30 | Syria Transition Roadmap . . . Why?
historic military victory against Muammar Gaddafi and his militias. Nevertheless, predicting Syria’s future was no easy or simple task. The fragmentation within the Syrian opposition appeared both inside and outside Syria. After forty years of single-family rule, the political vacuum inside Syria was so vast that the divided Syrian opposition found it difficult to reach a consensus on matters concerning representation, leadership, and building a common vision, in addition to future planning for building a new Syria. This was in spite of the fact that the various opposition groups, such as the Syrian National Council and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Oppositions Forces, were holding several conferences. The conferences discussed government reform and the demand for putting an end to the Assad regime—however, no group succeeded in including and representing all the ethnic, religious, cultural, and political groups; nor did any group succeed in proposing a detailed plan for Syria’s future. The Syrian National Council presented its vision for the transition phase of the new Syria, as it called it, in April 2012.1 It was completely general, focusing only on the political and economic aspects and the revolution’s main demand, which was President Bashar al-Assad’s departure, but it did develop a number of basic principles for the transition phase, with which the Syrian Expert House’s recommendations somewhat intersect. Thereafter, in July 2012 the political opposition in Cairo agreed on what it called “The Joint Political Vision for the Features of the Transition Phase,” as approved by the Syrian Opposition Conference held under the patronage of the Arab League.2 All conference participants agreed upon this document. However, the document included several highly general and theoretical visions that faded into history after the changes and transformations the Syrian revolution witnessed on the ground. The Day After Organization worked on a broader project that presented a detailed vision for a post-Assad Syria in the areas of law, transition justice, and security-sector reform, and that outlined possible foundations for the electoral and constitutional
systems.3 In spite of the generality, as compared with the Syrian National Council’s vision, nevertheless, and by virtue of the limitation of Syrian participants in its workshops, the final report was more like recommendations submitted from other countries that had undergone transition periods similar to Syria’s, without acknowledging the deep differences in the historical, social, and political context. Afterward, a group of Syrians spearheaded by the former Syrian deputy prime minister Abdulla al-Dardari, through the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in Beirut, developed what they called the “national plan for Syria’s future.”4 However, it focused primarily on reconstruction and economic reform for the period after the crisis, as al-Dardari called it, and barely mentioned the major political issues for which the Syrian revolution began. The need to find a unified and inclusive vision that would be representative of all Syrians after Assad became a clear priority. Previous projects had played a role in building up this vision. In addition, some of the political parties, local councils, and revolutionary forces presented their own ideas and initiatives. However, there would need to be practical plans, through which the Syrian people could better express their point of view vis-à-vis building a free Syria, without benefiting any one tribal, sectarian, or political affiliation at the expense of another. There would need to be a realistic visualization that could convince all Syrians that the transition phase, despite its long duration, would finally lead them to the freedom, dignity, and democracy for which they strive. The internal transformations, which overtook the countries of the Arab Spring after the revolutions, especially in Egypt, clearly indicate the necessity of a common vision among all political currents on the democratic transition plan, without which the country is vulnerable to chaos and subject to co-optation on the part of extremist or antidemocratic forces. Starting from this reality, in the summer of 2012 the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies (SCPSS) began work with the goal of putting forth an inclusive project, with a vision to develop the work of the Syrian opposition in its confrontation with the