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3 China
sits out Syria regime change tango By Peter Lee
The Brotherhood's best
hope for a major, indeed dominant political role
inside Syria requires regime collapse and the
exploitation of the Brotherhood's superior
discipline and organization in the ensuing chaos
to establish itself as the voice of conservative,
orthodox Sunni Islam (the dominant confession in
Syria) as their associates did so successfully
(and to the chagrin of many secularly-inclined
liberals) in Egypt.
Despite its lack of a
Syrian presence and its apparently sectarian
character, the SNC has been recognized as "the
legitimate interlocutor of the Syrian people" by
16 governments, including the United States,
several European Union countries, and several Arab
states. [4]
Reading between the lines,
however, most countries are anxiously
trying to reconcile
their desire to see Assad fall with a queasy
awareness that the SNC is perhaps a sectarian,
Islamist train wreck ready to happen. The only
authority to give the SNC full recognition is the
similarly named (and equally shaky), the Libyan
National Council. The rest of the 16 nations have
offered vigorous lip service to the SNC in an
effort to buttress its prestige, but have as yet
declined to recognize it as the legitimate voice
of the Syrian people.
It seems the main
function of the SNC is to vocally implore - and
thereby justify - foreign intervention in Syria.
Though unheard in the West, there are
other opposition groups that don't share the
Muslim Brotherhood's maximalist rejection of
negotiation with the Assad regime.
The
main in-country dissident organization, the
National Coordination Committee (NCC), accepts a
platform of negotiations with Assad. In fact, the
head of the SNC, Burhan Ghalioun, attempted to
achieve a unified opposition with a significant
presence both inside and outside Syria by allying
with the NCC.
Justin Vela describes the
outcome of Ghalioun's attempt to abandon the
no-negotiation/foreign-intervention franchise in
favor of a broad-based movement:
One particularly damaging stumble
occurred when SNC Chairman Burhan Ghalioun
signed a draft agreement with the National
Coordination Committee, a Syrian opposition
group largely based inside the country, in an
attempt to unite the two groups. The agreement
rejected foreign military intervention and
called for dialogue with the regime, conditions
that infuriated many Syrian activists. In the
face of widespread opposition, Ghalioun backed
away from the agreement.
China
weighs options China has, for the most
part, let Russia take a leadership role in making
the anti-regime-change case for Syria. However, on
February 4, China's Global Times posted an op-ed,
"Third Path" for Syria, which laid out a vision
for a resolution of the Syrian crisis that called
for compromise - and an active role for China:
History shows regime changes in
restive regions mean endless turmoil and
uncertainty. Therefore the Syrian opposition
does not need to be that ambitious. Threats
against al-Assad will persist as they always
have. Compromises on critical issues in exchange
for a "soft landing" of his country seem to be a
good deal for him. [5]
Interestingly,
the article - which may not represent a formal
policy of the Chinese government but undoubtedly
represents at the very least the informed view of
a faction within it - hinted at a decoupling from
Russia's approach, seemingly characterizing
Russia, but not China, as a die-hard supporter of
Assad.
[A]l-Assad is backed by the
Russians. If a war between Western and Russian
"agents" occurs in Syria, as is speculated to
happen by some in the European media, it would
be an arduous and prolonged battle ... China is
obviously seeking to assume an active role. The
busiest mediators on the world stage are not
necessarily stronger than China.
Russia
can be an ally in advocating a "third path".
[6]
The Global Times op-ed can be
regarded as a warning to Russia, which, through
its vigorous and vocal defense of the Assad
regime, has become identified as its uncritical
and committed ally.
More importantly, it
presented China not only as an impartial mediator,
a role that Russia had sacrificed; it stated that
China's willingness, in contrast with its usual
abhorrence of "interference in the affairs of
sovereign states", to "assume an active role", and
even have Russia follow its lead.
Statements of Wen Jiabao also fed into
this narrative:
"On the issue of Syria, what is most
urgent and pressing now is to prevent war and
chaos so that the Syrian people will be free
from even greater suffering," Wen told a press
conference after a China-EU summit in Beijing on
Tuesday.
"To achieve this goal, China
supports all efforts in consistence with the UN
charter and principles, and we are ready to
strengthen communication with all parties in
Syria and the international community and
continue to play a constructive role," Wen said,
adding that China would "absolutely not protect
any party, including the Syrian government",
Chinese media reported.
Contrary to
the wishful thinking of Western observers, Wen is
not signaling that he is ready to throw Assad
under the bus. Rather, China is trying to save
Assad - or, more accurately, promote a peaceful,
incremental resolution to the Syrian crisis that
leaves the current power structure reformed but to
a significant degree intact - by positioning
itself as an honest broker in the dispute.
Differences in the Russian and Chinese
approaches can be seen in the choice of
interlocutors among the non-SNC opposition.
Russia, with deeper ties to the current
regime, appears to be placing its hopes for
political resolution of the crisis on the
"patriotic opposition", a collection of 11 small
parties closely associated with the Ba'ath Party
and allowed to function even under the restrictive
Section 8 of the current Syrian constitution.
In an article written in January 2012, a
Russian journalist described a certain amount of
political ferment he observed during a recent trip
to Syria:
At present there are three main
trends in the Syrian patriotic opposition -
democratic, liberal and left, which is mainly a
communist one. The Syrian Social Nationalist
Party is the most influential party among the
democratic forces ... the party's program is
more conservative in comparison with the
Ba'ath's program. Nevertheless there are no
differences of principle between the two parties
...
The liberal trend of the opposition
is represented by the recently registered
secular democratic social movement led by Nabil
Feysal ... He is an outright opponent of the
Islamic fundamentalism, [a] supporter of the
liberal democracy. His goal is to turn Syria
into "Middle Eastern Denmark".
The
National Committee for the Unity of Syrian
Communists is the most influential component of
the left (communist) trend of the opposition
within the country ... headed by Qadri Jamil, a
prominent Syrian economist and the professor at
the Damascus University. He is the only
representative of the opposition who entered the
committee on the design of the new constitution
... [7]
It is not difficult to
characterize these political parties (including
one that defines itself as "more conservative than
the Ba'ath" and having "no differences of
principle" with the ruling party) as part of the
regime's strategy to hopelessly muddy the
opposition waters and retain the upper hand in a
multi-party environment.
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