Syria under Assad is there to Stay, Says the Syrian Third Estate.

By Abir A Chaaban

The situation in Syria shifted from being a conflict involving revolutionary and opposition forces revolting against a totalitarian regime to a conflict involving a legitimate government fighting Al-Qaeda militants in Syria. This shift consequently changed the Syrian public’s approval of the armed rebels to the favor of the regime. Following the Syrian Army's victory of Al Qussayr, the Syrian rebels feel demoralized and defeated. It is unlikely that they will fight even if armament was available. Al Qaeda will remain the only player in the battleground. The local rebels started losing sight of the cause of the fight to that of the radical Islamist militants. 

The National Coalition of Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, which is the main speaker on behalf of the armed rebels, lacks legitimacy at the domestic level at least on three direct fronts. The first is the radical militants. The Coalition failed to gather militants on the ground under its umbrella. Of course this task is next to impossible taking the role Al-Nusra Front plays at the militancy. Failure to control the militancy will consequently lead to failure to control the rebellion, since the command of the militancy is not under the control of the Free Syrian Army.

The second front is the secular National Coordination Committee, the left, which is the peaceful opposition. The National Coordination Committee rejects the militarization of the conflict. It also rejects foreign intervention. Consequently, the National Coordination Committee does not recognize the National Coalition. The National Coordination Committee has the largest opposition supporters of citizens inside Syria. 

The third front is the growing popular support to the government and the Syrian Army instead of the rebels. This support comes from the Third Estate of Syria. This support could be easily spotted on social media. The National Coalition could not generate more than 2,500 supporters on its Facebook page for the past month and so, this is in comparison to Bashar Al Assad’s Facebook page generating more than 400,000 supporters, and the National Coordination Committee generating more than 13,000 supporters. These numbers indicate that Assad has a larger support than the militant and the peaceful opposition combined. 

The National Coalition of Opposition and Revolutionary Forces lacks a strategic outlook to how it wishes to achieve its objectives of this war. It also lacks clear goals as to what it expects to do with Syria once it takes over government. This is mostly obvious in the Coalition’s poor public communication tactics. Its communication is limited to asymmetrical publicity composed mainly of press releases expressing condemnations and accusations of regime’s acts on the one hand, and pleading international community for ammunitions and supplies on the other hand. This is in comparison to The National Coordination Committee which communicates its views of the future political system in Syria, possible solutions to end the conflict, and terms of negotiating a new government. The National Coalition on the other hand has no intellectual base, no strategy aimed at achieving objectives that would be of interest to the Syrian people, and no vision to the alternative to the existing government. 

The only option the National Coalition offers is arming the rebels to gain ground militarily by pleading for Arab and Western support. The National Coalition has established the image of being the instrument used by international powers to oust the regime, rather than being a real national coalition of revolutionaries aiming at achieving a democratic state in Syria.  The National Coalition does not plead the public for support. Its communication is geared at the United States and the Gulf States. It did not seek public approval prior to seeking Arab legitimacy at the Arab League.  The National Coalition's dependence and reliance on outside powers does not place it publicly as a representative of the Syrian people.  Thus It failed to connect not only with the militants on the ground but also with the Third Estate, the Syrian people. 

Following the fall of A Qussair, the Syrian local armed rebels became demoralized. They lost faith in this conflict and in the Coalition. Even if the Syrian local rebels were armed, they are not likely to fight. The player that will remain at the scene of the battle is not the Syrian armed rebels but Al-Qaeda. The international community must take popular sentiments into account. Assad cannot go. Assad is the strongest man in Syria right now. He is not perceived as a dictator or a tyrant, but a nationalist liberator. Assad does not have to prove to his people that he is fighting Al-Qaeda. He does not have to prove that the few rebels on the ground are accomplices with a foreign network of terrorists. His popularity is on the increase. Western countries must start reconsidering the situation taking these facts and these sentiments, rather than from where they would have wished the course of the Syrian conflict to take.