•  washington
• Wednesday, October 19, 2011
• Inter Press Service

As the death toll from more than six months of popular unrest climbs past the 3,000 mark, the opposition to the government of President Bashar al-Assad is intensifying efforts to present a unified face to both the outside world and the Syrian people.

On Monday, clashes in the city of Homs reportedly took the lives of several dozen people, including soldiers and members of the regime's security forces who have been responsible for most of violence since the uprising first broke out in Dera'a seven months ago.

Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council, the governing apparatus of the Syrian opposition, has been developing more sophisticated governance structures and communication strategies in order to boost its legitimacy as a sole representative of the Syrian people.

Despite early official recognition by the Libyan provisional government, and statements of support from some Egyptian parties, the council has yet to make significant inroads with either the rest of the Arab world or with the West.

On Oct. 13, four members of the SNC were hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace to introduce the U.S. public to the council and answer questions about their structure, objectives, and representation.

Najib Ghadbian, Dima Moussa, Murhaf Jouejati, and Ausama Monajed covered topics ranging from the representational structure of the council to the council's expectations from the international community.

The panel was hosted by Steven Heydemann, the senior adviser for Middle East Initiatives at USIP, who hailed the SNC as 'the leadership structure that the opposition has been struggling to develop for some time.'

The council was formed largely to demonstrate to the international community that the Syrian opposition is capable of developing an alternative political vision for a post-Assad Syria, a question that has remained largely unanswered for the seven months of the uprising.

The SNC has developed a highly sophisticated structure, including foreign relations, media, and finance bureaus, along with a 230-seat general assembly with representation from the seven major groups currently represented in the opposition — expat leaders, Islamists, intelligentsia, leftists, grassroots activists, and a variety of minority groups.

The organisation is capped by a 29-member executive committee with similar representational distributions. Though the structure is undoubtedly ambitious, it has yet to successfully convince the international community of its efficacy as a coordinating political body.

As Hydemann remarked, 'The SNC continues to face a number of significant challenges…in demonstrating its credibility and its legitimacy to the international community.'

Though the SNC panellists at the USIP event distributed flyers with statements of support from the White House, the European Union, and the French Foreign Ministry, none of these entities has explicitly recognised the singular legitimacy of the SNC.

The initial announcement of the formation of the SNC was greeted with great deal of scepticism by many ostensible opponents of the Syrian regime, partly due to the high proportion of Islamist figures on the partial list of names distributed by the council.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service