Some observers of the crisis in Syria have sought to divide the opposition to Bashar al-Assad into an "armed opposition" and a "non-violent opposition movement for freedom and democracy, which still rejects calls for military intervention" as Phyllis Bennis does in a recent opinion piece in Al Jazeera.
She sees these as two distinct oppositions movements, one non-violently fighting for freedom and democracy, and another that has taken up arms and "is also responsible for attacks leading to the deaths of civilians" and who knows what they are fighting for.
Even though the opposition to the Assad regime has clearly been growing in the last year, she sees this current state of the opposition as the result of fragmentation:
The opposition was divided from the beginning over whether massive reform or the end of the regime was their goal. It divided further when part of the opposition took up arms, and began calling for international military intervention.Like many observers, she sees this armed opposition as drowning out the non-violent opposition in recent months.
I believe this way of looking at the opposition to Assad is incorrect and historically inaccurate. For 18 months there has been a main opposition to the Assad regime that has been composed of a lot of forces from across the political spectrum of Syrian society. There have always been political differences within the movement and there has been political development within the movement as a whole.
The movement started out as peaceful demonstrations demanding reform, as it did in Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and Egypt in January and February of 2011. There were always revolutionaries with in these movements that thought these demands could never be met by the current dictators and argued for regime change. In all of the movements of the Arab Spring, those demanding regime change gained greater and greater sway in the movement as the regimes met the peaceful protests with violence.
While, no doubt, there are Syrians who were part of this reform movement and left it when the main demand shifted to regime change, I think it is false to portray this as a split in the movement. I think it much more accurate and much more useful to realize that the movement as a whole shifted from being a movement demanding reforms from Assad to one demanding his overthrow. The opposition movement in Syria has grown massive and is united in the demand that Assad must go! Only long time fans of Assad, not members of the original opposition, are still asking him to stick around but just clean up his act.
Likewise, I think it is wrong to suggest that there is a separate and distinct "armed opposition" as opposed to the "non-violent opposition." In the beginning, this "Arab Spring" opposition to Assad was overwhelmingly non-violent. Assad may have been fighting al Qaeda or other "armed terrorist gangs" elsewhere, but he was lying when he used that as an excuse for firing on peaceful protesters on Homs, Hama, Dara and other places.
As Assad followed Qaddafi's lead in applying military power to peaceful protesters, this started to have a powerful effect on the attitude towards non-violence within the movement as a whole. Whereas the movement, even as it started to demand the removal of Assad, continued to stand on the principal of non-violence and non-intervention, this started to change as more and more Syrians were killed by the regime.
The attitude of the opposition movement both towards armed struggle and outside support changed as the revolution developed and was illustrated by massive demonstrations demanding intervention. They named July 29, 2011 "Friday of 'Your Silence Is Killing Us'" and held massive demonstrations across Syria that directed that slogan not only at other Syrians that had yet to join the struggle but to the people of the world as well. The Syria wide mass protests of September 9, 2011 were named the "Friday of International Protection." That was the first time the movement as a whole put forward an explicit demand for foreign intervention. As Assad's violence continued unabated on March 16, 2012 the opposition called the protests the "Friday of Immediate Foreign Intervention." Assad killed 15 protesters on that day. So you see, it is a most shameful falsehood to speak of a "non-violent opposition movement for freedom and democracy, which still rejects calls for military intervention." It lets us off the hook by telling a lie on them.
Damascus Protesters Call for International Protection Now ! Erbeen 9-2-11
Assad sent his troops out to crush the rebellion when it said "Your silence is killing us." From Wikipedia "20 protesters were killed throughout Syria, most notably in Deir ez-Zor, where the government tried to stop mass gatherings" on July 29th. And it was there, at Deir ez-Zor and on that day that a colonel in the Syrian Army defected to the opposition together with hundreds of soldiers to found the Free Syrian Army to protect the protester. So you see, separating the opposition into armed and non-violent camps is ahistorical as well.
The Free Syrian Army developed from soldiers ordered to shoot protesters, soldiers who decided instead that it was their patriotic duty to defend the protesters. They have been joined by formerly peaceful protesters that have now also taken up arms in defense of the revolution. The FSA started out exclusively as a force to defend peaceful protesters but as Assad's attacks continued and grew both in scope and brutality, the FSA has also started conducting offensive operation and while they may or may not have weapons given to them by the CIA or Qatar, it is clear that they have overwhelmingly armed themselves with weapons taken from Assad.
Even though the FSA is getting better weapons, that doesn't justify Phyillis Bennis' attempts to create a false parity between the two forces as she does when she says:
The regime is clearly responsible for more attacks with heavy weapons, including tanks and artillery, but it is also clear that the anti-government forces are being supplied with increasingly heavy weapons"Heavy weapons" is a distinct military category that does include tanks and artillery as well as combat aircrafts. "Increasingly heavy weapons" is no such category. Since the FSA has had to do most of its fighting with AK-47s and they are now getting more RPGs, it can be said that the FSA is getting "increasingly heavy weapons" but that rhetorical flourish doesn't make an RPG equal to a 120mm cannon.
Furthermore, "being supplied" is an underhanded way of implying that the FSA is "being run" by outside agencies without providing any proof. It is by no means "clear that the anti-government forces are being supplied" with weapons by anyone. It is very clear that they are getting more and better weapons, here is a video of the FSA taking over of a Syrian military base and capturing a lot of weapons. Would you call that "being supplied?" More recently we have heard of whole units of the Syrian army defecting with sophisticated anti-tank weapons and manpads. Would you call that "being supplied?" They have even been successful at capturing intact, some of Assad's tanks. Would you call that "being supplied?"
