As Constitutional Committee Meets, Her Message: Don’t Forget About Syria

The Syrian Constitutional Committee, a 150-member group comprising the Syrian government, civil society, and opposition groups, is going to reconvene in Geneva on Monday for a sixth round of negotiations. The goal of the Committee is to draft a new constitution, end the decade-long civil war that is still ravaging the country, and build long-lasting peace. 

Dima Moussa is a member of this committee and of the smaller drafting committee, a 45-member group responsible for drafting new laws ahead of the U.N.-supervised elections. She was nominated by the Syrian Negotiation Commission, representing the opposition, and was the Vice President of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces from 2018 to 2020. The 44-year-old lawyer, originally from Homs, has spent most of her life and career between Turkey and the United States. 

The Committee has yet to produce concrete results, two years after its creation, and Moussa hopes that big players on the files, mostly Russia and the U.S., could pressure players to shake up the status quo and for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s representatives to negotiate in good faith.

For Moussa, the lack of U.S. engagement from the Biden administration demonstrates a wider American foreign policy shift but has the consequence of perpetuating the status quo in Syria. She is hoping for greater engagement from Washington. “There hasn’t been a clear policy on Syria yet by the Biden administration,” she says, “they have been looking at it, reassessing it, studying it. I don’t know what they’re doing with it but there hasn’t yet been a clear statement of policy on Syria.”

Moussa also hopes that the broader international community, mostly focused on the situation in Afghanistan and other crises, does not forget about Syria, where 6,7 million people are still internally displaced and 6,8 are refugees. 

Moussa’s remarks have been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Stephanie Fillion: What are your hopes for the next round?

Dima Moussa: My hope is that everyone shows up this time with a sense of responsibility and the urgency that is commensurate with the level of suffering that the Syrians are experiencing today, those inside Syria in addition to all those who had to leave the country and become refugees, as well as the condition of division of Syria. 

The hope is for everyone to come with the true desire and determination to resolve the Syrian issue and to work together to get a meaningful political process underway. I think one of the main things we’re facing is that Syrians have lost hope. We need to restore that, and we need them to also see that their well-being is our priority going into the sixth round, which requires everyone to put Syria and all Syrians above anything else. This requires admission by some that real change is necessary and is the only way out and it’s the only way for the future, and at all levels, and there can be no preconditions or taboos when we are discussing the future of Syria.

Fillion: What do you think the international community can do to shake things up and incentivize the Syrian government to work on making real progress?

Moussa: In the West, when talking about Syria, we hear the same expressions relating to stabilization, ending the conflict, and maintaining ceasefire zones. These are more generally used by the U.S. but I think more or less the West is using these same expressions. While these are very important things they’re temporary, they’re not the end result. They have to be interim steps to lay the foundation for the implementation of the political solution.

If their focus is just stabilization, and a ceasefire here and there, it doesn’t sound like there’s that eagerness for a political solution, whether if we’re not seeing it in rhetoric, we’re certainly not seeing it in action. At the end of the day, the political solution in Syria has to be based on a consensus amongst Syrians, it can’t be imposed by anyone.

Whether or not we like it, the Syrian file has been internationalized, therefore, it can only be resolved with involvement by the international community, or at least international stakeholders, and there are so many in Syria today, which not coincidentally also requires consensus among them, something that we haven’t seen, and even on the international yet at the international level. 

Other things that we need to be cognizant of are some steps by the U.S. and others in the international community, purely removing certain individuals who are very close to the regime from the sanctions list, whether it’s the U.S., the European Union, or the United Kingdom. […] It’s giving them wider margins within which they can further obstruct and delay the political solution. 

Other things that are of concern and that the international community is quite responsible for is increasing talk about the return of refugees when clearly the situation in Syria is not conducive to voluntary and dignified return by those who were forced to become refugees, and also the talk about reconstruction. We hear about stabilization which is fine but there have been some discussions, but any discussion about reconstruction before a political solution is probably also not serving to advance the political solution. I think there need have been more signals to the regime by the international community that can be perceived as saying ‘you’ve won this war and you can stay and we’re going to work with you’, which is a complete disregard of the demands of the Syrian people.

Fillion: How has the Biden administration been on Syria so far?

Moussa: It’s clear that the U.S. priorities have shifted and I don’t think this is something new. I believe the shift has started actually before Biden took office, but [the Biden Administration is] clearly continuing along the same path, even taking more actual steps in that direction, which is turning east, that is focusing mainly on China. 

What we’ve seen since Biden has taken office is more tangible steps in terms of repositioning, including things like, pulling out of Afghanistan, also pulling out of many of the bases, [including the] U.S. military bases in Iraq. There is a general reprioritization of many files in the Middle East, including Syria, I think one of the manifestations of that is that there hasn’t been a clear policy on Syria yet by the Biden administration. They have been looking at it, reassessing it, studying it. I don’t know what they’re doing with it but there hasn’t yet been a clear statement of the policy on Syria. This is of concern because we’re coming up to the 10th month of this administration, and we’ve seen no policy on Syria. There isn’t even a U.S. envoy to Syria so when [the former U.S. special representative for Syria engagement] James Jeffrey left, he has not been officially replaced yet. There is no high-level official in the U.S. administration responsible for Syria. This is a very concerning issue because it means that Syria has fallen even further on the priority list for the U.S.

We don’t know what [the Biden Administration’s] official policy is once here because it still doesn’t have one, and every time we ask, always the same answer: We’re working on it. Whether we like it or not, the U.S. is a major player and in any file in the world but in a place like Syria, the U.S. policy is very important. There was maybe some hope, especially after the Biden-Putin Summit in Geneva this summer. The only tangible result out of that was the renewal of the cross-border aid resolution, but since then, there hasn’t been any breakthrough in any of the other files relating to Syria.

Fillion: Any message you want to send the international community?

Moussa: The last time we saw something significant happen this year in terms of the political process and the political solution was in late 2015 when the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) came together, which included almost all those international stakeholders, including the Astana group, and what later became known as the small group, or the like-minded group. What came out of that is Security Council resolution 2254 which is our roadmap for the political solution and the way forward with Syria. Since then that group has sort of divided into these two sides that have been working more against each other than with each other. I think one of the things that would be positive is if we have something similar to that format, where all the international community stakeholders come together again, and what we want are practical, implementable steps for this resolution that we Syrians can implement.