10 SEPTEMBER 2024
Sawsan Abou Zainedin is an architect and an urban development planner by training, but for the past decade she has been working with various Syrian civil society institutions and initiatives. And now she leads Madaniya, a platform for more than two hundred Syrian civil society organisations around the world.
Madaniya was launched last year, so it is still very new. “We started the mobilisation with different organisations in February and March 2023, and then the inaugural conference in Paris was held in June,” Sawsan recalls, but the discussion and planning had been going on for about a year beforehand.
Madaniya is not the first attempt to harness the energy of Syrian civil society. “There are so many initiatives,” Sawsan admits. “There are at least two large networks for humanitarian NGOs. And then there’s We Exist, which brings together organisations to focus on advocacy, and most of those work on human rights issues and governance.” There are other coalitions gathered by theme, and several more organised by location — SCAN UK, and ones in Turkey, across the US, and in Europe. The Syrian Civil Society Networks Platform brings together some of the big diaspora-based networks.
“Inside Syria, there’s a platform bringing together a few organisations in the north-west, and a larger one in the north-east. There isn’t, as far as I know, any platform to coordinate organisations in regime-held areas, or to bring all of these geographies together. Although there are organisations whose mandate is to support civil society, and they do work with partners throughout these different areas, but through previously designed programmes.”
The intention with Madaniya was to bring together the totality of this civic space, so that it’s acknowledged as a stakeholder, Sawsan explains. “If you talk about stakeholders, you’re talking about the regime, about the opposition, some of the de facto authorities,” she says. “But I would argue that we are the only stakeholder with a real interest in the democratic future of this country. And we find ways of working for that even when we’re doing pure humanitarian work.”
The Syrian crisis developed into an overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe, but the root of it remains political, she insists, and this must always be highlighted, even in humanitarian interventions. It’s important to her that Madaniya is Syrian-led and Syrian-funded, and that it remains so.
Madaniya’s inaugural conference at the Institut Du Monde Arabe, Paris, June 2023. Photo: Madaniya.
A Voice and a Shield
Madaniya includes big medical and humanitarian organisations, but also very grassroots and community-based organisations. These don’t have the same access to international aid, so might not seem as influential. “But if we think instead of influence in communities, then they would be the main players, particularly in different areas inside Syria,” Sawsan argues. “In regime held areas most of them only operate under the radar, but this should not lead to their isolation because they’re still part of the project.”
The idea is to mobilise organisations around a shared set of values, and so Madaniya has strict criteria. “One is the independence of these organisations, their ability to make decisions independent of the political agendas of local, regional and international actors,” Sawsan says.
That’s a challenge for organisations working in a restrictive environment, whether it’s a sector like the humanitarian one, or a region like Turkey, or the northeast under the Autonomous Administration, or Idlib under the Salvation Government. “But this does not compromise them on a value level,” Sawsan insists.
With recent moves in Lebanon and Turkey to force back refugees, it was not safe for organisations based there to take an open stance. “They needed to work through us,” Sawsan says. “So we act with our members, but also act on our own to shield the different organisations. We engage with ministries in the UK and Europe, in the US and in Turkey. We’re trying to gain that access with Arab states, but it’s been very, very challenging.”
Syria House
In its interactions with the UK government, Madaniya mostly works through its member organisations, and particularly the Syrian British Consortium because its purpose is to engage with UK politics. “There are multiple NGOs based here which already have relationships, so we work collectively.”
Up to now, Madaniya hasn’t engaged with Parliament. “We definitely need to consider that,” Sawsan thinks. “Our engagement has been with civil servants and ministers. There’s a lot to learn from the US, because civil society there is very active in Congress. I think the Syrian British Consortium is best placed to mobilise the diaspora here to engage with Parliament.”
The earthquake in Turkey and Syria on the 6th of February 2023 took place as Madaniya was still being formed. “The UK government wanted to pay condolences to those who were affected, so their plan was to visit the Turkish embassy,” Sawsan explains. “But there’s no Syrian embassy in the UK.” And so Syria House was set up as a temporary structure in London’s Trafalgar Square, at the heart of the capital.
“We worked with UK based organisations to make this temporary space, with Action For Sama, Syrian British Consortium, The Syria Campaign, and many other organisations who also helped and supported.”
Syria House was visited by King Charles III, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, as well as government ministers, politicians and diplomats. “That the UK government went through civil society organisations was a really good gesture, particularly in the face of the normalisation trend,” Sawsan believes. “At the same time Syria House also served as a space for the public, for Syrians to come together in solidarity with each other at a really tough time.”
