16 May 2012
| Oppositions in Disarray |
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Irreconcilable differences among opponents of the Syrian regime guarantee that Western efforts to unnaturally unite them are bound to fail. By Eiad Wannous
This disarray is nothing new. Prior to the outbreak of protests, the opposition also suffered from discord, and the perennial problems of exiled opposition groups. These were mostly composed of figures attached in one way or another to the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical organisation that was responsible in the 1980s for many massacres and assassinations of numerous Syrian intellectuals. However, to understand the roots of all the hullaballoo made by some media outlets about the need to "unify" the Syrian opposition, it is worth going back to 2006, when there was not a single protest in Syria. At the end of January 2006, Washington attempted to unite this fragmented opposition in order to form a "front" against the Syrian leadership, which had been blocking US hegemony in the Middle East since 1970. The State Department began by hosting a meeting between Muslim Brotherhood representatives and some apparently liberal secularist exiles. Under US pressure, the gap between these factions seemed to narrow just enough to permit a political alliance between them. But just as unity seemed all but locked up, another split opened up, this time over the role of Israel. The US administration then faced a dilemma: should it cut its ties with the newly "unified" Syrian opposition groups because they had not reached a consensus that would guarantee peace with Israel, and instead supported Islamists? Or should it support the new opposition groups in the style it did in Lebanon 2005, when a lobby of sectarian leaders formed the US-backed "March 14 forces"? Recent developments related to Syria, such as the appearance of armed Salafist groups and statements made by US officials calling on the armed groups not to give up their weapons to the Syrian authorities, show that the US has solved its dilemma by going with the first option. Obviously, there neither has been nor is now any natural tendency towards unity between these groups, since they belong to totally different ideological backgrounds and have antagonistic political views. Indeed, the religious question remains a major stumbling block to their dreamed-of unity, and makes confrontation between them inevitable. That is, do they want a secular state that separates church from state, or an Islamic one based on a radical totalitarian religious regime? This question represents a deadly structural flaw in any externally imposed unity. Moreover, the "unity of the opposition" is an unhealthy political practice, if democracy is really the West's aim. But unity itself seems to be nothing but a tactical step imposed by the West to change the leadership in Syria, without heeding the threat of turning Syria into a failed state if such unity were to dissolve at a later stage. The irony of all the fuss over unity is that the current situation seems to generate ever more opposition groups. Prior to the March 14 protest there were four liberal parties, three Kurdish ones, three Salafist groups, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Until now, none of them has dissolved. Rather, they have generated several other supposedly "united" bodies. Each of them has a different political agenda which varies regarding such issues as whether requesting foreign military assistance or participating in dialogue with the Syrian government is acceptable, and what ideology should guide Syria in its new era.
Such generation of oppositional bodies would also be healthy if the motive was to convince the Syrian public that their country is not falling under the hegemony of the US. But the reality is quite different. The words of Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian opposition figure, say it all: "We spent the last months wrangling over lists of names and councils and quotas, instead of coming up with a strategy or to chart a vision for the future...Until now, we still lack a strategy and a vision." |
16 May 2012
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