According to a Foreign
Policy article, the aim is to announce a new opposition council on 7
November, a day after the US presidential election. This will replace the
current Syrian National Council, which has weak roots in much of the opposition
movement inside Syria.
The US is reportedly heavily involved in the new
initiative. The summit in Qatar – a Gulf state which allowed American forces to
use an air base to send supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan - follows a New York
meeting in September, when US secretary of state Hilary Clinton (pictured at an earlier summit) met Syrian
activists.
US trying
to shape a ‘proto-parliament’
The two main presidential candidates have been competing
with each other over who is more committed to overthrowing the Assad regime –
and shaping a post-Assad Syria in favour of US interests. In last
week’s televised debate on foreign policy, Republican challenger Mitt
Romney argued for a “form of council that can take a lead in Syria”. It is now
becoming clear that the Obama administration, though incapable of direct
military intervention in Syria, is engineering such a council to ensure any
post-Assad government is closely allied to US interests.
Dozens of Syrian movement representatives are expected to
attend the Doha summit. The US hopes it will become an interim alternative
government to the Assad regime – and potentially a future government. A senior
US official has referred to it as “a proto-parliament”.
Foreign
Policy reports the same US official as saying: "We need to be clear: This
is what the Americans support, and if you want to work with us you are going to
work with this plan and you're going to do this now".
The meeting will be attended by many representatives of
Local Coordination Committees – a crucial component in the grassroots of the
Syrian opposition - in an attempt to broaden the social base of the new
leadership council. These committees have tended to be more hostile to foreign
intervention than the exile-dominated Syrian National Council. The
participation of many such committees, if not all of them, appears to indicate
a growing accommodation with the US.
The US administration will be represented directly at the
Doha summit. Robert Ford, the country’s ambassador to Syria, will attend. He
has already been involved in negotiations over the composition of the new
council. Ford also reportedly held a conference call with several Free Syrian
Army commanders in October.
Civil
war and foreign intervention
What began as a popular uprising against the brutally
authoritarian Assad regime has morphed into civil war. The dynamics of the
Syrian opposition movement, embroiled in fighting Assad’s forces, have
increasingly become influenced by relations with foreign interests: the US and
its allies in the region.
This development is disastrous. It threatens to turn the
Syrian opposition into a proxy for US intervention. There is, however, no
coherent political opposition inside Syria to the trend of working with the US.
The lack of such alternative political leadership, combined with US efforts to
corral the movement in support of its interests, has encouraged this
trajectory.
The US has for some time been forging relationships with
parts of the Syrian movement, to help remove the Assad regime – an ally of Iran
seen as an obstacle to American influence in the region – and to shape what
happens on ‘the day after’ Assad’s removal. Limited in its capacity to directly
intervene - as it did it Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya - it has had to rely on a
range of covert means.
The British government is a reliable ally in this
project. But the US and British governments are no champions of freedom,
democracy and human rights in the Middle East.
We need to campaign
to stop Western intervention in the country, and allow Syrians to determine
their future free of foreign interference.
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