Once again, positive results eminate from the US decision to enforce UNSCR 1441, and the removal of Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s bold democratic experience is reverberating throughout the Middle East. Even Syria, which is actively supporting terrorism/terrorists in Iraq, is not immune from the democratic genie let loose from its Iraqi lamp.
Middle East dissidents are beginning to find their collective voice, along with once fragmented oppositions, who are coming together as one voice in demanding inclusion into the political process, and calling for change.
“This is a huge development for the opposition within Syria,” Kabalan said. “For the first time we’re seeing a blueprint for reconstituting Syria’s political process.
The announcement was backed by an unusually diverse collection of politicians and activists, including human rights campaigners, Communists, Kurdish nationalists, overseas Syrian exiles, the imprisoned Parliament member Riad Seif and the London-based Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in Syria for two decades but is believed to enjoy popular support.
Anwar al-Bunni, a prominent Syrian rights lawyer, said the declaration demonstrated that there is a democratic alternative to the Baathists, the nationalist and nominally socialist party that has ruled Syria for more than 40 years.
The regime wants the world to believe that if they go, it is only Islamists and radicals who will come to replace them,” Bunni said. “Syria really needs all the world to know that there is a replacement for Assad that is democratic and liberal.”
Joshua Landis, an expert in Syrian history at the University of Oklahoma, said the declaration was an indication that Syria’s opposition was maturing. “
