Syrian Opposition Activist Says NATO Must Intervene
President Bashar al-Assad will not renounce power peacefully, according to spokesman for local action group.
Syrian Opposition Activist Says NATO Must Intervene
President Bashar al-Assad will not renounce power peacefully, according to spokesman for local action group.
As the violence continues in Syria, there are mounting calls for international intervention within the country. IWPR Arab Spring editor Daniella Peled talks to the 22-year-old spokesman for the Local Coordinating Committee of the opposition in Jabal al-Zawiya in the northwestern province of Idlib, who says it is time for NATO to step in.
What is the situation like now in your area?
The army raided Ariha, a city in Idlib, on the morning of January 12, firing from heavy weapons, tanks and trucks. Two young men were killed and about seven people injured, including a child of 12 who was shot in the wrist and is now in a very bad way. Tanks remained in the streets and no one could move around – the army was shooting at everything that moved.
What was the impact of the visit by Arab League monitors?
What Arab League are you talking about? What is this League that gives chance after chance to the regime? They are defending the regime more than Assad’s agents. We have shown them tanks, the wounded, people martyred – enough to bring down any regime in the world – but still they defend the Syrian regime.
Yet the regime will fall. It will continue to kill us, but we will not stop demonstrating and we will continue until we get our victory. Agents of Assad have said they are ready to kill two million people, but we say we are ready to give 20 million people so that he does not stay in power.
We want our children to live a life different to that which we and our fathers have had to live. We are ready to die. I am talking to you now, but I don’t know if we will ever get a chance to speak again.
Is the opposition going to turn to wholesale violent resistance?
For ten months, we have done our best to continue peacefully, with at least 20 martyrs every day. But I think the opposition will turn to violence very soon.
There are also tens of thousands of soldiers who are ready to leave the army as soon as there is a safe haven for them to go to. We talk to soldiers, including our relatives, and ask them, “Why don’t you leave? How can you stay in the army and kill your brothers?” They says, “We will die if we leave the army, we need a safe place to go to.” When they have that, then they will leave the army.
Assad will not give up peacefully. He knows nothing but killing – he was brought up on it. No one can stop it apart from NATO. The Arab League is silently supporting Assad; Iran, Russia and China are also supporting him. We want NATO intervention like in Libya, and anyone in the opposition who isn’t openly asking for it does not represent the citizens of Syria. The opposition are sitting in their five-star hotels while we are dying.
People want military intervention, anything that can get rid of this man [Assad]. The role of the opposition should be only to convey what the citizens are saying in the demonstrations, and if the people are asking for international intervention then the opposition needs to ask for it, too.
We are the revolution, and we are asking for international protection. We are dying, and if we have to die, then let [Assad] die with us. Some say it is a betrayal to ask for NATO to get involved, but it’s a bigger betrayal to allow your citizens to be killed.
(Interviewee’s name withheld for reasons of security.)
Daniella Peled is editor of IWPR’s Arab Spring output.
