Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations mediator in the Syrian crisis who sought to bring the opposition factions into negotiations with the Syrian government recently in New York, has said that holding elections in the country would doom prospects for any future talks. While the Syrian parliament has been discussing the elections, getting closer to announcing them sometime in the summer, Brahimi said that elections would be inappropriate until peace had been achieved between the rebels and the Syrian government. “We would very much like to continue the Geneva process,” Brahimi told reporters at the UN after a closed session of the Security Council, referring to the two rounds of negotiations that have been held in Geneva. But “plans to hold elections in the coming months would be incompatible” with the peace process, he said. It was against this background that Bashar Jafari, the Syrian ambassador at the United Nations in New York, explained his government's views on the current situation in Syria and the involvement of foreign fighters, from Hizbullah members to citizens of the Arab Gulf states, in the conflict to Al-Ahram Weekly. In a report released by the United Nations refugee agency recently, it was also stated that four out of every 10 Syrians had now been uprooted from their homes, making Syria “the world's leading country of forced displacement.” According to the same report, more than 2.5 million Syrians are registered as refugees outside the country, mostly in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, while 6.5 million have been internally displaced.
Why does your government want to conduct elections this summer in the light of the lack of security in the country? The opposition is engaged in a war against the government in Syria, and there are also some two million Syrian refugees aboard. First of all, there is no war as you describe it between the opposition and the government in Syria. However, we do have serious problems with terrorists. As proof of this, the Pentagon itself has issued studies which say that there are at least two thousand armed groups operating in Syria. These groups are mostly made up of foreigners, missionaries, so-called jihadists, and they come from Chechnya, Burkina Faso, Latvia, and anywhere you can imagine, but most of them are Saudis, Chechnians, Tunisians, Qataris, Emiratis, Kuwaitis, British, French, Americans, Belgians, you name it. Many of them are mercenaries and brain-washed. They believe they are coming to Syria for jihad. Jihad against whom we don't know. They think that in coming to Syria they will be fighting for Allah, but they don't know whom they are fighting with. We have captured some of them in Aleppo, and they confessed that before coming to Syria they were told they were entering Palestine.
But you can't generalise about all the fighters. Of course not. But most of them, or many of them, are foreigners. I am saying that in Syria the fight is not between the government and opposition forces. In Syria, there is an opposition, but this should be ‘oppositions' in the plural and not ‘opposition' in the singular. These oppositions are not united, and they don't follow one agenda. We have a national opposition operating inside the country, and this is peaceful. We have external oppositions outside the country, and many of these work for different foreign agendas, some of them Turkish, French or American, and others Saudi or Qatari, and all of them having conflicting agendas towards each other. This makes the picture particularly complicated. Do you see the French opposition combating the French army or attacking the Tour Eiffel? If this happens in France, then what is happening in Syria could be considered normal. However, it does not happen in France, and what is happening in Syria is not normal. It's abnormal; it violates international law, and it violates United Nations resolutions.
The conflict has extended to many places in Syria, which means that participation in the elections will not be easy. There are also more than two million refugees in camps. How will these people vote? We are aware of the security issue which in some areas might not be helpful to the process of the elections, but the troubled areas are spotty and do not cover the whole country. The parliament is fully engaged in regulating the elections, but I admit that this issue [the elections] is a tricky one. On the one hand, people are criticising the government for not being serious in conducting elections, but on the other hand when we have given a date and started preparations we have been criticised even for holding elections. The elections are due to take place in June or July. What matters to us is that the assessments we have received show that we can hold the elections successfully. The question of the refugees is not unique to us: many similar experiences have taken place in the past in different countries when refugees were able to vote wherever they were. The question will be followed up by special commissions, the details of which I don't know yet. Some people are emphasising these difficulties in order to create negativity against the president in the elections. Some states and some governments are also deeply involved in the bloodshed in Syria. They are not seeking solutions. If they were, they would support the return of the refugees instead of being happy to see them live in miserable camps and conditions under which they are likely automatically to turn against the government.
If you consider the opposition fighters in Syria to be terrorists, why did you sit with them at the recent Geneva peace talks? Is there any possibility of a third round of these talks? The people we met in Geneva are part of one faction of the opposition in Syria. The opposition Coalition abroad does not have any presence in Syria, and its members are political refugees who have been living outside Syria for decades. Some of them have US citizenship; some of them are British, French, Qatari, Saudi or Turkish. They are of different nationalities, and they lost their contact with their homeland decades ago and now have become more or less the followers of the agendas of their adopted countries. They don't have any military presence on the ground. They don't have any say whatsoever about operating inside Syria. They pretend the Free Syrian Army is their military wing, but the latter issued a statement in Geneva denying that it was under the control of the Coalition.
Why did you agree to meet with the opposition in Geneva if this is the case? We agreed to go to Geneva based on the communique issued after the Geneva I Conference. It stated that Geneva II should include Syrian delegates and opposition delegates, though this was a mistake made by [UN Secretary-General] Ban-Ki Moon and Brahimi from the beginning when they insisted on bringing these people to Geneva. The fact is that only the Syrian people can decide their future. Neither Ban-Ki Moon, nor the Coalition, nor Brahimi can decide it for them. Only the Syrian people can decide for themselves. This was the first problem at Geneva II. We went to Geneva and sat with them in order to test the water and see what was going on behind the scenes. We said that we would be willing to return, and we are waiting to be informed where and when.
Has President Bashar Al-Assad been able to extend his time in office because of the security situation? The only way for this to take place will be through the elections.
Israel says that between four and five thousand Hizbullah fighters are inside Syria. Some video footage shows Iranian fighters from the Revolutionary Guards inside Syria. Can you comment on these allegations? Whatever Israel says – four thousand or even ten thousand Hizbullah fighters – these are Israeli figures. Let them say what they want. But the number is much smaller. Israel is exaggerating the number in order to demonise Hizbullah. The important point is that Hizbullah was the last group to come onto the Syrian scene. Hizbullah was there once its own security was exposed. Hizbullah is fighting on the borders of Syria and Lebanon in order to protect itself.
What about the videos of Iranian fighters in Syria? You can manipulate anything with technology these days.
Could it be that individuals from Iran are operating in Syria without the knowledge of the government of Iran? We don't have any such individuals in Syria.
What is your main concern at present with regard to the conflict? We are against the Sunni-Shia confrontation that the terrorists and their supporters are promoting. This is a very dangerous game, and we are not part of it.
