The Syrian opposition is fighting the enemy within the mind of every citizen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/12/syrian-opposition-enemy-within

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The appointment of Abdulbaset Sieda to head the Syrian National Council (SNC) opposition comes at a time when the SNC is undergoing what was euphemistically called a restructuring and opening up to other opposition groups.

This is an immense challenge and is part of a major re-evaluation and overhaul of the experience of the opposition in the past year, during which so much change has occurred on all fronts. This comes also after Burhan Ghalioun, the previous president of the SNC, declared that they had failed the Syrian people.

The appointment comes after two important meetings, one of the SNC in Rome which decided on the restructuring and another in Bulgaria where the SNC met with several other opposition groups and managed to come up with a joint statement.

The Bulgaria meeting also discussed a roadmap to create a common vision and a plan for co-ordination between what is now recognised as a diverse collection of opposition groups with the aim of developing a mechanism to work together under the umbrella of the SNC while maintaining their autonomy. Another aim is to prepare for the transition after the fall of the regime.

What makes these plans more difficult is that the opposition is at the same time fighting a battle of ideas against the regime's dominant Ba'athist ideology. These ideas are deeply ingrained in the minds of Syrians, including those of the opposition, and benefit from a headstart of 48 years where Ba'ath party ideology was hammered in through the media, the educational system and other government institutions.

In addition, a complex web of informants, modelled on eastern European security services, created a lack of trust and a kind of thought police where citizens were expected to report on each other. Even Syrian expats and exiles, living as far away as Texas or Paris, never felt free of these ideas or far from the atmosphere of suspicion.

The SNC has had problems since its inception. It was created in the summer of 2011 initially from a coalition of the Damascus Declaration, the Muslim Brotherhood and several organisations that represent religious and ethnic groups like Kurds and Assyrians. To these were added delegates of local coordination committees who represent the protesters on the ground.

From its inception the SNC was heavily criticised for not being inclusive enough, for being created by Turkey and Qatar, for being unrepresentative of the forces inside the country and for being dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. It was also inevitably compared to the Libyan National Transitional Council and hence suspected of preparing the ground for a western military intervention or invasion of the country.

Then other groups started springing up as alternatives to the SNC. The National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change was formed in Damascus as several versions of old parties like the ancien regime National Bloc were also being created and other parties and movements emerged from the left, right and centre. Prominent members of the SNC broke away and formed their own parties, then rejoined.

Under pressure for inclusiveness the SNC expanded its membership from about 70 to over 300 until it became unmanageable, with meetings reminiscent of that last caricature-like scene in the film Lawrence of Arabia where the Arabs, instead of uniting, ended up bickering in parliament.

The opposition to the Syrian regime in fact represents every idea that was suppressed in Syria since the 1958 declaration of the United Arab Republic and unity with Egypt, and especially since the advent of the Ba'ath party in 1958. The Arab Socialist Ba'ath party incorporates elements of Arab nationalism calling for pan-Arab unity combined with anti-imperialism and socialism. The authoritarian or even totalitarian nature of the regime evolved from a slogan that no voice can emerge above the noise of the battle against Israel and imperialism. This was consolidated through several wars and battles, both internal and external.

The ideas represented by the opposition include various facets of the antithesis of Ba'ath party teachings. Where the dominant ideology was unity, the opposition has diversity; where it has secularism you have the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious parties; where it had Arab nationalism you have Kurds and ethnic groups; where there was a one-party state you now have a multiplicity of parties. What was a strong centralised state under the Ba'ath is now a debate about various forms of administrative and political decentralisation.

For decades contacts with foreign countries were totally forbidden whereas now there are competing regional and international influences and agendas reflected in different elements of the opposition. Tribes are re-emerging as a force to be reckoned with, so are traditional families, some with feudal background.

From the standpoint of the official regime ideology the opposition represents everything that has been anathema to its views for almost half a century. Hence the opposition looks fragmented, totally dependent on foreign influence, supported by the west and Gulf countries which in Arab nationalist terms represent imperialism and its clients, as well as the reactionary forces that it has fought all along.

Whenever an element of this ideology comes up in a meeting of the opposition, it is like hitting a brick wall. Syrians were brought up for generations with the idea that any attempts at dissent were part of a conspiracy to fragment the nation and weaken its resolve in the battlefield amounting to treason and collaboration with the enemy. While these may sound like empty rhetoric, Syrians, some of whom are discovering the practice of politics for the first time, experience these mental obstacles and realise the difficulties of surmounting them.

What the SNC hopes to achieve in the near future amounts to co-ordinating different ideas and battling a mentality that is deeply programmed in the minds of people. It is in fact a process that will take at least two generations and will last long after the regime is gone; the enemy is within the mind of each and every Syrian.

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