revolution could be seen as a symptom of an internal crisis on the part of the regime. In her first statement made after the beginning of the revolution, Buthaina Shaaban, an advisor to Bashar al-Assad, pronounced the rebellion to be an example of "sectarian strife aimed at straining the diversity of Syria". When Bashar al-Assad personally addressed the people of Deraa, he requested that they "cooperate" with the authorities in order to "bring [sectarian strife] to an end". Throughout this time, the Syrian authorities' narrative has remained unchanged.
Flatly denying that problems afflicting Syria existed, or that there was a crisis of governance, the regime's interpretation of the revolution was to portray it exclusively as a foreign conspiracy, involving a group of fundamentalist zealots and terrorists. Thus the problem could be left to the military and security apparatus to quash. The "reform measures" carried out by the regime with typical panache reflected the same attitude: the Emergency Law was replaced with a "Terrorism Law," which only made matters worse; in addition, constitutional amendments took away some of the ruling Baath Party's powers, only to hand them over to the Presidency. The President himself was allowed to run for an additional two terms in offices, and even held parliamentary elections at a time when half of the Syrian population was not under his rule. In order to be acknowledged as legitimate, any "opposition" forces would be obliged to engage in a dialogue with the regime "under the auspices of the state," or in other words, according to the regime's own rules.
Given the rationale displayed by the regime, in accordance with the practical steps it takes, a majority of the Syrian opposition as well as other observers consider it unlikely that the regime will arrive at a dialogue-based conciliation leading to democracy and the liberation of the Syrian people. Indeed, only a few short months into the rebellion, and following intensive discussions between Syrian intellectuals and the opposition on the prospects of a negotiated solution, revolutionaries on the ground had concluded that the people of Syria could rely only on themselves to create change.
National Dialogue: Two Points of View
Within the Syrian revolution itself, two distinct ideas have taken shape concerning the paths which should be taken to put Syria on the path to democratization following a period of repressive rule. The first point of view was shaped by the leaders, grassroots activists and intellectuals who came to prominence in the popular struggle against the regime, including groups such as the Damascus Declaration, the Muslim Brotherhood in addition to independent intellectuals and artists. According to this first point of view, dialogue with a regime which did not hesitate to use tanks to suppress peaceful protests would be futile. They also believed that the regime was structurally "quasi-totalitarian," and not amenable to reform.
A second group was eager to find a "middle ground" with the regime, based on reconciliation and dialogue. To further this aim, they helped to establish the National Coordination Committee for the Forces of Democratic Change (NCC) at the end of June, 2011. This second approach was adopted by the "traditional opposition," most notably those forces which remained within the National Democratic Congress after the People's Party and other groups had departed. Yet the nucleus of the NCC was clearly made up of the Arab Socialist Union Democratic Party (ASU). While the ranks of the ASU had numbered in the tens of thousands during the 1960s, a combination of repression and waning enthusiasm within its structures and chains of command has left the ASU with only several hundred members today. Further proponents of the second position included individual leftist and liberal figureheads who have risen to prominence over the past decade, and whose attempts to hold "Civil Congresses" at the beginning of Bashar al-Assad's rule were quashed. Also within the NCC were a number of independent figures and groupings within the Left, such as the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (KDU), the Syrian wing of the PKK. This same group had used violence against Kurdish revolutionaries in Aleppo and Afrin. In fact, the regime had earlier handed over control of unruly Kurdish areas to the KDU.
Additionally, the ASU's leadership failed entirely to take part in the revolution. While a majority of the party's grassroots base involved themselves in the revolt against Assad, the ASU's leadership was faced with a rebellion within its own ranks, and in April, 2012 reaffirmed a previous statement issued on January 25, 2012, that it was withdrawing from the NCC. Besides denouncing the NCC's overall strategy, the ASU leadership's statement maintained that "Every member of the [ASU] Party who works with the [NCC] does so in a personal capacity".[1]
The NCC had first declared its willingness to enter into a dialogue with the regime, aimed at resolving Syria's political crisis, at a conference which the group convened in the town of Halaboun in the environs of Damascus in September, 2011. The conditions which the NCC placed on negotiating with the regime included the following: the release of political detainees, the withdrawal of military and security forces from the towns and streets of Syria, the guarantee of the right to peaceful protest, and the annulment of Article 8 of Syria's constitution, as a prelude to moving from a single-party state to a pluralist, democratic system of government.
