In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [70]
On February 18, the transitional committee began work on the formation of a fifty-member national council, with representatives from all of Syria’s fourteen governorates. Its members were scheduled to be announced on April 6.
Both the Syrian government and Washington responded to the Damascus Declaration selectively. The regime gave Abdel-Azim considerable leeway in carrying out the accord’s activities, despite the fact that the regime’s nemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood, was one of the declaration’s primary supporters. Drafts of a new parties law that made their way around Damascus indicated that the regime was not making much space for opposition parties. Syrian political commentator Sami Moubayed, who had seen drafts of the law, reported that while the parties law would be issued within the month, it would not accept parties whose “behavior is opposed to the Revolution of March 8 [the day the Baath took power].” Parties that were “chaotic, terrorist, fascist, theocratic, religious, ethnic, sectarian, tribal, etc.” would be denied license—leaving little room for many of Syria’s opposition parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Kurds, to formally join political life. Not surprisingly, foreign funding was strictly forbidden as well.3
The regime then began going after outspoken declaration members to force the opposition to toe the nationalist line. Riad Seif, who was released from prison on January 18—the very day that the transitional committee on which he now sits was formed—bore the brunt of regime harassment.
“On February 14 [the first anniversary of Hariri’s assassination], there was a decision to contain all the Syrian opposition,” Seif said. “I am one of the primary names on the Damascus Declaration, so they arrested me again.”
He was released the next day. On March 12, during a rally supporting Kurdish rights, the same thing happened. “If they arrest and hold me, I will be a hero, and they don’t want that. They cannot get rid of me other ways, because that would be costly. So they try to scare me so that I am unable to think,” said Seif, whose son disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1996. “They warned me not to talk to foreigners or diplomats. They follow me everywhere. They tell my neighbors not to talk to me. I was less isolated in jail.”
The problem, according to Abdel-Azim, was a stark contradiction between the leadership’s words and the regime’s actions. “In his last two speeches, the president said the national opposition that doesn’t take foreign funding should be respected,” Abdel-Azim said. “But on the street, two days later, they call us traitors and beat us.”
Washington struggled to find ways to handle the Damascus Declaration as well, especially in light of the rising Syrian nationalist sentiments resulting from the US occupation of Iraq, Washington’s strong alliance with Israel, and the Hariri investigation.
“I told the Americans that they will get more credibility if they focus on corruption and the regime’s crimes in the 1980s,” Nashar said, following his return from the Washington conference. “On these issues the regime cannot defend itself…. The human rights associations have a lot of files [on corruption and human rights abuses]. If America concentrates on this, Syrians will emerge from fear. Look at what happened in Lebanon. Do you think that a million Lebanese could have protested on March 14, 2005, [demanding Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon] without international cover?”
Perhaps with Nashar’s nuanced advice in mind, on February 18, the same day that work on the declaration’s national council began, Washington announced that five million dollars from the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) would be earmarked “to accelerate the work of reformers,” including “build[ing] up Syrian civil society and supporting] organizations promoting democratic