From Dar Al Hayat: The Syrian opposition, that is its identity

On the evening of every Thursday, a name is given to the next day’s protests in Syria. And every Friday, we see a single slogan for the protests that take place in most cities and in the countryside, and we hear many chants in common between all of those protests.

Coincidence is not behind this phenomenon, which requires long talks, constant discussions, profound coordination, and overcoming the difficulties of communication and transportation, under a deployment of security the likes of which the country has never seen, and bloody use of force reaching every area where protests are taking place.

Thus, in the face of the broadest bloody campaign and exceptional security surveillance, protesters in cities and in places far apart are able to find shared formulas for their movement and its slogans. This shows that assiduous work is being done, starting in every neighborhood and converging at the level of the whole country, and that there are organizers for such work who are discussing and debating amongst themselves, so as for every movement in any neighborhood to be part of the general protest movement in the country.

The opposition protest movement has gradually shifted from regional and economic demands at the beginning to demands of political reform, reaching the demand for regime change. This means that the events are being dealt with and the regime’s security response to all of these demands is being reacted to on a daily basis. In other words, the events are being analyzed politically, and demands and slogans are being chosen that fit the developments, which in itself reveals that the events are being dealt with politically at a sophisticated level, one that is not restricted to veteran opposition members, but includes a new generation working on the ground in neighborhoods and cities, as well as one that is being able to find shared formulas that bring together all protesters in every part of the country.

Those organizers, most of whose names are unknown, have come to represent, as they still do, the leadership of the protest movement, politically and on the field. They are the “coordination centers”, present everywhere in the country. And if it is difficult to know exactly how they work, one can imagine that there would be committees at the level of neighborhoods, holding meetings and choosing representatives to coordinate with their counterparts in other neighborhoods, with such neighborhood representatives eventually choosing one from among them to represent them and communicate with counterparts in other cities, and those representative or delegates forming the national leadership of the protest movement.

During some protests, especially those organized for the funerals of victims, slogans can be heard that are harsh and sectarian, reflecting feelings of anger and vengeance against the regime and its associates. Yet most shared slogans reflect a nearly unified political program, asserting freedoms, the unity of the people, the secular nature of the state, democracy, equality between citizens, and preserving the dignity of all Syrians.

Such a political program is what brings together the different strands of the Syrian opposition, the old as well as the new, and it is suitable to represent the alternative which Syrians would reach a consensus over, and on the basis of which the next political system would be established.

There is now in Syria a broad movement of popular opposition that has its own leaders and a minimal program that brings them together. Such a fact invalidates the regime’s arguments over the issue of “armed gangs”, as well as the arguments of the regime’s supporters and those who remain hesitant both inside and outside of Syria, who speak of chaos, division and sectarian liquidation in case the regime were to collapse, under the pretext that there is no opposition force capable of managing the country’s affairs.

Today, it seems necessary, more than at any other time in the six months that have passed since the eruption of the protest movement in Syria, for the leadership of the coordination centers to turn into one that would speak in the name of the opposition and would negotiate over the future of the regime. It also seems that this leadership is aware of such a necessity, after international demands that the regime leave have been raised. Indeed, the day after the European and American stance was announced, and the latent stance of countries in the region could be felt, those coordination centers announced that they were merging into a single body under the name of the Syrian Revolution General Commission, in order “to unite the field, media and political efforts”, as it said in its statement, stressing the necessity of coming together as a single working unit. It also made clear that its aim was to build in Syria “a democratic and civil state of institutions that grants freedom, equality, dignity and respect of human rights to all citizens”.

Thus there is now in Syria an opposition movement with a well known identity and political program.