The members of the NCC remained hopeful that such an approach would be sufficient to ensure democratization, and to spare the country any calamities, provided that the authorities were sincere in their willingness to engage. Sources within the NCC had indicated that allowing Bashar al-Assad's continuation as president was a moot point in an agreement allowing for a meaningful democratic transition. In an interview, Hassan Abdulazeem claimed "the NCC does not fall into that part of the opposition which demands that Assad not be included in any future resolution".[2] A further, similar meeting was convened by a group of Syrian intellectuals at the Semiramis Hotel in Damascus on June 27, 2011. They used that platform to demand an end to the regime's "security approach" to the revolution, and for an alternative, democratic future for Syria, based on dialogue.
Not to be outdone, the Syrian regime convened a "National Dialogue" meeting of its own, without consulting the opposition. Chaired by Vice President Farouk al-Share, the Conference of Comprehensive National Dialogue included a number of intellectuals and artists loyal to the regime and who came from the National Progressive Front (the coalition which nominally rules alongside the Baath Party). Held on July 10 and 11, 2011, this single event was never followed up.
While none of the meetings described above bore political fruit, they nonetheless allowed for the variety of points of view within the opposition, which contains a wide political diversity, to come to the fore. In addition to the reform-driven actions of the "traditional opposition," a number of new formations took shape within the popular activities of the revolution. Bringing in both new and well-established political forces, these include both the on-the-ground revolutionary leadership (the Local Coordination Committees, the General Command of the Syrian Revolution, and the Supreme Council for the Leadership of the Syrian Revolution) as well as dissidents whom the regime had earlier forced into exile. Holding its own conferences in Antakya (Antioch), Turkey and Brussels, these groups helped to establish the Syrian National Council.
In addition to their belief that the regime has yet to propose a genuine, realistic agenda of dialogue as it continues to use violence to deal with Syria's national crisis; opposition groups that helped form the Syrian National Council consider the regime to be structurally antithetical to democracy. They argue that there exists a structural impediment within the regime which makes an internal transition to a democratic, pluralist state impossible. They also point out that the Syrian regime had openly declared its non-recognition of the revolution, and that it refused to acknowledge the opposition, responding to the rebellion exclusively through the use of force. They believe that the statements by the regime that it would abide by Arab League and other international efforts to end the conflict in Syria were purely a ruse to buy time.
At the end of the day, the representatives of the Syrian people simply do not consider themselves able to sit at the same table as a President who had killed nearly 100,000 of their own. The opposition groups that shaped the Syrian National Council further believe that the state must be liberated from the institutions of repression before Syria can mature from an authoritarian state to a democracy: the transition to democracy is not merely a question of laws or rights, but is also a fundamentally a question of practice. Unless the balance tips clearly in the people's favor-which could be signaled by concrete indications that the regime is collapsing and its self-confidence depleting, or for example by an announcement that Assad will either resign or guarantee not to extend his term-the opposition forces will not be able to secure the people's demands through dialogue.
The main obstacle to any reconciliation remains the regime's refusal to countenance any resolution which does not keep its structures of power in place. Commenting on this situation, an opposition leader stated that the solution lies in "disengaging the regime from the [Assad] family. Once that is completed, we can begin determining the conditions for a peaceful transition to a civil, democratic state. It will also be possible for people within the regime to take part in such a process at that juncture, provided that their hands are not stained with blood, nor tainted with ill-gotten gains".[3]
In addition to the above two groups-those who refuse to enter into dialogue with the regime and those who are willing to consider it-there is a third bloc of actors within Syrian society which, burdened as it is by the horrifying crisis presently gripping their country, has become more amenable to the prospects of a negotiated settlement. This they would do for the sake of bringing bloodshed, death and destruction to an end. Moaz al-Khatib, who resigned from his post as President of the Syrian National Coalition, arguably provides the clearest embodiment of this reasonable humanitarian attitude.
The Geneva Conference will provide the opportunity to bring all of these divergent opinions into sharp relief. In the event that it is actually held, the Geneva Conference will test the differing attitudes towards dialogue with the regime amongst members of the Syrian opposition. This it will do by revealing the regime's views on the questions to be discussed in the conference, and its sincerity in bringing the crisis to an end. After so much blood has been spilt, however, very few remain to be convinced that a regime which has worked to kill off all previous attempts at dialogue could conceivably bring forward anything but futile words.
[1] Statement of the Central Committee of the ASU, April 15, 2012, "Writers for Freedom" website:
http://www.iwffo.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52864&Itemid=11.
[2] "Hassan Abdulazeem: ‘We cannot control whether or not Assad stays; we are not demanding his ouster,'" quoted in Kuwait's Al Rai daily and on the "All for Syria" website, May 13, 2013:
http://all4syria.info/Archive/81932.
[3] See Mohammed Ali Attasi, "An Interview with Prominent Syrian Dissident Riyadh El Turk, July 27, 2011 (Arabic): http://syriafirstofall.blogspot.com/2011/07/blog-post_29.html.
