Syrian dissidents form council, hope to win greater international support

Liz Sly

The Washington Post

October 2, 2011

CAIRO — Syr­ian dissidents meeting in Istanbul on Sunday an­nounced the formation of a council uniting most of their country's fractious oppo­sition groups, a step that activists hailed as a po­tential breakthrough in the months-long standoff be­tween a largely leader­less protest move­ment and the govern­ment of Pres­ident Bashar al-As­sad.
The Syr­ian National Council aims to rep­resent the oppo­sition in dealings with the international community and to offer an al­ternative to As­sad, some­thing that has been lacking since or­dinary Syr­ians began swarm­ing the streets in March to stage anti-govern­ment demonstrations.
At a time when protesters in some ar­eas are           

increas­ingly resorting to weapons, activists said they hoped that the cre­ation of a uni­fied oppo­sition body would breathe fresh life into the protests and encour­age international support for an upris­ing whose complexities have deterred signif­icant action by world powers.

What form that support should take is one               

issue on which there is still no consensus, with many protesters in­side Syr­ia increas­ingly call­ing for NATO inter­vention and many exiled dissidents re­main­ing adamantly opposed to for­eign inter­ces­sion.

But many activists said they are re­lieved that the Syr­ian oppo­sition can now claim a semblance of unity af­ter months of bickering and nu­mer­ous false starts. Syr­ians nationwide took to the streets to proclaim support for the council.
"Finally, af­ter 40 years of op­pres­sion and six months of blood­shed, we have a united oppo­sition," said Yas­er Tabbara, a Syr­ian American lawyer who is a member of the council and helped orga­nize the effort. "The international community has been wait­ing awhile for an al­ternative to the As­sad regime and a body it can       

negotiate with and talk to. This is it."

The an­nounce­ment was made by the Paris-based aca­dem­ic Burhan Ghalioun, a ris­ing star in the oppo­sition move­ment who enjoys widespread support among youth activists in Syr­ia in part because of his sec­ular­ism and his perceived po­lit­ical independence.
The council aims to "achieve the goals of the rev­olution to topple the regime, including all of its compo­nents and leader­ship, and to replace it with a demo­crat­ic pluralis­tic regime," he said in a state­ment read to journalists.
It will not, council members stressed, at­tempt to duplicate the role of the Libyan Tran­sitional National Council, which was swiftly formed as an al­ternative govern­ment in the weeks af­ter the Libyan re­volt began. The Syr­ian council will serve as a form of parlia­ment to debate