Syrian opposition meet in Cairo
July 4, 2012 by sks
Filed under Reports, Syrian Revolution
4 July 2012: Brawl mars Syrian opposition meet
A meeting of Syria’s splintered opposition in Cairo descended into scuffles and fistfights on Tuesday that dealt another blow to Western efforts to produce a unified front against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The meeting also failed to resolve many of the differences between the rival Syrian opposition groups, further complicating efforts to find a viable alternative to rule by Assad, whose forces have killed thousands of Syrian civilians and combatants.
“This is so sad. It will have a bad implications for all parties. It will make the Syrian opposition look bad and demoralize the protesters on the ground,” opposition activist Gawad al-Khatib, 27, said.
A Syrian Kurdish group quit the meeting, provoking mayhem and cries of “scandal, scandal” from delegates. Women wept as men traded blows, and staff of the hotel used for the meeting hurriedly removed tables and chairs as the scuffles spread.
“We will not return to the conference and that is our final line. We are a people as we have language and religion and that is what defines a people,” said Morshed Mashouk, a leading member of the Kurdish group which walked out.
“The Kurds withdrew because the conference rejected an item that says the Kurdish people must be recognized,” said Abdel Aziz Othman of the National Kurdish Council. “This is unfair and we will no longer accept to be marginalized.”
The outburst lasted only a few minutes, and some said it had been stage managed to get the Kurds on television.
When one Kurd screamed, “Nothing has changed, we need to be listened to” as he walked out of the conference room, in front of cameras, a young activist followed him shouting: “This is a faked withdrawal seeking to make the conference fail.”
Sixteen months into an uprising against Assad, the failure to rally Syria’s disparate religious and ethnic groups behind a united leadership will make it more difficult to secure international recognition.
An official from the meeting’s host, the Arab League, who attended the closed meetings, said of the opposition group: “They are so different, chaotic and hate each other.”
A final statement read by Syrian opposition leader Kamal Al-Labuany, said:
“All the attendees of the conference agreed that the political solution has to start by the fall of the regime represented in Bashar Assad and the icons of his power and calls for an immediate halt of violence committed by the Syrian regime.”
Reading from a one-page statement, he said the opposition groups agreed on the “importance of preserving civil peace and national unity”.
But at times that spirit of “national unity” was hard to detect, in the Kurd walkout and in the sparring over how best to create a unified front against Assad.
Opposition leader Haitham al-Manna of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change (NCB) told Reuters that one of the points of disagreement was over authorities to be granted to a committee to act as a face of the opposition.
A draft document, put together by a 16-person preparatory committee, had called for setting up a follow-up committee to coordinate all the opposition parties and to execute the contents of documents agreed at the talks.
“The Syrian National Council (Syria’s main opposition group) has rejected that this committee act as a leader, which shows its interest to remain the sole leader of the opposition,” Manna said.
A senior leader of the SNC told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the council had rejected granting any leadership powers to such a committee and wanted it to act solely as a coordinator.
However, the divided opposition did discuss in broad terms what their nation should look like after Assad.
One of those principles was to have a new Syria governed as a “republican, democratic, civilian, pluralistic system”.
This covenant also referred to social justice in the economy with redistributive taxation policies, while providing investment security and an economic system that would prevent monopolies.
A document on how to handle the transition from Assad’s rule said his Baath party would be dissolved but everyone – provided they did not have “hands stained with blood” – would be allowed to help steer the country.
It also said a meeting should be held in Damascus to create a temporary legislative body and an interim government during the transition. It outlined actions to reform the army and to form a committee to investigate crimes against the Syrian people, such as massacres and political detentions.
Assad has held on far longer than other Arab leaders who faced popular uprisings, in part due to his willingness to use overwhelming force but also because of divisions among his population, the opposition and the international community.
Russia, Syria’s longtime ally, opposes tough UN action proposed by Western powers. The United States and European powers have themselves shown no appetite for military intervention of the kind they used in Libya.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
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Syrian groups come to blows while seeking peace
Syrian government forces are killing demonstrators at the rate of 50 to as many as a 150 a day, but Syrian opposition leaders in exile and in Syria still cannot unite around the common goal of how to topple a brutal dictator.
Dahowd opposed an armed revolt and international military intervention.
