When the Syrian revolution started, no one believed that the Syrian opposition has a role in erupting and creating such revolution. It was simultaneous revolution, like what’s happened exactly in Tunisia, disorganized revolution, and has no leadership or ideology. But when things going after six months, the Syrians they look at Libya, where the example of Transitional National Council in Libya [the de facto government formed by opposition forces during the 2011 uprising against deposed Libyan President Muammar Gadhafi] was successful in bringing the international support and getting the international community to take actions to protect the civilians in Libya.
The [United Nations] Security Council acted very quickly in Libya, after 11 days adopted the Security Council Resolution 1970 [the measure adopted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council in February 2011 condemning Muammar Gaddafi’s regime and imposing a series of international sanctions]. The killings continued by Gadhafi forces, the Security Council adopted the Resolution 1973, which give the Security Council the approval to protect the civilians under the responsibility to protect. In Syria the Syrians are looking to the same model.
They know the [Syrian President Bashar] Assad regime will not go by himself by negotiations. And they need action from the Security Council. And if you need action, you have to have one united voice from the opposition. This is why the idea to have the Syrian National Council as an umbrella organization for all the human rights – all the Syrian opposition groups to be with him. We started the meetings of the Syrian National Council in August 2011. It’s not easy to unite an opposition – very fragmented, have different ideologies, have different backgrounds; they never sit with each other before, they don’t have debate, they don’t have discussion. And more of that, they are ruled under 40 years of dictatorship, where there is no such culture or sense of unity.
It’s not an easy thing. We start, and have very, very difficult time to bring all of the Syrian opposition to the table and agree about the establishment and creation of the Syrian National Council in October 2, 2011. And after that, the organization grew up a little bit, but because we did not get the support from the international community there are no actions being taken against the Assad regime to protect the civilians in Syria. This undermines the credibility of the SNC, or the Syrian National Council, because the Syrian people, they saw that someone who, living in Washington, in Paris or in Istanbul, cannot defend the Syrian people.
This is why the growing credibility and support of the Free Syrian Army [an armed opposition group in Syria established in 2011 to oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad], those became the heroes in the hearts and the minds of the Syrian people because those, they are underground and they are defending the Syrian people – but even that’s by their lives, by all the necessary means. And that’s undermined the credibility of the Syrian National Council. But still, a lot of challenges ahead of the Syrian National Council to get more organized, to be able to build such an organization who will be able to govern Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. And because now, as many areas have been liberated – and should we have a central government?
The diversity within the Syrian society is reflected on the Syrian National Council. The Syrian National Council includes Alawite [a sect of Shia Islam], Christian, Druze [a religious sect with origins in Shia Islam that has assimilated aspects of other religions and philosophies], Sunni, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and all of this. Syria has more than 17 minority groups, ethnic, religious groups. And that’s put a lot of challenge when you are in the transition process, because in transition you cannot do an election and you cannot test the popularity of each group, and this is why you have to work with the consensus. In the consensus, then you have to spend a huge time in negotiating, in bargaining, and setting up the rules.
Maybe you don’t agree, but you have – because it’s not an easy to have a decision after consensus – different groups coming from different background, different ideologies. They have agreed that Bashar Assad has to go, but they have to agree to work together. And this is the difficulties we struggle and face in the Syrian National Council.
Radwan Ziadeh is a Syrian dissident and democracy activist. He grew up in a middle class family in Damascus and became politically active after the death of President Hafez Assad in 2000. Remembering the struggles of his own family growing up, Ziadeh wanted to live in a free country and helped establish the Syrian Human Rights Association, a group dedicated to promoting human rights, in 2001.
Four years later, Ziadeh founded his own organization called the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies. Through his center, Ziadeh acted as an international lobbyist for the cause of Syrian freedom. Speaking at venues like the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ziadeh raised awareness about the human rights abuses being committed by the Assad regime in Damascus. As Ziadeh intensified the spotlight on Syria, the government retaliated by placing a travel ban on his family, effectively imprisoning them in Syria, or stranding those traveling abroad in third countries. In 2007, Ziadeh fled Syria for the United States as the Assad government issued a warrant for his arrest.
Beginning in March 2011, the Syrian people revolted against President Bashar Assad, who had succeeded his father, challenging the government’s control over the country and resulting in a tense standoff between the remnants of the regime and diverse opposition forces. In 2012, Ziadeh seized the opportunity afforded him by the revolution and visited his homeland for the first time in five years. He continues to reside in the United States where he works through organizations like the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies to rebuild Syria into a free and democratic society.
Twitter: @radwanziadeh
The Syrian Arab Republic originated as a secular, socialist state dominated by the Ba’ath party, an Arab nationalist movement. The state has since evolved into an autocracy headed by a single family and dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, a branch of Shia Islam.
The Ba’ath Party took power in Syria in a series of coups d’état in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the leaders of those coups, Hafez al-Assad, became president in 1971 and led the country until his death in 2000. Under Assad, Alawites assumed control over the state security forces. In 1982, Assad’s forces stormed the city of Hama to brutally suppress a Sunni rebellion, killing thousands of civilians.
Following the death of Hafez al-Assad, his son, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president by a referendum in which he ran unopposed, officially garnering 97 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 2007, again with 97 percent of the vote.
The Syrian government is one of the world’s most brutal and restrictive. From 1963 to 2011, the government operated under an “Emergency Law,” which suspended many constitutional protections of civil liberties. The government continues to use arbitrary detention and torture against political opponents, and operates through an extensive internal security apparatus, including secret police. The government controls most of the country’s media outlets, and access to the Internet is permitted only through state-operated servers. The minority Kurdish population has been continually discriminated against and repressed.
Influenced by movements in Egypt and Tunisia, large opposition protests took place across Syria in 2011. The government responded with a harsh crackdown. Security forces fired on protestors, killing thousands. The crackdown led the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership. The Assad regime attempted to appease dissenters through a series of low-level and largely inconsequential reforms in 2011 and 2012. However, the conflict has escalated into full-fledged civil war with both liberal and Islamic militias being formed to fight against the Assad regime. The Assad regime has continued to attempt to defeat the opposition using air strikes and heavy artillery to attack rebel-held neighborhoods. Freedoms of association, assembly, and the press were restricted even further as the government attempted to quell the uprising. Over a million people have been either internally displaced or fled the country as refugees.
In the summer of 2013, it was confirmed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons to attack civilians. Over 600 people were killed in one such attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus using a nerve agent confirmed to be sarin. The Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons drew international attention and resulted in a renewed international focus on the nation and its civil conflict.
Freedom House rates Syria as “not free” noting that conditions even prior to the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war were, at best, abysmal. It earned the worst possible ratings of seven in both the political rights and civil liberties categories. Conditions since the 2011 uprising have only deteriorated, and civil freedoms are restricted under the fear of violence. Freedom House has also expressed concern over rising sectarian tensions and massive displacement.