“What difference can the SNC make if it gets international recognition and loses its legitimacy among the protesters? And what difference can the FSA make, if it fails to get all the emerging paramilitary groups to accept the authority of its Military Council and its leader?” Ammar Abdulhamid, a U.S.-based Syrian dissident who has been critical of the SNC said recently. Abdulhamid has criticized the SNC’s “lack of transparency” and claimed that several independent Syrians who wanted to attend the conference in Tunisia “as monitors” were not allowed in. “So long as SNC leaders remain more preoccupied with winning international recognition than they are with internal cohesion or outreach to their own people, they are destined to become as irrelevant and cut-off from realities as Assad is today,” he said.
Category: Mentions & Quotes
Jordan’s king calls for Assad to step down
A brief mention in the Globe and Mail:
The accumulating criticism of Syria in the Arab world is “a moral boost to the protest movement in the country and the opposition groups outside,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian human-rights activist at the Foundation for the Defence of Democracy in Washington. “But it will have no direct practical effect unless it is coupled with greater support to the Free Syrian Army, the establishment of safe zones inside Syrian territories and the imposition of a no-fly/no-go zone.” “The Assads are committed wholeheartedly to the ongoing militarized crackdown,” Mr. Abdulhamid said, “and they will not be moved and removed by mere symbolic gestures and diplomatic pressures.”
Turkey-Syria relations reach new lows
A mention in SETimes.com:
Ammar Abdulhamid, a US-based Syrian poet and activist who runs the Tharwa Foundation, says “The Turkish government is now forced to make hard choices.”
“Neutrality is not a viable option here, and the question now confronting Mr. Erdogan and his advisers regarding Syria deals with the extent of their potential involvement in managing the looming transition there,” he told SES Turkiye.
“This calls for a greater engagement with opposition groups, and not only the SNC, but also greater logistical and material support to the Syrian Free Army,” he said.
Surprise recall of US ambassador to Syria spurred by threats
Quote in the Christian Science Monitor:
“World leaders and Syrian opposition leaders should face the fact that the Syrian situation now requires international intervention and that the Assads need to be stopped by any means necessary,” Ammar Abdulhamid, a prominent Syrian opposition activist based in the US, wrote in his daily newsletter Monday.
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 