Apr 19,2012

The Syrian ceasefire supports the status quo: the armed might of the government on one side and the armed opposition factions on the other.

The government cannot eradicate the rebels although it can brutalise them. But neither can the armed opposition hope to topple the government, which retains its popularity in the capital, Damascus, and in many other parts of the country where Shiite Islam and the Alawites are a majority.

Is this what the world wants? Are the members of the UN and its former secretary general, Kofi Annan, who has negotiated this ceasefire, aware of the implications of this?

At first sight, Annan has hardened into place, like a freeze-frame in a film, the conflict as it now stands. If the government retains its position as the superior force, why should it agree to all the other elements of the Annan plan?

It may concede that the International Red Cross can tend to the wounded, but it will never concede bowing to elections in which there is a chance of the opposition winning.

At most, it will allow for some minority representation.

The Annan plan may not even get this far. The Syrian government is quite capable of shooting itself in the foot. So intent is it on inflicting bloodshed that it cannot see that the balance of the advantage offered by the Annan plan tilts in its direction. Hence, its continuous shelling of the city of Homs.

But there is a chink of light for the opposition. It does not lie with the armed factions that make up the Free Syrian Army, which are in effect being neutralised by the Annan initiative. It lies with the large numbers that have protested but have not taken up guns.

If one reads or watches the news reports, one can be forgiven for thinking that the armed militants are the dominant force in the opposition. This is not so. As often happens in conflict zones, the media lead us astray. The media gravitate towards the gun. Quieter forces get only cursory attention.

We saw this in Egypt. Not at first, as there was, as in Tunisia, only nonviolent protest. But later, after president Hosni Mubarak was deposed, some of the demonstrators started throwing stones and petrol bombs at the police. Perhaps there were a hundred or so of them, but this is what the media focussed on for days, to the detriment of the peaceful demonstrators. Fortunately, for reasons unclear, the militants appear to have faded into the background and the recent nonviolent demonstrators are again the focus of the media's lens.

Who knows what would have happened in Libya if there had been nonviolent groups. The guerrillas got all the world's attention. Maybe if the opposition elements who did not want to take up guns had been filmed and interviewed, their numbers might have swelled.

In Yemen, nonviolent demonstrators outnumbered the armed men and had much to do with toppling the regime. In Bahrain, there were only nonviolent protests and they have had some effect, albeit not enough. In Qatar, Al Jazeera television, a nonviolent force for good, has been a crucial element in furthering the Arab Spring.

Back to Syria, the leadership of the nonviolent opposition, the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, convened a meeting in Cairo in February. The forum's stated aim is "to enable the Syrian people to overthrow the current regime with all its symbols by all means of civil resistance". The forum is due to meet again this month.

One member, Rasha Yousef, told the Daily Star of Lebanon that "it's not late for a political solution. In politics we don't say we have one solution. We say we have solutions".

In its statement, the group says it wants to dismantle the current regime "in a way that averts the reproduction of tyranny in another form".

Maan Abdul Salam, another member, argues that "meeting the regime with arms will only push them to use survival instincts -- the gun. But it is much harder to fight peaceful demonstrators than armed groups".

This was the British experience facing Mahatma Gandhi's opposition to its rule in India. It was Martin Luther King's view and it was, much less known, the experience in Denmark and parts of France of the German military command.

Basil Liddle Hart, the leading British military thinker of that time who was responsible for the interviewing of captured German generals, observed from what they told him that nonviolent opposition gave them much more trouble than the Allied armies.

BBC television did report from Syria last week on the mass nonviolent demonstrations after Friday prayers. What it did not point out was that these demonstrators were the majority force. But only they can prize apart the stalemate that Annan for the best of intentions has organised.

© Jordan Times 2012