Inside Syria's Revolt

Some in the opposition still believe that dialogue with the regime is possible. Louai Hussein, a writer and journalist who spent seven years in prison in the 1980s without being put on trial and was briefly detained again last March, is the founder of an unlicensed NGO called Building the Syrian State. He not only rejects the idea of foreign governments sending weapons to the Free Syrian Army but believes that the FSA and local defence committees should not have taken up arms at all. The struggle against the regime should be carried out peacefully with demonstrations, strikes and civil disobedience. He wants a dialogue that would be more like a negotiation between equals than anything that has taken place so far. ‘The regime expects a dialogue in which it is the presiding power while we are nothing more than complainants or petitioners. They treat the crisis as a small problem. We reject that kind of dialogue. We only accept dialogue if it’s about transferring power and not if it’s led by the regime.’ He was frustrated by his experiences last year, when he met Bouthaina Shaaban, Assad’s political and media adviser, six times. He put forward numerous proposals for reform, among them agreed rules on how long demonstrations could last and requiring security police to have their names and numbers clearly displayed on their uniforms. Although he was told that the president had approved several ideas, no real changes were implemented. He also met the vice-president, Farouk al-Sharaa, four times, but nothing came of that either.