Syria Conflict
January 16, 2012
As about-faces go, this one was fairly embarrassing. Hardly had the two main Syrian opposition groups - the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the National Coordination Body (NCB) - agreed last week not to call for external military intervention, than SNC head Burhan Ghalioun was forced to yield to members of his own organization and renounce the deal.
"The paper has been cancelled after pressure from members of the council. Some threatened to resign," SNC member Khaled Kamal told Reuters news agency. "Ghalioun signed it without the knowledge of council members, so after consultation he withdrew his signature."
The SNC promptly held talks with the Syrian Free Army, thus far a relatively ragtag collection of military deserters. On Monday, the SNC issued a statement saying the two groups would be coordinating activities, the aim being "to strengthen the capacity of the SFA against regime forces and to protect civilian regions which the regime wants to raid or pillage."
The confusion, experts say, stems largely from the fact that the NCB represents Syrians living inside the country and therefore logically must err on the side of caution while the mostly expatriate SNC can afford to be more adventuresome.
"The problem is that the SNC is influenced by people who live outside Syria and have different interests and a different agenda," Mohamed Rahim, a Syria expert at Munich University's Institute for the Near and Middle East, told Deutsche Welle. "It's difficult to get a consensus of opinion because people simply have different goals, depending on which country they're speaking from."
Rahim added the personal interests of opposition figures and groups also played a role.
"People know that it's only a question time until the Assad regime ceases to exist," Rahim said. "People want to establish a profile now, rather getting involved late in the game. People want to position themselves to play a role in Syria in the future, and that makes it difficult to agree on a common position to present to the rest of the world."
But even if the Syrian opposition does manage to get on the same page about what it wants from the world, the world may not listen.
Assad's allies
The argument against stumping for foreign military intervention is that Assad, unlike Colonel Gadhafi in Libya, has powerful friends in the world, and that such a strategy would be ineffective or, even worse, counterproductive.
"Syria has strong allies," Khalaf Dahowd, a member of the executive bureau of the NCB, told Reuters. "The Russians told us we will not use one veto - we will use 20 vetoes in the [UN] Security Council."
Assad is also backed by China, Iran and the powerful Shiite Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. And ratcheting up the conflict could cost large numbers of Syrian lives.
"We are against the militarisation of the revolution because it justifies the oppression and the use of force," Dahowd added. "Tens of people are getting killed now but if the revolution becomes a military one, then hundreds will be killed."
Nonetheless, one UN estimate already puts the number of anti-Assad Syrians killed since demonstrations against the government arose last January at more than 5,000. Something, it would seem, needs to happen soon to break the stalemate.
The Libya model
Thus far, NATO, the US and Syria's neighbor Turkey have all ruled out a foreign military intervention. Nonetheless, some people believe that Syrians may be able to force Assad out in a fashion similar to the way Libyans rid themselves of Gadhafi last year.
The key, say experts, would be for the Syrian Free Army, which currently claims to number up to 40,000 members, to achieve a foothold within the country.
"The only possibility is to conquer some territory, establish some autonomy and then attract international support, following the example of Libya," Rahim said. "And in my opinion, the only hope is to win over important figures from the Syrian military. If they see that the ship in going to sink anyway, they may decide to change sides."
On Monday, Syrian parliamentarian Emad Ghalioun announced he had left the country for Egypt to protest the Assad regime's human rights abuses. And over the weekend, in an interview with the US television station CBS, the Emir of Qatar called for humanitarian military intervention in Syria, becoming the first Arab leader to do so.
Still, the Syrian opposition may have trouble replicating history for the simple reason that Assad, too, will be trying to draw lessons from the past.
"The Syrian government has learned from Libya that it can't allow liberated areas in the country where rebels can group together," André Bank, a Middle East expert at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, told Deutsche Welle in an interview last September.
Meanwhile, more talk
While the various opposition factions jockey for position, attempts are continuing to de-escalate the situation.
On Sunday, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon publicly called upon Assad to "stop killing [his] own people."
And the foreign ministers of the Arab League are scheduled to meet in Cairo next Sunday to discuss Syria.
But Arab League observers are already in Syria in an attempt to prevent bloodshed - a mission that has been widely criticized as casualties have continued.
"When we look at what the Arab League has done, it hasn't yielded results," Rahim told Deutsche Welle. "The observers are considered merely a kind of camouflage for the Assad regime."
And with no peaceful solution to the Syrian impasse in the offing, calls for a military approach are sure to persist - and perhaps even grow.
Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Rob Mudge