Louay Hussein, mainstay of Syria opposition, flees to Turkey

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 29 Απριλίου 2015 - 07:35

A decades-long mainstay of Syria's domestic opposition sought for years to convince both the regime of Bashar al-Assad and its exiled opponents to make peace and reconcile, lay down their weapons and join forces to rebuild the country.

But now Louay Hussein has had it.

In recent days, he and his wife fled Syria and wound up in Spain with relatives before heading to Turkey to join up with the rest of the exiled opposition fighting for the Assad regime's downfall while at the same opposing the rise of jihadi groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as Isis or Daesh, and the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra.

"Right now, Bashar al Assad's regime has turned into militia and therefore he doesn't accept negotiating or co-operating or reconciling with the opposition," Mr Hussein said in a lengthy interview with the Financial Times and the French daily Le Figaro days after his escape. "There is no solution now I think other then forming a fourth force [after Isis, Jabhat al Nusra and the government] whose aim is the safety and unity of Syria to stand against all sorts of tyranny: that is, the regime, Daesh and Nusra. The solution now has become very hard and almost impossible."

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> Mr Hussein, a 55-year-old leftist intellectual, was in and out of the jails of Mr Assad and his father, Hafez, for decades before the protests broke out in March 2011 in a groundswell of opposition to the regime that eventually became an armed uprising. He is among a dwindling core of mostly leftist opposition people, who agitated for reform from within Syria. The messy outcomes of uprisings elsewhere made them wary of revolution. Except for occasional trips to conferences abroad, he has stayed in Syria over the past four years where he formed a tolerated opposition group, Building the Syrian State. Since his escape, the group has distanced itself from him.

Mr Hussein said he was detained in November and released on bail in February. Then he "felt real danger for my safety and my life". He was released with the intervention of several countries, including Iran "because it doesn't want the regime to appear that hideous".

Exiled Syrian opposition leaders have long argued Mr Assad would never step aside or compromise with his opponents. But Mr Hussein says the possibility of a negotiated settlement has ended, and he came to the conclusion that Mr Assad was incorrigible over time. "Those who used to say in the past that there is no use of negotiating with Bashar were wrong," he said. "We had to work on pressuring Bashar's regime to accept negotiations."

At the same time he described Mr Assad's regime as even more vile than that of his father, who killed thousands in an early 1980s uprising. "Bashar al-Assad's regime uses violence in all its forms and colours without limit," he said. "The most hideous act that the regime is performing is the siege he imposes on some villages and cutting off food and medical supplies through which caused the death of many children and individuals due to hunger and malnutrition."

<>Mr Hussein, a member of the same minority Alawite community as Mr Assad, said his conversations with Russian and Iranian officials allied with the regime convinced him there was no hope for change from within.

"It was due to . . . the failure of his allies, Russia and Iran, to accept the concepts of negotiation and reconciliation, and due to what appears now of Russian inability to pressure the regime to make real change," he said. "That was the turning point."

In conversations with Russian and Iranian diplomats in Damascus, he became convinced that Moscow saw Syria only as a tool to counter the US while Tehran saw it only as a tool to make regional gains. "They apparently do not have the desire to the end the Syrian crisis," he said.

Mr Hussein said that there were several armed Syrian opposition groups in the country's north and south - that describe themselves as the Free Syrian Army - which he continued to trust but acknowledged they were small. He said it was crucial to build a viable alternative to the regime before bringing it down. "We need to always understand that striking Bashar's regime or getting rid of Bashar needs the other half of the equation, which is the existence of a real Syrian alternative," he said. "Otherwise the chaos, will increase and enable the extremist groups to take the rest of the country."

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