Editorial: Recognition is the key

WITHIN 48 hours of Syrian opposition groups agreeing a new coalition, after six days of tough negotiations in Doha, France joined the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council in recognizing the new body, the Syrian National Coalition, as being the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
Other countries, most notably the United States and Britain, while warmly welcoming the new organization, have held back from echoing the unreserved endorsement of French President François Hollande. It must be wondered why. Behind the scenes, diplomats from Washington and London were briefing journalists that the new SNC needed first to demonstrate that its 60 members, not all of whom have yet been named, could form a cohesive political body that would speak with a unified voice. More darkly, one briefer said that the failure of the opposition groups to reach a substantive deal in Doha had been key. The inability to place the need for unity above individual political interests, had suggested that Syria’s would-be political leaders had learned nothing from their past failure to present a genuine coalition platform. Thus, to give immediate formal recognition would run the risk of severe embarrassment, if the coalition fell apart or indeed, failed even to come together properly in the first place.
This is, however, a deeply cynical and unhelpful view. It seems clear that little thought has been given to the degree to which the failure to recognize the SNC, could undermine the still-delicate process of completing its membership, and then forming a Free Syrian government, to administer liberated areas.
Moreover, the Americans and their British cousins ignore the reality that immediate recognition by a large number of states, would have empowered the new body, not least in terms of the way its members behave toward one other. Now Washington sitting on the sidelines, invites fresh discord. Some SNC members may start insisting that it was the recalcitrance of rivals, that caused the Americans to pull back from unreserved recognition.
There is another issue as well. Washington was exerting almost constant pressure on opposition participants during the Doha meeting. There were quiet meetings in coffee bars, corridors and delegates’ hotel rooms. There was, according to one Syrian, a succession of ‘phone calls', some of them from people high up in the State Department, all seeking to coax and persuade those involved to reach a full agreement, on personnel, policy and procedures, before the Doha meeting ended.
Is the lukewarm US response to the still-limited agreement, eventually hammered out, as sign of pique ? Yet the Americans may come to be grateful for their failure to strong-arm a complete deal. Had Washington got its way, immediately there would have many, not least the Assad regime, who claimed the new SNC was nothing more than a US front, simply one more excuse for the Americans to be meddling in Middle East affairs, as part of its campaign against Damascus ally, Iran, and in defense of its own demanding but ungrateful ally Israel.
Those Syrian opposition leaders who were angered by Washington’s interventions in Doha, protested with some justice that it was the Syrian people alone, who began the revolt against the Assad dictatorship; it has been the Syrian people alone, who with financial and moral support from the Arab world, not least the member states of the GCC, who have sustained the fight and it is the Syrian people, both fighters and civilians, who have been dying in their thousands during the 18 month revolt.
There is, however, one way in which Washington could give unstinting formal recognition to the SNC and thus help to bolster the new body’s legitimacy as the unified voice of the Syrian opposition. This would be to use the SNC as the key channel for humanitarian aid to the mounting number of desperate Syrian refugees within and outside the country. The distribution of this assistance would still be done by the NGOs such as the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR. However it would be funneled through an SNC body, specifically established to deal with this crucial challenge.
Estimates of internally-displaced Syrians have been doubled to 2.5 million. They are now believed to be approaching 600,000 who have fled into neighboring countries. The UNHCR has predicted that, if the fighting continues into next year, there could be more than four million refugees. As winter sets in, the effort to save and sustain these wretched people, is a battle around which all opposition figures, as well as the United States itself, can surely rally without any danger of dispute.