Qunfuz

On 23 July, something called The Syrian Centenary Initiative appeared on Facebook. This was the first sign I’d seen of organized opposition other than by militia. The Initiative’s declaration explained that it had been formed in response to the massacres in Suwayda and the urgent threats to Syrian unity posed by internal violence and external actors like Israel. It pointed out the essential fact that the “logic of mobilization” – that is, the current government’s repeated mobilization of one sector of society against another – contradicts the “mentality of state [building].” It called on the “temporary authority” to engage in “shared national emergency efforts” to solve the crisis.

The Initiative had ten demands. Here they are, in brief summary (and this is based on my translation from the Arabic scribbled during a train ride. If you think I’ve got the emphasis of anything wrong, or missed out anything essential, please let me know):

1. A complete ceasefire in Suwayda.

2. Guarantees that the violence will not be repeated.

3. An immediate stop to population transfers and demographic change.

4. For all sides in Syria to accept the principle that no weapons should be held by any party other than the state.

5. The formation of an independent investigative committee into the Suwayda violence consisting of Syrian, Arab and international legal and human rights experts.

6. Rapid modifications to the Constitutional Declaration, including a law to allow the formation of political parties and civil society organizations, and changes to the way the parliament is formed.

7. Effective measures against hate speech and incitement.

8. Dissolution of the current Civil Peace Committee and the formation of a new 25-member committee allowing a much greater role for independent civil society and representing all parts of the country.

The Transitional Justice Committee should also be reformed to ensure its independence and the involvement of the civil society and legal organizations that have been working on the issue for many years.

9. The formation of a permanent Crisis Management Council consisting of both ministry and civil society personnel, with decision-making ability.

10. The convention of a Syrian national conference within three months at the most.

This conference should fairly represent all sectors of Syrian society, from the various religions, sects and ethnicities, from all the regions, both men and women. It would continue in its work until it has developed an effective national strategy.

It would reconsider all the steps taken by “the temporary authority” since the fall of the regime.

Its tasks would include forming a 50-member military security council which would then rebuild a national army commanded by both current army officers (that is, those militia leaders appointed by the HTS authorities) and officers who defected from Assad’s army but who did not have roles in the Islamist militias. The conference should also form an elections commission to decide on the means of electing the president and the parliament.

The Initiative clearly seeks to expand the transitional government far beyond the HTS core which is currently governing. It seeks to bring in a much more representative range of national, civil society perspectives, and to review and alter key decisions already made. This is a fairly radical demand, but it is made in constructive, even polite terms. It frames its demands as “an opportunity for the authority to reclaim the popular legitimacy which it first enjoyed.” This makes sense: the fact is that Ahmad al-Sharaa’s administration is in power, its men man the checkpoints, and there is currently no alternative to them, other than perhaps worse chaos. It is to be hoped that the administration finds (or perhaps rediscovers) the intelligence needed to not only tolerate this opposition, but to listen and respond to it.

The Centenary Initiative explains that it is inspired by the hundredth anniversary this year of the Great Syrian Revolt, a movement which was at once anti-colonial (against the French occupation) and pro-Syrian. It expressed a common Syrian nationhood greater than the sectarian or tribal identities the French had sought to exploit in order to divide and rule (and impoverish) the country. The Revolt’s leaders included Sultan Pasha al-Atrash (a Druze chieftain from Suwayda), Saleh al-Ali, an Alawite from Latakia, and Ibrahim Hanano, a Sunni from Aleppo. The militiamen assaulting Suwayda in 2025 have just destroyed the statue of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash in the city’s Omran Square. Pictures and videos show them standing on or smashing his picture. In this context, the Centenary Initiative seems an absolutely and urgently necessary move to reclaim the possibility of Syrian nationhood from sectarian and regional splintering.

The signatories include revolutionary activists like Eyad Sherbaji, George Sabra, Khaled Abu Salah and Fayez Sara, the defected diplomat Bassam Barabandi, the poet and long-term political prisoner Faraj Bayrakdar, the businessman Ayman Asfari, and the founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights Fadl Abdul Ghany, among several hundred others. The names themselves are not so important (I’ve just pulled out some, not necessarily the most influential – and I hope not too much politicking will be done concerning the personalities of the signatories). What is important is the Initiative itself. Indeed it, and the work needed to push it forward, may save Syria from the abyss.

The Initiative has already faced a wave of criticism and condemnation. It has been accused of serving foreign agendas (all opposition to Assad was likewise accused of serving foreign agendas), and even of seeking to repeat the experience of the Tamarod Movement in Egypt in 2013, which facilitated General Sisi’s coup against the elected Morsi government and the returnn of the military dictatorship. I don’t think it’s possible to return the Assad regime in any form. Unlike the Egyptian military, which jettisoned the Mubarak family but survived intact, the Assad regime has collapsed entirely. In any case, this Initiative obviously aims for a democratic state in which all Syrians can be at home, not for a return to tyranny.

Syrians fought and died for the right to criticize the decisions made by those in power, to participate in decision making, and to build a state and society which would serve everybody regardless of their background. This Initiative provides some hope after weeks of horror and shrinking possibility.