BBC News - #Syria opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun looks to future

BBC News - Syria opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun looks to future

clip from article:Ahmed, a 20-year-old former soldier in the Syrian army had shot at protesters, he told me. But he had had no choice.

"We had security officers standing right behind us... They ordered us to open fire," he said.

"Some of us shot in the air, some on the ground, but one of us refused to shoot at all. He laid his gun on the ground.

"A security officer killed him there and then."

He said he had seen more than a dozen such summary executions before being captured in an ambush by the "Free Army", made up of former soldiers who have defected to the opposition.

He was glad that had happened, even though he was injured in the attack.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

There will not be chaos like in Libya. We still have powerful military institutions that we want to preserve”

Burhan Ghalioun Syrian National Council

I repeated his story to Burhan Ghalioun, the head of the main Syrian opposition group. The regime was clinging to power with such violence: wouldn't there be terrible revenge afterwards?

Mr Ghalioun, chairman of the Syrian National Council (SNC) is one of those planning for the day after Assad.

Immediately following the collapse of the regime, they would announce a national reconciliation process, as in South Africa, he said. They would also learn the lessons of Libya (and Iraq) and maintain the institutions responsible for order.

"Syria is unlike Libya. There is still a functioning state and institutions. We still have a legal and judicial system.

"We want to distinguish between the regime and the state in Syria. There will not be chaos like in Libya. We still have powerful military institutions that we want to preserve."
Supporting the revolution

First, they have to overthrow President Assad. I arrived in Mr Ghalioun's Paris apartment - he is a former professor at the Sorbonne - while he and his aides were discussing strategy: How to get the West to intervene? What to do if Russia maintains its veto in the UN Security Council?

"We're asking them [the international community] to assess every possible option to create and enforce a safe area in Syria and to stop the atrocities being committed in Syrian towns", he told me.

"We are seeking a partial no-fly zone: covering a limited area, just over one piece of territory. We don't want the complete destruction of Syria's air defences. [read more at link]