Opinion

Syria’s freedom fighters unite

In a move toward creating a united front, Syrian opposition parties this week decided to set up a coordination committee to prepare for the transition from despotism to democracy.

The decision came at the start of a four-day conference, “The Congress for Change,” that brought together 22 opposition parties and groups in Antalya, Turkey.

The conference started only hours after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad announced a “general amnesty,” with a promise to release all political prisoners at an unspecified date. Syrian opposition sources tell me that Assad’s security services are holding more than 12,000 people, including some children and old men.

The conference is significant for several reasons.

First, it indicates a dramatic shift in Turkey’s policy. As a neighbor of Syria, Turkey had tried to persuade Assad to stop killing people in the streets and open a national dialogue focused on a serious reform agenda.

But by last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan had concluded that Assad’s departure is the only way Syria can emerge from its crisis. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davoudoglu asserts that Assad can no longer be trusted to initiate the “drastic measures” needed to calm Syria’s nationwide revolt.

Second, the gathering debunks the Assad-circulated myth that the Syrian opposition is too divided to offer an alternative to his despotism. The conference has brought together a wide range of political movements, from the democratic Damascus Declaration to the Muslim Brotherhood, and social-democratic and communist parties.

“What we want is a people-based government in place of a regime based on a clan,” says Abdul-Razzaq Ayd, spokesman for the liberal Damascus Declaration. “The people of Syria are fighting for their second independence.”

Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mulhim al-Durubi rejects as “vicious propaganda” Assad’s claim that regime change in Syria would lead to an Islamist dictatorship. “Assad is trying to malign us while offering us political bribes,” Durubi says. “However, everyone except Assad knows that Syrians want freedom, not any new kind of dictatorship.”

Syrian business community representative Ghassan Abboud said that participants will “set aside our differences until our beloved homeland is liberated.”

A prominent Kurdish Islamic scholar, Sheik Muhammad Murad al-Khaznavi, told the conference that fighting the despotic regime was “a religious as well as a patriotic duty.”

“However, this does not mean that we want to set up an Islamic emirate,” al-Khaznavi said. “What we want is a system based on law — a democratic, liberal and secular system with the separation of religion and state.”

Finally, the gathering highlighted that a revolt that started with limited demands has concluded that nothing but regime change offers Syria a better future.

“What we all agree upon is the fall of the regime,” says Salah Badreddin, leader of the Free Kurds movement. “Syria’s future regime will base its legitimacy on the national uprising.”

The presence of several tribal leaders at the gathering was also important.

Sheikh Abdullah Thamer, leader of Al-Anza, one of Syria’s largest Arab tribes, told the conference that tribal elders across the country were “unanimous in demanding an end of dictatorship.”

Youth activists just arrived from Syria told the conference that Assad’s offer of an amnesty was “nothing but a cynical move by a discredited despot.”

“The man says he wants to forgive people he has sent to prison,” says Ziaeddin Daghmash, a youth leader. “The truth is that it is he who should ask to be forgiven by the people he has been oppressing for so many years.”

With the Antalya accords, the outside world now has a credible Syrian interlocutor as the pro-democracy revolt enters its sixth week.

Having gingerly distanced itself from the Assad regime, the Obama administration should now establish formal contact with the united Syrian opposition — as Turkey, France and Italy have done.