Syria’s interim authorities is bringing collectively individuals from the nation’s many religions and sects for a two-day nationwide dialogue that started on Monday.
What’s the nationwide dialogue?
Ahmed al-Shara, the nation’s interim president, whose insurgent coalition seized management of Syria in early December, promised to carry a nationwide dialogue to debate the formation of a consultant authorities.
His authorities set a March 1 deadline to start the method. Invites for the occasion had been despatched out on Sunday, Feb. 23, to hundred of contributors, together with neighborhood leaders, teachers and non secular leaders, solely someday earlier than the convention was set to start.
Additionally invited had been journalists, businessmen, activists, former detainees of the Assad authorities and the households of people that had been killed or wounded in Syria’s brutal, 13-year civil struggle.
What in regards to the Kurds?
Mr. al-Shara has spoken of the necessity to unite Syria’s many fractious populations to construct a brand new Syria. Syria is a Sunni Muslim majority nation however has many spiritual and ethnic minorities, together with Alawites, Druse, Christians and Kurds.
However makes an attempt at unity have already run into challenges.
Some Kurds, who make up some 10 p.c of Syria’s inhabitants, had been invited to the dialogue. However the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed militia that controls a lot of Syria’s northeast, was not. Syria’s interim authorities has demanded that the militia disarm and be a part of a unified nationwide army pressure, as a situation of becoming a member of the dialogue.
The committee organizing the convention has beforehand stated that the SDF doesn’t symbolize all Syrian Kurds.
Turkey, a close ally of the rebel group that led the overthrow of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, has for years sought to curb the ability of the Syrian Democratic Forces, sustaining that the militia is linked to Kurdish separatist insurgents inside Turkey.
What’s going to come out of the dialogue?
Many Syrians are skeptical about what a nationwide dialogue could carry, particularly in a deeply divided nation the place sectarian tensions are spilling over into revenge killings.
Syrians are additionally cautious of the guarantees of inclusivity coming from a authorities led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that has given authorities and ministerial positions to its personal loyalists. It has but to incorporate within the authorities different insurgent teams that helped to oust Mr. Assad.
The convention organizers have stated that there isn’t any direct hyperlink between the formation of the brand new Syrian authorities and the dialogue convention, although they’re taking place on the similar time.
Convention contributors will challenge suggestions for the brand new authorities, in addition to for the writing of a brand new structure and legal guidelines. However these suggestions seem like nonbinding.
“Suggestions from the Nationwide Dialogue is not going to be mere recommendation and formalities, however would be the foundation for the provisional constitutional declaration, financial identification and institutional reform plan,” stated Hassan al-Dughaim, the committee’s spokesman.