This increased militarization in defense of the people has given the crisis in Syria all the characteristics of a civil war, which is what it has in fact become. But as has been said many times: War is a continuation of politics by violent means. So in assessing the legitimacy of either side of the conflict, its not enough to point out that both sides are "responsible for attacks leading to the deaths of civilians." That is unavoidable by either side in any war. It is much more important to understand what the two sides are fight for, i.e. what policies are being continued.
Assad is attempting to suppress a rebellious population. He has elected to use mass murder as his principal method of doing that and his armed forces as this principle instrument. With canon and aerial bombs he is attacking whole neighborhoods, not just those that oppose him. In response to that the opposition to Assad has developed armed forces of their own, but the mass opposition to Assad continues to grow.
Below the fold are a collection of videos of mass demonstrations in Syria in the past few days. These are the people that are driving this whole process, not NATO or Russia or Assad, and the whole UN diplomatic corp. They are all just reacting to thousands of Syrians in revolt. These protesters are united and have courageously come out to demonstrate knowing it could cost them their lives.
They are united in demanding regime change.
They are united in their support for the Free Syrian Army.
They are united in demanding that the world come to their aid and stop Assad's slaughter.
Please look at these videos and understand that Assad wants these people dead. He will continue to kill as long as they continue to oppose him and they will never stop opposing him.
As long as the diplomacy goes on, so will Assad's slaughter. After eighteen months of his war against his people, those that still think they can "talk" him out of this approach are fools. No, they are worst than fools, when they publicly advocate the continuation of this approach, they become accomplishes of his crimes.
Even though Phyllis Bennis argues "Only diplomacy can stop the war, " she concludes:
The best thing outside powers can do is to move immediately towards serious new diplomacy, in which supporters of both the regime and the armed opposition participate, with the goal of imposing an immediate ceasefire.So after more than a year of the world talking and Assad killing, what she proposes is more of the same, so that eventually, after thousands more Syrians are slaughtered, we can reach "the goal of imposing an immediate ceasefire."
Oh, and what then? Won't that still require a UN Chapter 7 resolution authorizing the use of force? Otherwise just how does she propose that the world impose an immediate ceasefire on Assad and his army, throw blue darter at him?
This is how the civil war in Syrian will be decided. Not by NATO & Russian, and certainly not by opinions on the left. It will be decided by Syrian workers and soldiers turning against their government. Introducing the Miqdad ibn 'Amr Battalion, formed today, July 1, 2012 in the heart of Damascus, Syria.
Syrian protest videos posted online are accompanied by the common refrain "Syrian victims are screaming for your help. Will you answer?" The response from Phyillis Bennis and many other on the left is "Don't bet your life on it."
Minbaj | Aleppo | Evening Protest Demanding Freedom June 29, 2012
(6-30-12) Idlib | Standing in Solidarity With Douma
(06.30.2012) Kafar Sousah | Damascus, Syria | Amazing protests in support of Zamalka and Douma
Another HUGE HUGE protest in Salamiyeh #Syria today funeral of the martyr Ali al-Fakhur
The funeral of the martyr Ali Sadek Alqatrib July 1, 2012
BREAKING NEWS!!! UN to send monitors to Syria AGAIN!!! July 1, 2012
UN will be sending the monitors back to Syria. They will be unarmed and in a small team. Russia agree to this and back the new cease fire that is already under threat. Monitor's will over look the peace plan.
Car bomb kills 85+ at a funeral procession in Zamalka leaving behind a massacre! June 30, 2012
Mon Jul 02, 2012 at 12:41 AM PT: A few more point on the Phyllis Bennis article. She said about the NATO intervention last year:
they were wrong to see the Libyan intervention as a "human rights victory" then, and they are more visibly wrong now. A year later, following the deaths of thousands of Libyans, the now-divided country struggles with out-of-control militias holding thousands of prisoners, with torture, with escalating violence, with continuing attacks on sub-Saharan Africans and other foreigners,It is true that 30,000 Libyans were killed in 2011 after Qaddafi started killing protesters. Thousand were killed by NATO bombs, but most of those were engaged in killing Libyans as part of Qaddafi's gang. According the HRW, NATO killed 72 civilians, the UN has them down as killing 60,
Qaddafi killed 8,000 Libyans in the month before NATO intervened. We can never know how many Libyans Qaddafi would have killed if he had been free to do to Benghazi and Misrata what Assad has been doing to Syrian cities, but all indications are that he would have killed many more than he did and since NATO's mandate was to save human life not assure that Libya had an nice recovery, I think I must be regarded as a big success in that regard.
This should not be taken to mean that I agree with her description of Libya now, I have dealt with this type of slander elsewhere, but my point here is that nation building was not NATO's mandate, saving civilian lives was, and they did do that.
Also one other point, Bennis's bigness fear seems to be:
As the violence escalates in Syria, as more civilians, especially children, are killed, calls for military intervention escalate as well.She is worried that Americans may start to care about what is happening to the people in Syria and demand that something be done. This a sad plight for a leftist, to be worried that the masses may start to show an internationalist sentiments and demand that their government will do the right thing.
This news is breaking as Russian eminent a variety of signals with regards to crucial question of their stand on the future of Assad in Syria with tweets like the one below being the latest.