Politics, not violence – Samir Aita

After President Salim Hoss left Lebanon, a great Egyptian passed away, the able minister Nabil al-Arabi, the owner of many Egyptian and Arab virtues. I personally experienced his tireless efforts to stop the Syrian conflict and avoid its evolution into a civil war. In his memory, I think it is necessary to remember the events and circumstances in which I knew him.
In October 2011, I visited Egypt for a UN event. I was concerned about the escalation of the conflict in Syria and the spread of violence, violence by the authorities and violence by armed groups, which I knew from a seminar I attended in June that would go further than the “peaceful revolution” for freedom and dignity. Then the “political opposition” split into two factions, the so-called internal opposition, the “National Coordination Committee”, and the so-called external opposition, the “National Council”, which called for the “overthrow of the regime. all its symbols and pillars” and external intervention as requested by the Libyan Transitional Council.
Nabil Elaraby, then secretary general of the Arab League and a close friend of my uncle, shared my concerns and arranged a meeting for me with him. He hosted me and a colleague from the Coordination Committee, who seemed to share the same concerns. Digging into the details, we asked, “What can be done?” Thus emerged the idea of ​​Arab observers, whose mission was not really to monitor who was shooting, but to be on the ground to prevent an increase in violence. That evening, we were surprised to find that the Arab League Council had approved the idea.
I still remember clearly how the media documented protesters in many towns insisting that the observers remain in place, and how one day a Syrian soldier ran up to the window of an observer bus and yelled, “Save us!” It is well known that the mission of the Arab observers was undermined by dragging them into the media, which had incited the escalation of violence. The mission of the international observers was also frustrated.
During this period, the communication with Professor Al-Arabi continued. In short, he realized that the observer mission was being systematically undermined. All parties agreed that what could break this path was an attempt to unite the Syrian opposition and lay the foundation for negotiations with the existing Syrian authorities. Replace violence with politics.
In fact, we invited representatives of all factions of the opposition to a meeting in Cairo, and then held a meeting with the Arab League for the first time. Despite the agreement on the unification effort in Doha in August 2011 (which I did not personally attend), only one important member of the National Council agreed to attend, but he did not dare to do so at the last minute. However, what was worse was that the “internal opposition” refused to allow a joint delegation to visit the university. The delegation of the Coordination Committee went alone to the entrance of the university, despite the warnings of the Assistant Secretary-General, and was beaten. As a result, the appointment of the Secretary-General was postponed for two appointments, the first by the “Coordination Committee” and the second by those who condemned the division. Later, the National Council came to the Arab League alone, asking it to represent Syria’s legitimacy politically! Nabil Arabi did not accept it and finally had to freeze the membership under pressure.
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Later, events developed, and the United Nations appointed Mr. Kofi Annan, the Special Envoy for Syria, to launch a six-point plan to resolve the emerging conflict. He and the Arab League followed up on how we created the “Syrian Democratic Platform” in an open format with Michel Kilo and others to bridge the rifts among the opposition, and held a large conference in Cairo, including representatives of young activists in the country, in April 2012, which was attended by the main Arab media, who deliberately covered up the event.
But then Nabil Elaraby’s envoy came to us and told us that the Active State forced all opposition parties to accept Kofi Annan’s initiative and develop a joint negotiation plan, and we must establish a “link” between them. So the platform sent a delegation to Istanbul to hold a meeting with the National Committee to discuss the members of the Preparatory Committee for the Opposition Conference. It also negotiated with the “Coordination Committee” and others.
In fact, this time the Preparatory Committee met in Cairo for more than twenty days under the auspices of the Arab League. The negotiation process was difficult, especially with representatives of various countries and “research centers” in the hotel, which made it difficult for the Syrians to reach a consensus. But the effort ultimately led to the creation of a document, the “Syrian National Covenant”, which is still important today, and a document that envisions a transitional phase. Within Kofi Annan’s plan, after great efforts, a list of people attending a broad meeting of all factions of the opposition was agreed upon to approve these negotiation documents, which also included a meeting of countries with influence on the Syrian conflict, which was produced in June. On December 30, 2012, the document then known as “Geneva 1” was produced.
A few days later, in early July, the opposition conference was actually held in Cairo under the auspices of the Arab League. Negotiations took place between the “symbols of the opposition”, but I personally did not participate, and ultimately backed off under pressure on important matters in the National Covenant document, such as the removal of the slogan “Religion is for God and the Fatherland”. The slogan “For All”, which was historically created in Syria and placed the demand for full equality of men and women above customs and traditions, etc. But at that time my attention turned to bridging the rifts between the Syrian Kurdish parties and between them and other factions of the opposition.
Foreign ambassadors attended as “observers,” but some of them also brought Syrians who were not part of this difficult agreement. These people pushed this or that idea around in the meeting. But the most cruel of them was the two who created the Arab-Kurdish problem at the big final meeting, causing Professor Nabil Arabi to enter the meeting angrily, snatch two revised documents, and then present them as representing the consensus of the opposition. .
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This was the last moment of attempts to negotiate a political way out of the Syrian conflict. The situation then developed into a civil war, especially after the assassination of the Syrian “crisis cell”, negotiations began, and well-equipped armed factions moved in to “liberate” northern Syria. At the same time, Kofi Annan lost hope in a negotiated solution and abandoned his position in August 2012 after trying to pass a Security Council resolution under Chapter VII, followed by Lakhdar Brahimi, who understood that the Syrian conflict had become a proxy conflict between countries.
All this has happened more than a decade ago and is history. A history full of pain stemming from the fact that the destruction and division of Syria and the displacement and impoverishment of its people could have been avoided. It had nothing to do with how the authorities, the political opposition, local “revolutionaries”, those who feared the “revolution”, and external forces viewed the actions.
In the context of that history, we must praise the position of Professor Nabil El-Arabi and the role he played. Despite Arab and international pressure, he did not accept the Arab League legitimizing foreign intervention in Syria, as it had done in Libya, nor did he agree to deprive Syria of its legitimacy as a founding country of the League, and he tried hard to work on a path of negotiations despite his precise understanding of the logic and actions of the parties; Syrian parties and external parties. Nabil El-Arabi, as an Egyptian, realized that the security of Syria was a major issue for Egypt and the Arabs. May God have mercy on him.

Former editor-in-chief of the Arab newsletter Diplomatic World and chairman of the Arab Economists Forum