There is a question that makes everyone from the Syrian opposition who is asked it stutter. What is required from abroad in order to protect the peaceful demonstrators who are demanding regime change in Damascus? With the exception of a very small minority, some of whose intentions fall under suspicion when they ask for direct foreign military intervention against Syrian troops to force them to stop targeting civilians, the opposition, in the various formal bodies it is comprised of, has not yet formulated a stance on this issue that would allow for the protection of civilians to be translated on the ground, and for keeping the killing machine at bay. Foreign pleas, including Arab ones, to Syrian authorities to stop making use of force against civilians, as well as the economic measures taken by the West which aimed to pressure the regime to prevent it from continuing to make use of violence, have not affected the choice of the security solution. In other words, foreign political and economic pressures have not yet protected Syrian civilians from the regime's use of force. Here lies the predicament faced by the opposition, which has not yet been able to lay down a vision that could stop the killing machine. And it is perhaps precisely this issue that is still pressuring the opposition and its different formal bodies, within Syria and abroad. Indeed, the meaning of any material foreign intervention, military or otherwise, such as establishing a buffer zone, becomes mixed with the meaning of patriotism and sovereignty, which would if they were to be jeopardized strip the opposition of all credibility. Moreover, such intervention would, after the dual Russian-Chinese veto at the Security Council against a draft resolution for putting a stop to the violence in Syria, fall outside the scope of any international legitimacy. Consequently, unilateral action is highly unlikely to be engaged in by anyone, after the experiences of Iraq and Libya. That is what is making it difficult for the opposition to make a decision, as it falls between the hammer of ongoing and excessive violence against its supporters and the anvil of its obsession with protecting those supporters, reaching up to meeting the demands for change. Today, the opposition's Syrian National Council (SNC) is supposed to complete building its structure at the Cairo meeting. Yet, in spite of the support it has received from the interior, and from the demonstrators and protesters, it will not turn into the vessel of opposition activity. Indeed, there are voices and influential formal bodies in the domestic opposition that still have apprehensions, fundamentally, about the issue of their relationship with foreign powers and the possibility of them allowing for some kind of intervention. And if it is understandable for domestic opposition figures to stress their rejection of such intervention in any of its forms, by virtue of the weight of the regime's security theory about a “foreign conspiracy”, they themselves have meanwhile offered nothing that could be an alternative in order to protect civilians. In fact, some of them have voiced reservations over the conferences and meetings being held abroad, not just to declare their rejection of foreign interference, but also because of reservations over the political method for how to change the regime. And here lies another paradox, regarding changing the regime through dialogue or changing it through the protest movement and escalating it – which weakens the two methods at the same time, especially as no one considers that the reforms that were officially announced could form the basis for dialogue that would lead to the required change. Similarly, wagering on a popular movement that enjoys no protection will exhaust the opposition's supporters. It is clear that demanding that the charter of the United Nations and conventions on human rights and the rights of citizens be applied in Syria will not affect the formula being faced daily by the Syrian people. Such a formula is in fact in danger of becoming a routine one, in which the number of civilians killed becomes meaningless. It is also clear that the regime will not back down on its choice of resolving the situation through security means. This is why there will be no guaranteed protection of protesters unless it takes place through a joint effort by the opposition, whether in terms of political slogans, of its general method for dealing with the authorities, or of broadening the movement of protests. The condition for this will be to abandon some of its reservations, in both this and that aspect, and to consider that the one battle requires unified work, in order to place the greatest weight possible on the regime to wear out its killing machine and exhaust it.
