Syria’s interim government is bringing together people from the country’s many religions and sects for a two-day national dialogue that began on Monday.
What is the national dialogue?
Ahmed al-Shara, the country’s interim president, whose rebel coalition seized control of Syria in early December, promised to hold a national dialogue to discuss the formation of a representative government.
His government set a March 1 deadline to begin the process. Invitations for the event were sent out on Sunday, Feb. 23, to hundred of participants, including community leaders, academics and religious leaders, only one day before the conference was set to begin.
Also invited were journalists, businessmen, activists, former detainees of the Assad government and the families of people who were killed or wounded in Syria’s brutal, 13-year civil war.
What about the Kurds?
Mr. al-Shara has spoken of the need to unite Syria’s many fractious populations to build a new Syria. Syria is a Sunni Muslim majority country but has many religious and ethnic minorities, including Alawites, Druse, Christians and Kurds.
But attempts at unity have already run into challenges.
Some Kurds, who make up some 10 percent of Syria’s population, were invited to the dialogue. But the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed militia that controls much of Syria’s northeast, was not. Syria’s interim government has demanded that the militia disarm and join a unified national military force, as a condition of joining the dialogue.
The committee organizing the conference has previously said that the SDF does not represent all Syrian Kurds.
Turkey, a close ally of the rebel group that led the overthrow of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, has for years sought to curb the power of the Syrian Democratic Forces, maintaining that the militia is linked to Kurdish separatist insurgents inside Turkey.
What will come out of the dialogue?
Many Syrians are skeptical about what a national dialogue may bring, especially in a deeply divided country where sectarian tensions are spilling over into revenge killings.
Syrians are also wary of the promises of inclusivity coming from a government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that has given government and ministerial positions to its own loyalists. It has yet to include in the government other rebel groups that helped to oust Mr. Assad.
The conference organizers have said that there is no direct link between the formation of the new Syrian government and the dialogue conference, though they are happening at the same time.
Conference participants will issue recommendations for the new government, as well as for the writing of a new constitution and laws. But those recommendations appear to be nonbinding.
“Recommendations from the National Dialogue will not be mere advice and formalities, but will be the basis for the provisional constitutional declaration, economic identity and institutional reform plan,” said Hassan al-Dughaim, the committee’s spokesman.