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Ayoon Wa Azan (The Opportunity Presented On A Platter)
Published in AL HAYAT on 27 - 05 - 2011

My topic today is Syria. However, I was surprised by the comments on my article last Monday about the caliphate in Islam. As many readers objected to what I wrote, then I must have made a mistake in expression, but I did not intend to offend or provoke any confusion, especially as I am a founding member of the Dialogue of Islam and the West, and have been active in it for thirty years now, and the rightly-guided Caliphs are indeed a good example and a beacon of wisdom.
I now return to the issue of Syria and my article focusing on it.
Syria is currently going through a crisis, and I have many observations, questions, ideas and suggestions of relevance.
- Has Syria reached the point of no-return in what regards the relationship between the regime and the people?
- President Bashar al-Assad has lost in two months everything he achieved for the presidency and his country in ten years. There were many countries and actors waiting for an opportunity to pounce on Syria, and indeed, the opportunity was presented to them on a platter.
- Everyone is now saying that if President Hosni Mubarak said what he said on January 25 a few days earlier only, he would not have met the fate he met on February 11. Now, we hear that if President Bashar al-Assad included in his speech before the Syrian People's Assembly, on March 30, a program for reform, Syria would not have confronted the subsequent incidents which are ongoing and ever worsening.
- A reform program encompassing several points with a timetable for execution would have prevented an explosion.
- Assuming there are ‘elements of sedition', ‘armed gangs', and ‘criminals', we ask, were the Syrian authorities surprised to discover the existence of such groups? The Syrian security services are deservedly renowned for being aware of everything going on in the country, so the question is, why did the authorities not preempt the movements of the extremist groups?
- The answer to this is that there is unprecedented political and security failure in a county led by a young doctor, and whose security forces are the mainstay of the regime.
- Even if we assume for the sake of argument that everything the authorities are purporting about the armed gangs and the advocates of strife and crime is true, the fact remains that there are very legitimate popular demands, and achieving these is impossible if the situation does not calm down and if security does not prevail.
- The Arab Socialist Baath Party is dead and this is not regrettable. However, its death was not officially announced, and allowing real freedom for political parties will revive political life in Syria.
- President Bashar al-Assad came from the Baath Party and the old political and security establishment, but he did not govern through this or that, or even the emergency law. Instead, he gradually gained immense popularity by talking about reforming the economy and fighting corruption, something that gave people hope for a better future.
- No meeting I had with Dr. Bashar before he became a president failed to tackle the issue of measures to liberalize the Syrian economy and fighting corruption. In truth, I have read or heard many of the slogans raised by the protesters being uttered by the president a year or several years ago as being his established policy.
- If Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Jordan lose the economic achievements, and bilateral and multilateral partnerships because of the political unrest, then the people will lose and will be setback by years and years.
- Again I ask, did Syria reach a dead end relative to the relationship between the regime and the people?
- I propose a grace period […] meaning a truce or a warrior's break that would last six months starting with the cessation of protests of all kind and with the prosecution of the security officers who killed protesters, and culminating with a program of reform put forward by the president consisting of specific points or items linked to a timetable for gradual execution, item after item.
- If intentions become benevolent and if the execution is sincere, then the president would regain the popularity he lost in the past two months.
- The easing of the domestic situation will mean thwarting the bid by Syria's enemies abroad to continue their siege and sanctions. It is in hard times that one knows who their enemies are and who their friends are.
- The other option is the destruction of Syria in a confrontation that has a lose-lose outcome. The regime will not triumph over the people, and the people will not triumph over the regime. The solution is a win-win agreement that would prevent a civil war that the people fear the mere mention of (like how ordinary people refer to cancer as ‘that disease').
The above means that both sides will not get everything they want, and insisting on all or nothing is a sure path to destruction.
- The situation is so bad that I'm talking about “sides” in a country whose government is supposed to represent the people, and where both should be the same side.
- Brothers, try a grace period…
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