“If any military attack happens, it will destroy the social contract and the state, not the regime,” he said. “It will destroy the social infrastructure and peace within society.”
He argued that militarizing the revolution has given Assad “an excuse to enforce real power with atrocities.”
“The regime can succeed in the field of war. It knows how to use force. We say that in politics, they will lose,” he contended.
Dahowd was not alone.
“(Special UN Envoy) Kofi Annan’s six-point plan and Geneva transition plan must be supported internationally by the United Nations Security Council to stop the killing,” said Sinam Mohamed, female president of the People’s Council for Kurds in West Kurdistan. “If we support the revolution with weapons, it will lead to civil war between the Alawis and Sunnis. It is already starting in and around Homs.”
Mohamed also called for equal rights for Kurds who are not recognized as a separate ethnic group with a distinct language.
“If we support weapons, we will have a war; Syria as a country will be finished,” she said. “We don’t want to have what happened in Libya. War always ends in dialogue.”
Why not have dialogue now, Mohamed contended.
Others held just as fervently to armed rebellion.
“I am sure Al Assad will leave by demonstrations in the streets and the Free Syrian Army (FSA),” said George Sabra, spokesman for the most widely recognized opposition group, the Syrian National Council (SNC). The FSA is made of defected Syrian soldiers and civilians who are fighting the regime with arms captured from raids and attacks or supplied from other countries in the region. He said he is optimistic about the FSA’s progress and claims they now control 60 percent of the country.
“They are making battle in the capital. It is a war between the Free Syrian Army and the government,” Sabra said.
“The difference between the SNC and other opposition groups is that we strongly support the FSA and are looking to supply them with weapons and other kinds of support. It’s a real war,” said Sabra, who spent eight years in prison and was tortured along with his son.
Mustafa Zakwan, director of the “I Love My Country Group,” said force is the only option:
“The issue facing the opposition is clear. Syrian support is fragmented. Each region has a different opinion of how to move forward. This meeting is a useless waste of time. How do they expect that they could possibly come up with a solution in two hours when everyone disagrees. The only thing that anyone can agree on is opposition to Kofi Annan’s entirely ineffective plan. Assad will not work with Annan, it is totally unrealistic. There cannot be a solution that comes from the outside. It must come from Syria, from our country. Syrians have to rely on force. It is the only way. The international community is afraid of Syrian rebels but they do not respect them. They are not engaged with them the way they need to be, with the real people on the ground.”
Activist Bashar Kattab has lived outside of Syria for the past 20 years and supported removing Assad by force.
“Hope for a peaceful solution is lost,” Kattab said. “As long as Al Assad doesn’t believe in peace, neither can the protesters.”
Opposition groups are vehemently at odds about whether they should unite at all. Many find it undemocratic that one voice would represent so many diverse interest groups. The Syrian National Congress purports to represent the opposition and is largely regarded as such by the international community and the media despite objections by other activists.
“The SNC … wants to dominate power,” Dahowd said. “They are not democratic. We can’t go forward with that policy. The SNC is based on the Libyan model. It won’t apply to Syria because there are 26 different groups in Syria.”
Dahowd and many others said the SNC is dominated by fundamentalist Sunni ideology and will seek to impose its will on other social groups. Syria, with its large Shiite, Kurdish and Christian minorities, is a much more complex society than mainly Sunni Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. They were able to unite across the fault lines of religion, ideology, tribe, party and gender to unseat their respective dictators. It was only afterward, on the long and messy path to democracy, that discord emerged between factions seeking their own interests rather than the greater national good.
In Syria, the fault lines continue to impede a solution that can be embraced by all parties. After two days of rancorous talks, the final statement reflected a fractured opposition; it simply called for a halt to violence, the fall of Assad’s regime, support of the Free Syrian Army and the protection of civilians.
Participants disagreed about who would represent the opposition and the need for foreign military intervention.
The most powerful opposition group, the Free Syrian Army, boycotted the meeting altogether, saying in a statement “We refuse all kinds of dialogue and negotiations with the killer gangs…,” essentially undermining the meaning of any consensus.
Charlene Gubash is NBC News’ producer in Cairo. NBC News’ Joanna de Boer also contributed to this article.
By NBC’s Charlene Gubash
