As the Syrian crisis deepens and as the sectarian conflict intensifies among the various components of society, the extent of the responsibility - that should be held by all the different factions of the Syrian opposition for the sake of the country's future of - becomes more crucial. If we assume that the current Syrian regime is history, and regardless of how the current conflict will end, it becomes logical for us to consider that the Syrian opposition is faced by a major burden, as a result of the destruction induced by the regime to the country's internal structure. This was achieved through the inciting sects, tribes, and cities against one another through an open game, the purpose of which being to turn the conflict from one between the regime and the citizens, into one between the citizens themselves. This is exactly what the regime is doing with the opposition factions, inciting factions against one another. This is taking place as part of an attempt to suggest that the regime has finally discovered the advantages of the internal opposition, but that fears the so-called external opposition. The regime further accuses the external opposition of deriving its power from Western interests (the American and Turkish ones specifically!) In addition to the opposition's responsibility in restoring internal unity – which seems to be a very hard task in light of the current situation in the Syrian cities – there is also the responsibility of re-building the Syrian relations with two main neighbors, Iraq and Lebanon. These relations had been sabotaged by the Al-Assad regime by turning the relationship, which was supposed to be normal, between Damascus on one hand and Baghdad and Beirut on the other hand, into an opportunistic relationship based on the internal contradictions in both two countries. The regime also fueled those internal contradictions and used them to serve the policy of possessing “foreign cards” of the external “cards” in which the regime took pride. In Lebanon, the regime unjustly hurt the image of the Syrian population in the eyes of most Lebanese through the role played by its security officials over thirty years. The Lebanese had to finally discover the real image of these free people only recently, people who were not afraid to take to the streets in order to demand their dignity back despite the threat of death. And in Iraq, the Syrian regime abused the role that Syria should have played there following the occupation, by fueling the sectarian conflict and publicly supporting the terrorist groups. The latter served to protract the civil war and led to the fall of dozens of thousands Iraqis, which is a significantly bigger number than that of the fallen American occupation soldiers. Many points are to the credit of the Syrian opposition so far. Indeed, its political discourse and its approach greatly differ from the methods that the Libyan opposition has recently reverted to. They also differ from the methods of the Iraq opposition although the goals in the three cases were the same: to topple the regimes in Tripoli, Baghdad, and Damascus. In this context, one must commend the latest statements of Bourhan Ghalyoun, who spoke about the need to preserve the institutions of the Syrian state, to avoid confrontation between the dissidents and the Syrian army members, and the importance of maintaining the peaceful nature of the revolution. These statements indicate an earnest feeling of responsibility from the part of a major faction in the opposition that does know how to differentiate between the regime and the state and between the figure of the leader and the sanctity of the nation. This opposition is announcing that it is not against Syria just because it is against the regime that it wants to topple. Despite its determination on uprooting this regime, it realizes that the way to do that is not to push Syria towards a civil war, or through depending on foreign military intervention. Most of the opposition sides do realize the dangers of the foreign intervention on the future of Syria and its internal cohesion, not to speak about the threats of this intervention to the security of the entire region. Thus, the Syrian opposition is adamant on not following the Iraqi or Libyan models in order to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Thus, we find ourselves in front of this paradox where the regime is accusing the opposition of seeking external protectionو while it is deriving its power in confronting them from the Russian and Chinese vetoes. Meanwhile, the opposition - which shares with the Western countries the goal of establishing a democratic regime in Damascus – is publicly rejecting armed western intervention in Syria similarly to Libya and Iraq. The opposition's external campaign only consisted of asking these countries to find a way to prevent the killing machine from killing the civilians and working on toppling the regime with the least amount of losses and all the while preserving the unity of the country.
