Some observers suggest that realpolitik is driving external actors’ strategies rather than any concern to end the conflict or advance a democratic transition.Whether by design or not, external players are indeed doing just enough to maintain a state of stalemate,” says liberal activist Ammar Abdulhamid right, the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion.“Syrians will not be allowed to solve their problems until these players solve theirs,” he contends.“Islamists, loyalists, secularists, Alawites, tribalists, even nonviolence activists, all now are but instruments of implementation of agendas that they do not control or even want,” he writes.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 