The Syrian regime's policies are encouraging the spread of foreign interference in the country, even as the regime itself is doomed to fall. Hazem Nahar, an opposition activist, explains to Bassel Oudat Hazem Nahar, a spokesman for the opposition Syrian Democratic Forum (SDF) that was launched in Cairo in mid-April at a conference attended by leading Syrian opposition figures, spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly about the Syrian revolution, beginning by describing the reasons behind the uprising. "The revolution has happened because of the Syrian regime's economic and political structure. Authoritarianism and corruption have created a failed regime on many levels. There is no political participation, no development, and no minimum level of human rights. For the past four decades, Syrians have been an oppressed and impoverished people, a people without ambitions or a future. We must not forget the more immediate reasons that triggered the revolution either, including a lack of respect and insults to human dignity." A wide variety of Syrian opposition forces are leading the revolution, though sometimes these have had difficulty mobilising the street behind them. "This is to be expected after years of political vacuum and the suffocation of all willpower and initiative," Nahar said. "Arguments within the opposition could be a good sign, despite symptoms of political immaturity and the fact that the opposition has not yet been able to agree on the foundations of the future Syria. The Syrian opposition is currently living through a stage of self-discovery and the exploration of options. It will soon transition to cleansing itself of the residues of the corrupt and oppressive regime." Of the need for the opposition to formulate a single vision, as the international community has demanded, Nahar commented that "we have to draw a distinction between the political opposition and the popular movement. The popular movement has its own reasoning and mechanisms that are not affected by the actions of the opposition, which means that it relies on its own efforts, especially since the opposition is divided." Nahar, who is also editor of the political magazine Al-Mashka, said that "the regime's machinery of oppression has done everything it can to stop the movement from organising itself, making the achievements of the movement all the more remarkable as a result. Sooner or later, it will be able to organise itself better, especially if it succeeds in constructing an all-inclusive political vision for all Syrians to rally around." Responding to fears from the West that the Islamists will inherit Syria if the incumbent regime falls, Nahar said that "the Islamist trend is generally too eager to lead the political wing of the revolution, which is a serious political mistake. Even before the ouster of the regime, there is a behind-the-scenes power struggle going on among opposition forces. This could divide the popular movement in support of one political party over another and open the door for the regime to manipulate such differences, turning them into a struggle for power in the country." Regarding the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is made up of defectors from the regular army and is estimated to number in the tens of thousands, Nahar said that it was "previously hoped that the Syrian army would follow the examples of the Egyptian and Tunisian armies, but this did not happen. What occurred were small and mid-size defections instead, and as the regime escalated its violence against the Syrian people these defections connected together and coordinated themselves to form a miniature army of military defectors who refused to open fire on the people." "They were joined by civilian volunteers appalled at the violence of the regime. We should not talk about the FSA as if it were a clearly defined army. The majority of it is made up of civilians who took up arms after a year of unprecedented violence against them. Nonetheless, we can say that any vision that does not take the FSA into consideration is flawed, because the transformation of this army into reality, whether we like it or not, requires a clear vision to deal with it. Setting standards for how this army is to behave and the militarisation of the revolution as a whole is something we need to deal with." Nahar said that two important considerations were that the FSA should "function under one political umbrella with one vision of Syria's future and that it should adhere to regular military regulations in terms of discipline and unified leadership. It should also treat civilians and prisoners appropriately and keep within the realm of self-defence and protecting peaceful demonstrations. It should not adopt any sectarian or denominational character." Actions outside these parameters "would be condemned by revolutionary and political opposition forces, because they could drag Syria into catastrophe," he said. Commenting on demands by some opposition forces for foreign interference in Syria, Nahar said that "the opposition is dealing with this issue either with idealism or with exaggerated pragmatism mostly rooted in narrow personal or political considerations. These two approaches have resulted in serious mistakes, and it is inadequate to discuss foreign intervention by using naïve language as the opposition has done. It is not a question that can be answered with a simple yes or no." Instead, possible foreign intervention in Syria, if it is on the table, should be discussed in adequate detail. "The mechanisms of any such intervention, together with its phases, methods, parties, duration, effects, positive and negative aspects, gains, and losses