June 30, 2011
Coalition of Factions From the Streets Fuels a New Opposition in Syria
By ANTHONY SHADID
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- An opposition drawing its strength from Syria's restive streets has begun to emerge as a pivotal force in the country's once-dormant politics, organizing across disparate regions through the Internet, reaching out to fearful religious minorities and earning the respect of more recognized, but long divided dissidents.
The Local Coordination Committees, as they call themselves, have become the wild cards in what is shaping up as a potentially decisive stage in Syria, with some protests spreading Thursday to Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, and the government tentatively reaching out to the opposition next week. The success of the young protesters may determine whether that change is incremental, as the government has suggested, or far more sweeping, as the protesters themselves have demanded.
Their success has stemmed from an ability to stay decentralized, work in secret and fashion their message in the most nationalist of terms. But that very success has made them a mystery to the Syrian government, which prefers to work with more recognized opposition figures who came together in a rare meeting in Damascus on Monday. American officials admit they are also trying to gauge the young protesters' importance in a time of tumult.
"For so long, the opposition was in quotes -- 'the Syrian opposition,' " said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It wasn't coalesced or organized; it was more oppositionists or activists. Now it's a real opposition, and even if they have multiple levels, they get the need to organize and come with a unified voice."
As in other Arab revolts, new dynamics have emerged as the demonstrations in Syria have gathered momentum in past weeks, particularly in cities like Homs and Hama. The youthful demonstrators who make up these coordination committees have bridged divides of sect, religion and class to try to formulate a leadership. As in Egypt, they were able to build on years of local dissidence that had already created informal networks of friends and colleagues.
"Reporting the news, that's how we started," said Rami Nakhle, an activist in Damascus who fled to Lebanon this year and helps organize the committees' work.
Even before the uprising, activists had smuggled in cellphones, satellite modems and computers in the event that the demands for change across the Arab world spread to Syria. They did, and even in the earliest days, activists there managed to offer a narrative of the uprising that was revealing, incomplete and -- in the government's mind at least -- biased. In the weeks that ensued, protesters said, activists coalesced into committees that reached out to one another.
Mr. Nakhle said the first committee arose in Daraya, a restless suburb of Damascus, and the best-organized are in Syria's third-largest city, Homs, which has emerged as a nexus of the uprising. There, activists came together in committees in the revolt's second week, with eventually 22 people helping coordinate as many as 100 people on the ground to document the demonstrations, said Omar Idlibi, a spokesman for the committees who helped organize the work in Homs before fleeing to Lebanon.
"It was like a small news agency," he said.
American officials and activists say that, nationwide, 100 to 200 people are fully engaged in the committees, with the majority of them overwhelmingly young. Across Syria, as many as 35 activists who are acknowledged as committee leaders try to communicate by Internet chat room each day at 10 a.m., though only 25 log on at any one time. Committees have charted different directions: in Hama, activists have occupied the city's Aasi Square in nightly protests; in Duma, a Damascus suburb, the committee has sought to begin a campaign of civil disobedience, urging residents to stop paying water, electricity and phone bills.
Across the country, activists say many of the members, fearing arrest, do not take part in the protests themselves and, more often than not, carry on with day jobs. One said he was a lawyer, another a real estate agent. One who identified himself as a 23-year-old civil engineering student named Ali said he spent 15 hours a day online.
"We live and work in the virtual world, not the street," he said.
Already, the local committees have faced sometimes bitter divisions. Separate groups have coalesced around two prominent women, Razan Zeitouneh and Suheir al-Atassi. A third group has tried to organize the Kurdish minority, which mainly lives in the east. There is also a debate over to what degree the committees reflect or drive the protests, which still seem largely spontaneous, even after months of organizing.
But in past weeks, the committees' profiles have grown sharply, as they seize a mantle of dissent that a divided exiled opposition, sometimes tainted by links to the United States and other countries, cannot claim. Prominent dissidents in Damascus like Louay Hussein, Aref Dalila and Faez Sara are respected but speak largely for themselves.
"We are in dire need for young new leaders. They are our only hope in the future," Mr. Hussein said. "The local committees have started to improve their political performance and their coordination. They are not just only organizing street protests and running the media campaign. They've started to become more politically sophisticated."
In statements, one of which Mr. Nakhle said took a month to prepare, the committees have reached out to minorities in a remarkably diverse country. The coordination among cities has created solidarities that never existed -- with a poor and neglected region in southern Syria known as the Houran or between cities with historic rivalries, like Homs and Hama. To a remarkable degree, their demands were echoed in the statement that followed Monday's opposition meeting.
"This is a new generation, and they don't have to learn from anyone," said Peter Harling, an analyst with the International Crisis Group who is based in Damascus. Syrian officials have promised what they describe as a period of reform, though many analysts and diplomats suggest their vision goes no farther than Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak: a ruling party that tolerates feeble but legal opposition parties, a measure of freedom of expression and a critical press, a loud but ineffectual Parliament, and security services that may undergo some reforms but are still riddled with corruption.
Even a step in that direction requires an interlocutor, and so far, the Syrian government has made clear it views recognized dissidents like Mr. Hussein as its potential partners. Those same figures fear alienating the committees, and in interview after interview, they have warned that they cannot speak on behalf of the protesters.
The result, as many have pointed out, is the emergence of a dangerous stalemate that runs the risk of militarizing an opposition. Residents say the price of weapons has gone up in Homs, and American officials acknowledge an embryonic insurgency that seems most pronounced in the northwest, where the Syrian military has staged more operations, killing -- by activists' count -- 19 people in two days.
"The government seems to be focused on the prominent activists," the American official said. "It doesn't seem to grasp the significance of the local coordination committees yet. I haven't seen any evidence that they're paying attention to them."
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and a New York Times employee from Damascus, Syria.