Competition Heading Towards Damascus:
The Fall Of The Syrian Regime In Its Final Days Not
Easy
01 August 2012By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed
The race to inherit power after the fall of the al-Assad
regime has accelerated after signs of its fall became
clear to everyone, even its allies: The Doha meeting,
the statements from Riyadh, the call from Rome, the
clashes on the border with Jordan, Turkey's threat
that it would intervene to confront the separatist PKK
on its border with Syria, in addition to the political
and military revolutionary blocs both inside and
outside Syria.
The fall of the Syrian regime in its final days will
not be easy, as some had imagined, and the inheritance
of power will be even more difficult than the scene we
are currently facing. Everyone is possessed by a
desire to move Syria onwards to a different future,
and bid farewell to four decades of iron-fisted rule,
with the exception perhaps of the "Syrian dissidents"
who met in Rome [to call for a political solution to
the crisis], the affiliates of the regime and some of
its symbols that have allied with Tehran and Moscow
since last year.
The fear is that this competitive and hasty race
towards Damascus may beget more chaos, and open the
door wide for forces who want to sabotage Syria. Here
I am talking specifically about Iran and its
affiliates. The Syrian groups competing are, in the
most part, nationalistic, and represent different
trends of various internal categories. However, unless
they expand their circles of participation, fall under
one umbrella, accept pluralism and leave it up to the
Syrian citizen to choose between them at a later
stage, they will find themselves bottlenecked at the
regime's hour of exit. Even though the past years of
Syrian rule did not allow us to identify all forces,
this does not mean they were not present. Pluralism
within the Syrian social fabric is an old-established
fact, whether in terms of ideas, politics or
movements.
The Syrian arena is now at the height of its mobility:
there is the Syrian National Council, the Free Syrian
Army, the Democratic Movement, the Muslim Brotherhood,
the Kurdish National Council, the powerful Arab
tribes, the Turkmen movements, the Association of
Syrian Ulama, the Coalition of Secular and Democratic
Syrians, the historical families such as al-Shishakli
and al-Atassi, and of course the coordinators and the
various revolutionary forces on the ground.
It is too early, of course, to draw a Syrian political
map, but it is not too early for the Syrians to think
about gathering together collectively under a new
flag. From there they can think about mechanisms of
political representation and action, and later the
formation of a government. No one wants the al-Assad
regime to fall only for its formula to remain in
place, i.e. a totalitarian, security-based regime that
abused the Syrians ever since it seized power in the
Baathist coup of 1963. The only safe choice to avoid
the risk of a vacuum in the post-Assad phase is a
broad umbrella that accommodates everyone, leaving the
majority of the Syrian people with the option to
choose later on. It is not a question of settling
scores, but it is about a shared future.
Al Rashed is the general manager of Al -Arabiya
television. He is also the former editor-in-chief of
Asharq Al- Awsat, and the leading Arabic weekly
magazine, Al Majalla. He is also a senior Columnist in
the daily newspapers of Al Madina and Al Bilad. He is
a US post-graduate degree in mass communications. He
has been a guest on many TV current affairs programs.
He is currently based in Dubai.
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