Et was twelve years ago, the year before the uprising in Syria, that a senior representative of the Assad regime was sitting with a Greek diplomat in the capital, Damascus. The conversation revolved around a possible association agreement with the European Union. Greece was already stuck in the sovereign debt crisis, and the top official in Damascus declared smugly and self-confidently: “Syrian finances are in much better shape.”
Today, the leadership around Bashar al-Assad is subject to sanctions, Syria has been destroyed and bled dry. In Athens, a Syrian from an influential family who lives in Assad’s empire sits in a restaurant and says: “We’re back in the Middle Ages – no, in the Stone Age.”
The man traveled to the Greek capital because he didn’t want to stand by and watch the Syrian self-destruction. He is part of a group that refuses to let the hateful narratives of the regime or the Islamist rebel militias determine their country’s future. The situation is dramatic, and it’s getting worse and worse. Millions of people have been displaced, the Syrian currency has lost about 90 percent of its value, most people live in poverty, many are starving.
Neither for Assad nor for the militias
The group is called the “Council of the Syrian Charter”. They meet up in European cities from time to time, this time for a few days in an old mansion in the Greek capital. Assad opponents living abroad have come, as have figures from regime-controlled areas. This is where tribal leaders meet with representatives of minorities, Sunni townspeople with members of the Alawite elite, i.e. the population group of the Syrian President.
They all want to end the war, reconcile the population, draft a new social contract, see themselves as representatives of “grey Syria”: those people who can do as little with Assad as with the armed opposition. No one voted for her, but her vote matters. Informal structures and social reputation have always been important in Syria, and the war has not changed that.
UN reconciliation process unsuccessful so far
The work began in secret. Alawite dignitaries tried to break out of the Faustian pact with the tottering regime. They teamed up with leaders from other parts of Syrian society to draft a code of conduct for peaceful coexistence, which the initiative approved at the end of 2017. “Neither side is innocent,” it says. The war only created losers. Nobody should be convicted for the crimes of their population group, the blame lies with individuals, not ethnic groups.
In 2018, the initiative dared to take its first steps in public. In the spring of 2019, the “Council of the Syrian Charter” was officially established in Berlin. Now he is working on being able to fill a political role, for example as a mediator. Because the official “political process” organized by the United Nations has been failing for years due to the total blockade by the regime. Western diplomats have long found it difficult to explain why it is being continued at all. Mamduh al-Tahhan, tribal leader from Qunaitra, Assad opponent and himself a member of the Constitutional Committee set up with UN mediation, does not hide the fact that he is stuck.
