Let Syria choose democracy over Assad By Hadi al Bahra 04.01.2015 Syria | Damascus: The year 2015 marks four years since thousands of Syrians peacefully marched for basic human freedoms. For decades the Syrian people suffered under the repression of the Assads. In March 2011, we said enough. Our peaceful demonstrations were met with a violent response from a brutal regime. Over the last four years Syrian cries for freedom were met by an international community unable to act and now narrowly focused on an extremist threat, while neglecting to deal with the root cause of this threat. The ISIL threat is real, and we must take it seriously. To do so we must defeat ISIL and its root cause. Three months into the US-led campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a military-only approach is not working. Instead of eliminating extremists, airstrikes are enabling the Assad regime and its militias and foreign fighters to escalate attacks on innocent people. This fuels extremists’ recruitment, including the thousands of foreign fighters who are coming to Syria from European capitals. Airstrikes also allow extremists to aid Assad’s mission of obliterating moderate groups because they free up his forces to strike elsewhere. All of this further buries Syrian hopes to build a society that respects the human freedoms of all Syrians I welcome the announcement by EU Foreign Ministers at the December Foreign Affairs Council reaffirming their support for the Syrian National Coalition. The EU and its member states have a direct stake in the establishment of a peaceful Syria. Not only is Europe a leader in the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Syria, but ISIL and instability in Syria threatens European security. However, any notion of an ISIL-first approach will only fail as long as EU foreign policymakers treat ISIL as unrelated to Assad’s tyranny. ISIL is a symptom of the instability and brutality caused by Assad. You cannot eliminate the symptom without tackling its cause. In December 2014 I travelled to Brussels to present EU leaders a comprehensive approach that will lay the basis for a political solution and prevent the resurgence of extremism. This approach does not require a re-adjustment of EU priorities or a reinvestment of resources. It simply requires that Europe change its narrow focus from defeating ISIL first and dealing with Assad second, to addressing both in parallel. To stop ISIL and bring peace to Syria we must: defeat ISIL militarily; remove the root cause of ISIL - the Assad regime; and lay the foundations for a political alternative, so that moderate Syrians are not forced to make the false choice between terror or tyranny. The Syrian National Coalition remains committed to such a solution. We strive for a democratic Syria that represents all of Syria’s religious and ethnic communities. That is why we are engaging with UN Envoy Staffan de Mistura and his team. Like Mr de Mistura, our priority is to bring peace to Syria. His initiative to build that peace from the bottom-up, through local freezes in battle-hardened cities like Aleppo, deserves serious consideration. But it does not come without risks. The first risk of a local freeze is that it could perpetuate and incentivise violence. We saw how local freezes incentivised violence in early 2014 when our moderate armed fighters - forced through a siege and starvation tactic by the Assad regime - agreed to a cease-fire in Homs. Tragically, it only solidified the regime’s stranglehold on Homs, strengthening Assad’s twisted belief that Syrians’ submission could be won through starvation. As the previous UN Joint Special Envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, made clear, the ‘Homs model’ will not lead to a sustainable political solution. A second risk is that a ceasefire in Aleppo could allow Assad to redeploy his troops elsewhere. Freed from the need to concentrate on Aleppo, Assad could send his forces to other fronts to make further military gains against moderates. Finally, if divorced from a wider national process, Mr de Mistura’s plan risks entrenching the balkanisation of the Syrian state, rather than leading to a national peace. Fortunately, the EU can limit these risks by encouraging Mr de Mistura to establish parameters for compliance and consequences for non-compliance. Tightly defined parameters, overseen by external monitors, will reduce the risk of any party making military gains as a result of a freeze. Meaningful consequences will ensure that such parameters are followed. To build a link from Aleppo to a national process, it must be clear from the outset that the goal is to achieve a political transition forged on the internationally-supported Geneva Communique. The Geneva Communique lays the basis for a future transition plan. The EU must make clear to the regime and its backers – Russia and Iran – that all parties must abide by it. In parallel, I encourage the EU to create the conditions for a viable political solution by intensifying pressure on Assad – through consistently robust policy declarations by the European Council and practical measures like sanctions which can save lives by weakening Assads military machine. In this fourth year of the Syrian crisis we must act not out of fatigue or frustration. We must act out of determination to break the cycle that fuels extremism in Syria. Europe must stand with the Syrian people to address the root cause of extremism. A comprehensive approach is the only way to rid the region of the terrorist threat and prevent this threat from reaching further beyond Syria’s borders.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 23:32:50 +0000
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