By Nicholas Blanford

BEIRUT: Syria’s opposition groups have agreed to nominate the Syrian National Council as their chief representative, but it remains to be seen whether the bickering factions can achieve the necessary unity to win the renewed confidence of the West and encourage nervous fence-sitting Syrians to join the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad.
 
A meeting of opposition groups in Istanbul Tuesday was an attempt to forge a unified front ahead of the second “Friends of Syria” conference scheduled for April 2 in the same city. Factional rivalries, splits and rows have weakened the external political opposition in recent months and handed the initiative to the emerging armed groups and the civilian revolutionary councils inside Syria.
 
Although the factions agreed Tuesday that the SNC would remain the representative of the Syrian opposition, there were dissenters, notably Haithem Maleh, a veteran human rights campaigner, and the Kurdish National Council.
 
The bickering has done little to gain the confidence of a broad swath of Syrians – especially some minorities – who do not particularly support Assad but fear the alternative if the regime falls and chaos ensues.
 
“The silent majority will be encouraged when they see hope for a better future and when they see concrete initiatives that will rebuild Syria and establish a democratic civil state where all people are treated with dignity and enjoy a free and prosperous life,” said Ausama Monajed, senior advisor to the secretary-general of the SNC. “A grassroots campaign needs to reach out to this group to gain their support even if they wish to remain at home.”
 
That’s easier said than done, particularly as the external political opposition is not held in high regard by the rebel Free Syrian Army and by activists in Syria who are driving the revolt. Many activists accuse the SNC of being out of touch with the realities on the ground and toothless in the face of the Assad regime’s efforts to crush the uprising.
 
“They are a waste of time. They move from one capital to another arguing with each other and have no credibility at all inside Syria,” said Ahmad, a Syrian activist living in hiding in north Lebanon. “We are the people running the revolution and we’ll not allow the SNC to push us aside and take power once Assad is gone.”
 
The divisions within the political opposition also have reduced the options for the West and its Arab allies as they ponder the best course of action to resolve the crisis in Syria.
 
The United States and Turkey have agreed that they will use the Friends of Syria meeting to win backing for the provision of nonlethal aid, such as medical assistance and communications equipment, to the opposition in Syria. But for now most hopes are invested in U.N. envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point plan to end the violence. Syria Tuesday agreed to the proposal, which in part calls for an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from urban areas, but since then the fighting and onslaught against pockets of support for the rebels have not eased.
 
Indeed, Assad’s stroll Tuesday around the damaged quarter of Baba Amr in Homs was an implicit display of confidence, signaling the regime’s determination to crush the rebellion rather than yield to international démarches. In the short term, the Syrian authorities have reason to feel some confidence: Russia, China and Iran continue to provide diplomatic and logistical support and despite thousands of defections in the lower ranks of the Syrian army, the key battle-hardened units remain largely intact. Political defections have also been minimal.
 
The West, on the other hand, has found itself running out of options, having slapped a raft of sanctions on the regime and called on Assad to step down. The Annan proposal will be allowed to run its course, but few expect that it will yield a significant breakthrough. A military intervention along the lines of the NATO mission in Libya has been ruled out. Even calls for providing military hardware to the FSA have drawn scant enthusiasm in Washington and European capitals.
 
Still, rather than the recent Libya intervention, it is the specter of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq that haunts the debate in Washington and London on how to end 42-years of Assad dynasty rule. While there is unanimity in the West on the need to remove the top regime clique, there is no appetite to repeat the Iraqi de-Baathification purge that gutted the civilian and military leadership in Baghdad leaving a vacuum that was filled by an insurgency and civil war. Instead, diplomatic sources say, Western governments are attempting to signal to Syrian officials and the business elite to break with the regime by suggesting that they are needed for a smooth transition. The message, according to one Western diplomat in Beirut, is to tell the political and business elite in Syria that they do not have to feel they must choose between the Assad regime or the abyss.
 
“Not everyone will be held accountable,” the diplomat said, adding that the West may not be able to be “too squeamish” on whom is spared future prosecution. “There is a recognition that there needs to be some kind of continuity for a softer landing and hopefully some in Syria understand this message,” the diplomat said.