from the viewpoint of Syrian interests, should be evaluated carefully. Some members of the opposition believe that if they express their rejection of foreign interference often enough, this will prevent countries eager to interfere in Syria from doing so. Another group believes that by urging these countries to interfere, the outside world will mobilise its armies and do so." "However, in fact neither side is capable of convincing the world to intervene or not to intervene. It will not intervene unless it wants to, and if it does so it will be to serve its own strategy and interests." Despite this, Nahar believes that foreign intervention is already taking place in Syria. "Practically speaking, the regime's policies since the beginning of the revolution have resulted in foreign interference, irrespective of regime propaganda about 'foreign conspiracies' targeting it. It is not rational to think that the majority of the Arab and Western countries are conspiring against the regime. The regime pushed matters too far, which opened the door to intervention by regional powers, Europe, and of course the Arab League. The regime is silent when foreign intervention comes from Iran or Russia, but it objects profusely if it is comes from the West or the Arabs." "There are few states that are not interfering in Syria's affairs today. If the regime continues the same policies, the crisis will result in more foreign interference, and the opposition must manage this by upholding Syria's interests." Nahar emphasised the distinction between national sovereignty and the rule of the incumbent regime, which is something that the regime has been trying to confuse. "Over the past four decades, Syria was never a 'national state' in the proper sense of the term. It was not even really a genuine state at all because it had been reduced to a state ruled by the incumbent regime. As a result, it was only logical to see 'national sovereignty' reduced to 'regime sovereignty' to the benefit of the regime." Nahar, who was forced to leave Syria after his detention by Syrian intelligence soon after the start of the revolution, believes that "protecting civilians" could be a political obfuscation even if it is also a human right. "Calling for foreign intervention to protect the people of Syria from being killed is an ethical demand that is not subject to political considerations: it is an inherent right of every people, like asking for international aid after a natural disaster. In such cases, international humanitarian law should be applied to help protect civilians, on the condition that this is in the interests of the people and of the unity of the country." "We must not forget what happened in Libya when considering events in Syria. We should certainly apply the principle of 'protecting civilians', introduced at the UN and into international law in 2005, but we should also take Syria's special situation into consideration. Since applying this principle is a sensitive matter, we need to find some new way of applying it to prevent the regime from continuing its tyranny while avoiding direct foreign military intervention as was the case in Libya. We must also look into more effective means of imposing economic and political sanctions." In Nahar's view the slogan, "no to dialogue," promoted by some opposition forces, is "naïve and shallow". Over the past 40 years of its existence, the Syrian regime has never proposed dialogue, he says. "Even two weeks before the revolution took off, the president was announcing political reforms that would take a decade to implement. The problem is that the regime has lost all credibility on the issue of dialogue, and it is dealing with the matter as if it owned the country and its citizens. Dialogue in the mind of the regime means allowing things to take place as long as it remains in power, which means transitioning from authoritarianism to a kind of empty pluralism." "The opposition inside Syria presented its vision for dialogue at the beginning of the revolution, summarising it in eight points: stopping the killings, withdrawing the army, releasing prisoners, stopping the state media campaigns against the protesters, lifting the Emergency Law, prosecuting those responsible for killing demonstrators and allowing the media and human rights committees to enter the country's towns and cities, guaranteeing the right to peaceful demonstrations and launching a political solution by recognising the right to share power." "Dialogue means negotiation, and negotiation means respecting the balance of power. The regime will never agree to genuine dialogue that will lead to the building of a new Syria, unless its authority is truly threatened." Nahar was reluctant to try to predict the future, but he summarised certain possibilities. "In politics, everything is possible, but what is certain is that the regime will be condemned by history, which means that its ouster is only a matter of time. This is not just my personal view. It is the case because the regime's ideological underpinning has collapsed, such as its being the 'leading party of state and society,' and so on." "The fear that the regime once planted in the hearts and minds of the Syrian people has gone, and everyone now sees the regime for what it is -- an oppressive system rooted in nepotism that promotes corruption and has no morals. The regime can not continue in power if its legitimacy is based only on military power. This poses an important question: how can the regime exit the scene leaving the least damage behind it and avoiding the country's disintegration into chaos once it is removed." "It is the duty of every Syrian to try to find an answer to this question."
