Editorial
FOR a few days more than a year now, the people of the Arab Syrian Republic has suffered from something worse than a desert winter. When the rebels against Syria’s government under President Bashar al-Assad first began their uprisings, they thought they would easily come to enjoy the Arab Spring that pro-democracy voices had inspired them to dream about. Instead the different and sometimes antagonistic opposition groups reaped for their people death and destruction.
Most the 9,000-plus deaths since the rebellion began were suffered by the opposition side. President Assad from the very start had the mindset of a ruler whose enemies were not just home-grown democrats but persons and groups supported by other Arab rulers and the Western powers, NATO itself (including Muslim-country Turkey). He knew that their aim was to do him in and put an end to his regime because it was in alliance with Iran and the pro-Iran Hezbollah in Lebanon.
So, President Assad and his generals did not think twice about firing heavy artillery on demonstrators and armed groups massed to build up an all out rebellion against him.
As the Xinhua News Agency’s analysis says:
“For over a year, Syria has been subject to intolerable pressure from Arab and western countries. A squeezing isolation has been imposed on the country coupled with unrelenting sanctions that targeted all vital sectors in the country.
“The West and the Arab League (AL) have worked to shake Syria economically to break up the close connection between the commercial sector and the government, undermine its Arab legitimacy by halting Syria’s AL membership, and ensure all-out support for broad-based opposition.
“The sanctions and isolation have to some extent worsened the people’s hardship as prices of most commodities have skyrocketed, businesses halted, and the Syrian pound sharply deceased in value. However, the government, likely after receiving funds from its close ally Iran, has readjusted and succeeded in the past few days [in mid-March] in maintaining the currency value.
“The exchange rate for the US dollar reached 100 pounds last week, but it declined to 79 pounds a couple of days ago. All in all, the pound has lost over 50 percent in value against the dollar in the past few months.”
Syria’s leaders are right. The Arab powers and the European want the Assad regime out of the scene because it is like the vanguard of the Iranian advance into the Arab World.
Infighting in the opposition
Last year, in August, opposition leaders formed the Syrian National Council (SNC) hoping to serve as the shadow revolutionary government against the regime. But this council, from day one of its existence, has been less engaged in developing a national program to overthrow the Assad government than in wrangling among each other.
Last Wednesday two SNC leaders quit and some others are heard to be also in the process of leaving the council.
These resignations, and expected departures of more opposition leaders from their council, has boosted the stock of President Assad and his regime. Last week, in the main square of Damascus and other plazas of the country more than a million Syrians came out to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime.
No wonder, the Western powers and the Arab League have apparently dropped their program to bring down President Assad by force of arms by support the fractured Syrian opposition groups and their rebel armies. The Arab League and the United Nations have appointed former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan as the special envoy for Syrian peace.
Xinhua reported that the leader of the opposition group Building Syria State, Luai Hussain, told its reporter “it’s about time to achieve a political settlement that is satisfactory to all parties.” The Chinese state-owned news agency also reported that “Hussain told Xinhua that intellectual elites should take a leading role in steering the country into democracy.”
Kofi Annan’s mission
Kofi Annan went to Syria as UN-Arab League peace envoy and spoke to the Syrian president. After the meeting Annan revealed that President Assad he was “determined to eradicate insurgents but at the same time commence dialogue.”
Annan, Xinhua said, “did not even allude to the possibility of a regime change.” His “mission was confined to convincing the Syrian leader of halting violence and launching negotiations with the opposition.”
The UN-Arab League envoy suggested that a dialogue with the opposition under his mantle be held outside Damascus. Assad rejected any dialogue outside his country.
Some months ago, Assad apparently was willing to hold such a peace effort abroad.
It’s good that the Arab and Western powers who had planned to bring down Syria’s Assad regime by force have abandoned that idea.
Kofi Annan left for Moscow yesterday. His immediate tyask is to gauge how far Russia is willing to push its key Arab ally to talk with the opposition after Russia finally joined a UN call on regime forces to pull back from cities where the rebels are strong.
Annan will meet President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today before going to China, the other UN Security Council member that has resisted global efforts to condemn Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Annan carries with with him President Assad’s answer to a peace plan under which Syria could begin a “political transition” to a representative government, with no specifically defined role for Assad.
Moscow backed Wednesday’s non-binding Security Council statement in support of the initiative only after making sure it contained no implicit threat of further action should Assad fail to comply.
This means nonviolent means could still be used to get President Assad ousted later. But maybe he will not be too easy to dislodge.
There are still 6,000-plus OFWs in Syria. They refuse to avail themselves of government help to come home. With this news of a peace dialogue, it will be harder to get them to leave their jobs.
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