Conclusions Regarding the Latest Events in Daraa

In our opinion, the conclusions that all sides should be aware of and grip from recent events, are summarized in the following points:
First: The phase of major military operations is over, and it is no longer acceptable or possible for it to continue. If there was something that justified and necessitated these operations in earlier phases, primarily preventing the collapse of the state as a state (and not as a regime) and fighting UN-classified terrorism, the military part of these two tasks has been accomplished in principle.
Second: If the military tool was used in an earlier phase to prevent the toppling of the state, then the political and socioeconomic tool is the main tool for completing the same task. Furthermore, using the same military tool, under the current circumstances, has the opposite effect, by deepening the fissures within Syrian society, deepening the wounds, delaying further the political solution, and continuing the state of attrition that threatens the future of the state itself.
Third: On the same point, and from the point of view of preventing the collapse of the state, the task of ending the state of de facto partition as soon as possible has become the primary task today. This task is practically impossible to achieve through the military tool, not to mention that trying to rely on this tool means reviving the war and taking it to a more catastrophic and dangerous level. The process of reunifying the country, expelling the foreign forces therefrom, and restoring its sovereignty, passes exclusively through consensus among Syrians and through restoring cohesion among Syrians, based on respect for people’s dignity and rights, and not by crushing them and imposing things thereon. This is something that cannot happen under the grip of the extremists who dominate the scene from the different sides. Therefore, the political solution and through UNSC Resolution 2254 and opening the door for comprehensive radical change has become the main tool to achieve the mission of preserving Syria and its people.
Fourth: If the tools to threaten the country’s unity and existence before 2018 were primarily military-political tools, then the tools of blockade and sanctions have become the main tool to achieve the same goal. Addressing these economic tools is not possible in any way in light of the dominance of big corruption, which turns these same sanctions into a pot of gold through import and export, manipulation of exchange rates, and the accumulation of funds from multiple sources, including Captagon and other black-market trades. Confronting these tools requires the unification of the country on the one hand, and requires unification thereof under a new regime that is under the people’s watch, oversight, and accountability, not a regime in which people are under its control and grip for every word the people might say in protest against the injustice and oppression that befall them, and their miserable and catastrophic conditions. Achieving a new regime that unites Syrians, preserves their dignity and rights, and unites Syria, necessarily passes through a political solution and through Resolution 2254.
In sum, the recent events in Daraa have reaffirmed the confirmed: there no longer is any solution to any problem in Syria, big or small, except through one path, which is that of a political solution and the one by which the will of the extremists and warlords is broken.

(Arabic version)