Liking the opposition in Syria

Yesterday, 566 more people in Syria lost their lives as a result of attacks by warplanes, tanks and Scud missiles of army units loyal to Assad. The day before, hundreds, and the day before that, again hundreds, lost their lives as a result of this regime's attacks. Probably tomorrow and the day after, these attacks of the Assad regime will continue and hundreds of people will again fall to the earth. Among these people there are perhaps people who have rebelled against Assad and are fighting. But it is surely not possible that so many people are fighters, for nearly as many people as the Syrian army itself have died in the attacks up to this hour. From this hour on, it is not known which mind or conscience still takes it seriously, but one defence that Assad and his supporters cling to is that he is ultimately exercising the right of legitimate defence against the armed activities of a minority terrorist group backed from outside.

These theses, which Assad puts forward as if deceiving a small child, unfortunately deceive no one, yet there is no shortage of those who wish to be deceived by them. In the end, the US and European fronts, which seemingly have been insistent from the beginning on Assad's departure, are seen lately to be clinging more and more to the pretext of "anti-Assad extreme Islamists". At this point, it is understood that Assad, who is committing so many massacres and crimes, is still more tolerable to them than the Syrian people. These concerns were openly expressed at the Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul as well. It seems that care is being taken, in particular, that the support envisaged for the opposition still does not reach the point of delivering the deadly blow to the Assad regime.

To be frank, the Syrian people, who have no concern other than defending their threatened lives and their trampled honour and fighting for that cause, are not seen by some as an alternative to Assad. In fact, this in itself should be a lesson of admonition for those who, since the revolutionary process in Syria began, have tried to stain it as an American or foreign-power conspiracy.

The revolutionary process in Syria has, in the true sense, no support or actor other than the Syrian people. A resistance based on external motivation could in any case neither have reached these dimensions nor continued. While hundreds die every day, the regime's calculation was that it could crush the resistance facing it with its massacres and excessive violence. Yet every move of violence it applied created a greater sense of resistance in the Syrian people, who are devoted to their honour.

We must say that those who explain the resistance simply by Salafi or al-Qaeda elements coming from outside are, at best, entirely alien to the nature of what is going on in Syria, and, of course, with a more widespread and accurate likelihood, are still busy distorting the event in hope.

The al-Nusra Front, which there are insistent attempts to place on the terrorist list, and the other brigades, whatever their names, are movements that emerged from the very fabric of the Syrian people in the revolutionary process. The single motivation of all of them is nothing other than the anger that has accumulated against the regime's murders, rapes and humiliations.

As the international community remains insensitive to what they are suffering, and consequently as the environment of conflict is prolonged, there is no need to be surprised at all that these movements are becoming ever more radicalised. We even have to see something beyond that: as initiatives on the path to a solution are delayed, the ties between the elements resisting on the ground and the coalitions, opposition and other diplomatic formations formed outside Syria are steadily diminishing, even severing. In this situation, it is child's play to reach a point where, whatever the coalition or national council that represents Syria internationally decides and however, it has no importance and no capacity for representation left.

The US and Western powers may dislike the existing real opposition in Syria and find interlocutors they can like, but since this opposition could have no capacity for representation, it would serve nothing other than to deepen the problem rather than solve it. Everyone needs to see that the opposition they dislike, that is, the Syrian revolutionaries, are the real people of Syria. But if the aim is to condemn Syria to constant instability, to keep it in a chaotic environment from which it can never recover, then it must be admitted that this is being successfully achieved by this way.

However, I would recommend that they also take into account that the revolutionary will formed in the Syrian people on this matter can no longer be stopped and that nothing else can be substituted for it.

Against the regime's brutal, merciless killing of hundreds of people every day, there is a popular uprising that does not step back at all, clings to the resistance with greater obstinacy, and has completely overcome the wall of fear. I fear that those who are late in deciding on this matter, who are busy harbouring hesitations about what is going on, will be left with no share other than complicity in this crime.