Arabs Rise for Rights, Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa, North America

Syrian National Council Seeks Legitimacy At Home and Abroad

Samer Araabi

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 2011 (IPS) - As the death toll from more than six months of popular unrest climbs past the 3,000 mark, the opposition to the government of President Bashar al-Assad is intensifying efforts to present a unified face to both the outside world and the Syrian people.

On Monday, clashes in the city of Homs reportedly took the lives of several dozen people, including soldiers and members of the regime’s security forces who have been responsible for most of violence since the uprising first broke out in Dera’a seven months ago.

Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council, the governing apparatus of the Syrian opposition, has been developing more sophisticated governance structures and communication strategies in order to boost its legitimacy as a sole representative of the Syrian people.

Despite early official recognition by the Libyan provisional government, and statements of support from some Egyptian parties, the council has yet to make significant inroads with either the rest of the Arab world or with the West.

On Oct. 13, four members of the SNC were hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace to introduce the U.S. public to the council and answer questions about their structure, objectives, and representation.

Najib Ghadbian, Dima Moussa, Murhaf Jouejati, and Ausama Monajed covered topics ranging from the representational structure of the council to the council’s expectations from the international community.

The panel was hosted by Steven Heydemann, the senior adviser for Middle East Initiatives at USIP, who hailed the SNC as “the leadership structure that the opposition has been struggling to develop for some time.”

The quest for legitimacy

The council was formed largely to demonstrate to the international community that the Syrian opposition is capable of developing an alternative political vision for a post-Assad Syria, a question that has remained largely unanswered for the seven months of the uprising.

The SNC has developed a highly sophisticated structure, including foreign relations, media, and finance bureaus, along with a 230-seat general assembly with representation from the seven major groups currently represented in the opposition – expat leaders, Islamists, intelligentsia, leftists, grassroots activists, and a variety of minority groups.

The organisation is capped by a 29-member executive committee with similar representational distributions. Though the structure is undoubtedly ambitious, it has yet to successfully convince the international community of its efficacy as a coordinating political body.

As Hydemann remarked, “The SNC continues to face a number of significant challenges…in demonstrating its credibility and its legitimacy to the international community.”

Though the SNC panellists at the USIP event distributed flyers with statements of support from the White House, the European Union, and the French Foreign Ministry, none of these entities has explicitly recognised the singular legitimacy of the SNC.

The initial announcement of the formation of the SNC was greeted with great deal of scepticism by many ostensible opponents of the Syrian regime, partly due to the high proportion of Islamist figures on the partial list of names distributed by the council.

Most states, however, appear to be waiting for tangible results from the council before formally disassociating from the existing regime.

Building a popular base

While convincing the international community of its efficacy, the SNC is also attempting to demonstrate its legitimacy to the Syrian people themselves, many of whom have expressed doubts about the representativeness of an externally-based and largely expat-run organisation to represent the actual interests of the Syrian people.

The SNC has tried to include the pivotal Local Coordinating Committees that have been directing much of the protest action on the ground, and has explicitly reserved 55 seats in its 230-member general assembly for “grassroots activists” with “the amount of activism” as a factor for admission.

Several of the panelists were quick to point out that the Friday after the formation of the SNC was dubbed “the Friday of the National Council” with signs proclaiming “The SNC Represents Me”, but the actual level of popular support remains unclear.

The road to civil war

Further complicating matters is the rise of armed resistance in Syria, as an organisation of defected Syrian army units known as the Free Syrian Army has begun to battle regime forces across Syria.

SNC members have assured the public that the Free Syrian Army, formally under the jurisdiction of the council, has limited its engagements to the protection of civilian demonstrators, by “defending a city until they secure certain passages for civilians to evacuate, then withdrawing”.

However, clashes like the five-day standoff in the central town of Al-Rastan have raised the spectre of militarisation of the Syrian opposition, which some fear may lead to a Libya scenario in which the country descends into a violent, divisive civil war.

Even as SNC members claim that the “FSA activities have no connection to militarising the uprising,” U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford urged Syrian protestors to stick with nonviolent methods, warning of creating a situation similar to Iraq in 2004.

Within the SNC, Murhaf Jouejati acknowledged that “Syria may be moving toward a civil war,” but it could be avoided if the international community assists the council in “winning the revolution”, though a continuation and expansion of existing sanctions but also by allowing international monitors to act as a buffer between the Syrian forces and the opposition.

The escalating violence has been matched by a growing acceptance of some prominent members of the Syrian opposition for a Libyan-styled NATO intervention.

A number of expat opposition figures, such as Radwan Ziadeh, and more recently, Haitham Al-Maleh, have openly called for NATO intervention, though Al-Maleh later qualified the statement by saying that NATO intervention would only be acceptable under U.N. auspices.

Voices for international intervention have been joined by the prominent domestic dissident Burhan Ghalioun, who has thrown his weight behind the Syrian National Council, and openly considered the possibility of a foreign military presence to aid the revolution.

Considering the low domestic support enjoyed by NATO members for the intervention in Libya, their latent distrust of the Syrian opposition, and the questionable outcome in Libya, however, it remains unlikely that such direct military involvement would materialise anytime soon.