April 20, 2012 -- Updated 1211 GMT (2011 HKT)
An anti-Syria government protester with a pre-Baath Syrian flag, which has been adopted by the opposition movement.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Randa Slim: The peace plan for Syria proposed by Kofi Annan is doomed to fail
- Slim: After more than a year of uprisings, Syria is still stuck in a violent stalemate
- She says one possible game changer is if the protests in Syria become more widespread
- Slim: Members in local councils are Syria's best hope for future leadership
Editor's note: Randa Slim is a scholar at the Middle East Institute and a research fellow at the New America Foundation. Follow her on Twitter.
(CNN) -- The six-point peace plan for Syria proposed
by Kofi Annan is doomed to fail for one simple reason: Neither
President Bashar al-Assad nor the government opposition is interested in
making it work.
For al-Assad, full
implementation of the plan, which includes a political settlement
through dialogue and respect for the rights of citizens to demonstrate
peacefully, will bring an end to his regime. From the onset of the
uprisings, his government knew that a repeat of the protests in Egypt's
Tahrir Square or Bahrain's Pearl Square in Damascus or Aleppo will mean
regime change. Al-Assad and his inner circle are not about to create
conditions that are conducive for such sit-ins just because the Annan
plan calls on them to do so.
For the opposition
groups, Annan could spend all the time he wants on negotiations, but any
talks not predicated on al-Assad's stepping aside will not be
acceptable. The activists who are spearheading Syria's revolution insist
that the opposition exile leadership has a limited mandate and that is
to discuss details for the transfer of power from the Assad family to
the opposition.
Randa Slim
The bottom line is that
the two main protagonists in the conflict look at the Annan plan as a
means to achieve their respective, mutually exclusive objectives.
By agreeing to the Annan
plan, al-Assad pursues a dual-track strategy: He appeases his Russian
and Iranian allies, who have been pressuring him to accept a political
solution, while working to kill his way out of the crisis under the
pretext that he is confronting "armed terrorists and gangs."
The opposition wants the
cease-fire in order to field mass protests. As one activist from Hama
put it to me recently: "We don't need military intervention, we don't
need humanitarian corridors, we don't need safe areas. Enforce the
cease-fire and millions will march toward the presidential palace
demanding Assad's ouster."
After more than a year of
uprisings, Syria is still stuck in a violent stalemate. Al-Assad has
not been able to crush the opposition, and opposition seems nowhere near
to dislodging al-Assad. Increasingly, the conflict is being framed in
existential terms, with some involved becoming more radicalized.
The majority of Alawites
believe their physical survival is at stake, because they are convinced
al-Assad's demise will engender wide-scale revenge killings on them.
Hence, they will not accept a solution that will produce a new regime in
which they are not guaranteed a leading role. Similarly, the opposition
groups believe that if they stop now and al-Assad remains in power, he
will hunt them down.
Absent a game changer
that will tip the balance in favor of one side or the other, the crisis
in Syria will become a full-blown sectarian war pitting Sunnis against
Alawites, which will likely spill over into the neighboring countries of
Iraq and Lebanon.
Although military
options have been considered by the West, it's hard to say whether that
would make a difference in reversing the dynamics in the country. A
military operation might cause a regional war involving Turkey, Saudi
Arabia and Iran, with each country supporting its allies in Syria.
For now, Iran's Supreme
Leader has cast his support firmly with al-Assad. A well-informed
Iranian source told me that the Iranian regime will support al-Assad no
matter what until the end. On the other hand, Russia's Syria policy
seems to be in flux judging by its vote in the United Nations recently.
It's too early to tell whether Russia will ease al-Assad out the way
Saudi Arabia did in the case of Yemen's Abdullah Saleh. Russia and Iran
will probably not abandon al-Assad until they are part of the
deal-making process about Syria's future government.
One possible game changer is if the protest movement in Syria becomes widespread and covers large stretches of the country.
To date, only four of
Syria's 14 governorates constitute the major hubs of the protest
movement: Homs, Hama, Idlib and Daraa. While we have seen protests in
other regions, they have not been as sustained and extensive as those in
the four governorates. This is partly due to the state of fragmentation
in the opposition ranks, especially among the exile groups, which do
not inspire confidence among fence-sitters.
Although large segments
of fence-sitters including businessmen have come around to supporting
the opposition, many remain ambivalent because they doubt the opposition
will succeed in overthrowing al-Assad. This perception is reinforced by
the fact that Annan's plan does not call for al-Assad to step down -- a
detail that is not missed by the Assad regime propaganda machine.
While the exile
opposition remains divided, there are hopeful signs that the opposition
ranks within Syria are becoming better organized, better trained and
gaining legitimacy.
The future leaders of
Syria will not come from the Syrian National Council or the National
Coordination Committee for Change; they will emerge from the ranks of
the revolutionary councils that are forming in different parts of the
country.
These councils bring
together an eclectic mix of the most active local coordinating
committees, independent activists, community and business leaders and
military defectors. They are putting in place an administrative
infrastructure that is akin to a local provincial council, handling
everything from media affairs to helping families who lost their homes
to providing legal aid to jailed activists. They are also coordinating
with each other to protect relief supply lines that cross their
respective territories. In the process, the leaders in these councils,
who hail from Syria's different religious and ethnic groups, are
developing political skills, cultivating local constituencies and
learning through trial and error the business of governing.
In a country that is
increasingly polarized along sectarian and ethnic lines, these councils
can perhaps provide the glue that keeps the country stitched together.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Randa Slim.
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