Does the Syrian regime intend to work with the UN monitors who have recently arrived in the country or will it do its best to frustrate them, writes Bassel Oudat Although the Syrian opposition has welcomed Saturday's UN Security Council resolution that called for the deployment of unarmed foreign monitors in Syria to supervise the current ceasefire, it has had strong reservations about the details of the resolution and its effectiveness, particularly since only 30 monitors will be deployed in the preliminary phase. As one Syrian opposition figure put it on his Facebook page, this number of monitors is barely enough to monitor his actions alone. So how will it monitor military actions spread out over the 185,000 sq km that make up Syria, he asked. However, the opposition has taken heart from the fact that the Resolution also states that the Security Council will consider other steps if the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad does not halt the violence in the country and comply with the recently drawn up Anan plan, named after UN and Arab League special envoy to Syria, former UN secretary-general Kofi Anan. These other steps will be necessary, opposition figures say, since in their view the regime has no genuine intention of observing the Anan plan. The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), representing the opposition outside the country, welcomed the Security Council resolution, describing it as "the first political fruit of the struggle of the Syrian people and their sacrifices" and "an important first step on the road for the international community to shoulder its responsibilities towards the Syrian people." The SNC warned of "the evasive policies, ploys and deceptions" that the Syrian regime was likely to adopt, adding that in its view the regime would not withdraw its artillery from the country's towns and cities and would not allow peaceful demonstrations or stop killing civilians. Inside Syria, a leading figure in the opposition Coordination Committee of Forces for Democratic Change also asserted that the regime would not abide by the UN Resolution. "It will try to circumvent and deceive the international delegation just as it did the previous Arab League monitors," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "However, the present delegation is different from the first one, and it understands better the real conditions in Syria and the nature of the regime." "Nevertheless, the regime is used to fabricating the truth and mixing the truth with lies, and it is likely to continue this policy because it knows that if it does not it will fall." After the ceasefire began on 12 April, regime troops did not withdraw from Syrian towns and cities and the security deployment continued even as some 800 demonstrations took place across the country last Friday, the largest number on a single day since the protests began in March 2011. This means that 14 months of security crackdowns, violence and detentions have not weakened the resolve of the protesters, which if anything has only increased. "The Syrian revolution will emphasise its peaceful nature in the coming phase," said Najati Tyara, an opposition activist. "As we can see, the protests are continuing despite the military deployments." Tyara, who was held in prison for eight months last year because of his activism, said that the "excessive force used by the regime has increased the counter-actions by the resistance. If the regime decreases its use of force as a result of the Anan plan, then we will see a proportionate response in the return to peaceful demonstrations." However, the opposition has already documented what it says are 80 violations of the ceasefire by the regime. Several cities have been shelled with heavy artillery, including Homs, Hama and Idlib, and dozens of people have been killed by the security forces around the country. Little credibility has been given by the international community to regime claims that "armed groups" have been breaching the ceasefire, perhaps because of earlier experiences. An earlier monitoring and fact-finding mission sent by the Arab League was abandoned in February after the regime did not reduce its security crackdown. Mission members said that the Syrian authorities had restricted their work and prevented them from moving about freely, even changing the names of towns and villages to deceive them. As a result, Arab foreign ministers decided to ask the UN to send peacekeepers to Syria in an attempt to stop the bloodshed. After the Syrian issue moved from the Arab to the international stage, Anan was dispatched to Damascus as a joint envoy of the UN and the Arab League to negotiate with the regime, proposing a six-point plan to withdraw the military from Syrian towns and cities, release prisoners and allow peaceful demonstrations, as well as begin meaningful dialogue with the opposition. Though the regime agreed to the Anan plan, it did not uphold it, and a few days before the deadline to begin the ceasefire it said it would not fully implement the deal, demanding impossible regional and international guarantees. This was viewed as an attempt to undermine the Anan plan, which was nevertheless approved by Syria's main supporters at the UN, Russia and China. Now that the Security Council has agreed to send monitors to Syria to observe the implementation of the Anan plan, the regime has little choice but to allow them in, being responsible also for ensuring their freedom of movement and safety. However, SNC member Rodeif Mustafa said that the opposition did not trust the regime's promises, which have always concealed "oppression, killing and massacres." "I believe that the regime is continuing in its despotic ways," Mustafa told the Weekly. "It promised to carry out reforms, but the end result has been more killing. It accepted the Arab initiative but refused to implement it. And today it declares a ceasefire without withdrawing its military forces and the killing continues." Mustafa, who is also head of the Syrian Kurdish Human Rights Committee, said that "we do not trust the regime. It has committed crimes against humanity, and it is incapable of upholding its promises to the international community on the Anan initiative or any other. The issue will therefore return to the Security Council, where Article 7 procedures will be used." "There is no doubt that the regime will fall if it implements the plan. So it should just depart without causing the Syrian people any more suffering and bloodshed." Meanwhile, the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA), made up of defectors from the regular Syrian army, said that it believed that the Anan plan committed the regime to stipulations that were impossible for it to implement. While the regime will try to convince the world that it is implementing the UN Resolution, if it did so it would collapse, the FSA said. As a result, the Security Council resolution should be viewed as a partial truce, used to reorganise the ranks in an ongoing struggle, the FSA said. The failure of the Anan mission will likely also open the door to more sanctions that could lead to Western military intervention in Syria, although this has been excluded up till now by Western powers. For its part, the Syrian regime has relied on its view that the West will not intervene militarily in order to continue its policies of repression, though things may change with Russia now apparently withdrawing its unequivocal support for the regime. "Pro-democracy activists on both sides -- the opposition and the more intelligent members of the regime -- should come together with the help of the international community and Russia in order to arrive at a peaceful transitional phase," Tyara said. Deploying international monitors in Syria does not mean that the protesters will now return to their homes or that the armed opposition will lay down its arms. However, it could give a boost to peaceful resistance and civil disobedience, raising the question of whether the regime in Damascus will tolerate hundreds of thousands of people on the streets in front of international monitors. Will it start negotiating with the opposition while hundreds of thousands of protesters are on the streets? Perhaps this is the miracle that the Syrian people have been waiting for.
