Has the time come for the fat lady to sing in Syria? As carnage continues across that nation, the question is making the rounds in Arab capitals and at the United Nations in New York.
The lady in question is Najah al-Attar, a jovial 78-year-old novelist who has been a vice president of Syria since 2006.
Under an Arab League plan to end the Syrian crisis, President Bashar al-Assad would step aside, allowing Attar to act as interim head of state. She would then name a caretaker government to organize “a national dialogue for a peaceful transition.”
The league’s plan will be the basis of negotiations that Russia plans to host in Moscow between the Assad regime and the pro-democracy opposition. The UN Security Council will vote as soon as today on whether to endorse the plan.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari will also try to sell the plan to Damascus next week when his country assumes the rotating presidency of the Arab League. In the meantime, the league has decided to freeze its monitoring mission, citing “bad faith and chicanery” on the part of the Syrian regime.
The plan doesn’t directly name Attar as putative interim leader because some “interested powers,” meaning Russia and Iran, prefer the other vice president, Farouk al-Sharaa, in that role.
But the Syrian opposition, smelling victory, might find it hard to deal with Sharaa — an apparatchik of the ruling Ba’ath Party who’s accused of involvement in planning the recent massacres.
As interim leader, Attar would hold a number of cards:
* Her father was a leader of the independence movement against the French in the 1920s. Her brother, Issam, who lives in exile in Germany, is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a key component of the anti-Assad revolt.
* Educated in Britain, she could use her network of contacts in London to mobilize support for a transition backed by the international community.
* The fact that she is a native of Damascus also works in her favor. Until last month, the regime had managed to keep things quiet there. However, the revolt has spread to the capital, with army defectors in control of some neighborhoods.
* Attar is a Sunni Muslim, like 70 percent of Syrians (and unlike Assad).
* She is not a member of the Ba’ath Party and not connected with the security services, the backbone of the Assad clan.
For his part, Sharaa points to his long experience as foreign minister to advance his claim for interim leadership.
A protégé of Hafez al-Assad, the father of the present despot and the founder of the dynasty, Sharaa owes little to Bashar and might not find it hard to unsheathe the dagger that he must have had hiding behind his back for years.
Sharaa could also count on support from Iran, which has a strong military-security presence in Syria, and Russia, which has emerged as the regime’s key diplomatic backer.
Tehran and Moscow believe that, as interim head of state, Sharaa might help them maintain part of their positions in Syria.
“The Islamic Republic cannot allow the installation of a pro-West regime in Damascus,” the daily Kayhan, mouthpiece of Iranian Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, asserted in an editorial last week.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has echoed that warning in softer tones. “We cannot go along with a plan aimed at regime change,” he said in Moscow last week.
On the negative side, Sharaa is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for involvement in the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
And some Arab League members think he might use the transition to play for time to split the opposition and keep at least some Ba’athists in power.
“Sharaa is a born liar and cheat,” claims a former Syrian oil minister now opposed to the regime. “The only reassuring thing about him as interim head of state is that his feet are too small for that boot.”
Diplomatic haggling over ways to persuade Bashar al-Assad to fly to exile, possibly in London, his wife’s native city, is likely to continue for at least another week.
And while diplomats talk in New York, in Syria people die.