Why the “Comprehensive Radical Change”?

The package of rescue measures, at the socioeconomic, democratic, and national levels, proposed by the People’s Will Party (known then as the National Committee for the Unity of the Syrian Communists) in a statement published on 25 February 2011, is still valid in most of its provisions, and is still required in substance, included in it was the demand to nationalize the two cell phone companies.

This package of measures, which was a national necessity in February 2011, remains so. However, because it was not implemented at the time, in addition to not implementing the 18 recommendations of the July 2011 consultative meeting, and the numerous lost opportunities followed by violence, suppression, and foreign intervention during that period – all that transformed the Syrian crisis from its domestic framework to the regional then the international. As a result, restoring the decision-making to the Syrian interior became an indispensable point of entry not to go back to pre-2011, but to solve the root causes of the problems that led to 2011. It is in this context that the importance of UNSC resolution 2254 lies, which does not only speak to a political solution, but a solution determined by the Syrians themselves.

The major problems that had accumulated in Syria over decades were subject to fragmentation, i.e. through reform, prior to 2011, but their massive accumulation and reaching the point of explosion, closed the door on reform and opened the door to change. Any political structure can continue for a period of time if it is subject to reforms periodically, but when reforms are absent and problems continue to accumulate, this means that the historical epoch of this system is over, because it has lost its ability to perform its historical function.

The expired political structure does not only mean the structure that governs the state’s parts, but also the formally dominant structure among the opposition. In one word, a whole political space has entered the phase of disintegration, while the new political space is still in the making. The first sign of the formation of the new political space is the people taking to the streets and protesting, thus expressing their dissociation from the old political space.

When grievances accumulate without solutions, and when great corruption goes from being a limited phenomenon to an intractable, dominating, and controlling phenomenon at all levels, including essential parts of the power system within the state apparatus, reform turns into a cosmetic process that is unable to achieve any real results. The situation in Syria is exactly like that and more.

The comprehensive and radical change that includes the structure of the state apparatus and its relationship with society, as well as everything related to organizing the society’s life politically and civically, and in a manner commensurate with the new objective necessities, is the inevitable trend in which Syria will move to restore its national sovereignty, that is, the sovereignty of its people, and that will be through the important entry point represented by UNSC resolution 2254, which can be summarized in two issues: ending foreign intervention and creating the conditions for Syrians to decide their own destiny, and in the various issues.