Sawsan sees this recognition of Syrian civil society as vital to build trust, so when there’s an issue, policymakers have someone to turn to. “We want to present the Syrian civic space as a stakeholder, not just through advocacy, because there’s not a balance of power in advocacy, but as a counterpart policymakers can engage with on equal terms,” she says. “The international community needs a counterpart to speak to, and there’s none better placed than the actors in the civic space to be this principled counterpart.”
Sawsan points to accountability as an area of progress where civic actors, by partnering with other states and other stakeholders, managed to make breakthroughs. It’s not perfect, Sawsan admits. “We all understand that it’s politics, it’s driven by interests, and not always by rights and principles,” she says. “The Syria Desk in the FCDO reach out to us, and to our member organisations,” she says,“but there are still some issues like early recovery where, while they’ve been receptive to discussing it with us, we did not see this discussion reflected in their policy and their engagement in international meetings.”
Risks and Opportunities in Early Recovery
The EU already provides funding to states around Syria in a failing effort to contain refugees, and the issues of refugee return and recovery aid have been central to arguments for rapprochement and normalisation. Might early recovery funding now benefit the very regime that forced the refugees to flee in the first place?
“In this case, our engagement with the UK was not the best,” Sawsan says, regretfully. “The early recovery strategy proposed by UN OCHA, to centralise early recovery work through a UN early recovery trust fund — this is another example of where things could go wrong. By placing the final say in the hands of the Damascus-based UN resident coordinator, the upper hand is given to the regime.” And this is despite the very long track record of aid manipulation by the Syrian government, she says.
Syrians have long called for more sustainable forms of aid, for a shift to early recovery and all the way to recovery — “but in a principled manner that’s conditioned by human rights,” Sawsan insists. “It’s naive to keep saying neutrality, neutrality, because aid is political, and it has always been a political tool, not just for the regime and de facto authorities, but also for the international community.”
She believes that the early recovery strategy could have been designed to shift power dynamics inside Syria. “We could work to empower other alternatives to the government,” she argues. “It doesn’t have to be the opposition. It doesn’t have to be the SDF and the AANES,” the de facto authorities in Syria’s northeast. “It doesn’t have to be the interim government,” in the northwest. “It doesn’t have to be ‘either-or’,” she insists.
UN Resolution 2254 speaks of establishing an inclusive transitional governing body. For this to happen, Sawsan argues that work must be done on deconstructing the regime’s entrenchment in state institutions, removing heads of the security apparatus, maintaining whatever state structures remain functional, and strengthening other structures to be involved. “Again, it doesn’t have to be opposition figures,” she says. “Alternatives do exist.”
The technical files could positively influence the political track, she believes, “if we centralise the conversation on the political essence of the problem,” but frustratingly, she sees a complete divorce between the political stance of governments, including the UK, and their technical approach.
“It’s been a containment policy, mostly,” she says of the approach taken to Syria by the UK, the US, and EU. “This is what worries me on early recovery, because it’s trying to fix the situation on the economic level without actually addressing the roots of it.”
The Trap of Containment
Syria’s revolution began in 2011. Conflict lines have been frozen since 2020, with Turkey’s military stopping the Syrian regime advancing further in the northwest, and the US-led Coalition doing the same in the east. We are now in 2024, and Syria has been out of the headlines for some time. So, we ask Sawsan, why should British MPs be thinking about Syria?
“The thirteen-years-long conflict has been frozen in terms of front lines, but its impact on Syria and Syrians, and also internationally, has been getting worse year after year — the humanitarian crisis, human rights abuses, the refugee crisis in the region, but also the security issue,” she says. “Time was not frozen throughout these thirteen years.”
And with the Gaza war, it’s getting more complicated. “With the Syrian government allowing its allies, Hezbollah and Iran to use Syria as a base, the Syrian conflict is spilling over, and the regional conflict is also spilling into Syria,” she says. “The entire international community’s policy has been to keep Syria off the table for now, keep it as it is while every aspect of the country is getting worse.”
Sawsan doesn’t believe this containment and normalisation approach will work, of trying to create economic conditions for refugees to return, but without addressing oppression within Syria, and at the same time to funding regional governments to block borders. “The thinking behind it is that let’s get things fixed on the economic level, and then the politics can fix itself,’ Sawsan says. “But I think this is going to explode.”
And seeing this, Sawsan thinks of Gaza again — “because but we’re trying to make this same situation with the entirety of Syria now” she argues. “Gaza, it was under siege, but economically it was well connected. It kept being served economically, but the main issue was not addressed. Eventually, it exploded again, and now it’s the centre of attention for the entire world.”
Sawsan’s message is don’t underestimate the political and security aspects, because recovery requires stability. “It’s very simplistic to think that only by slightly fixing the economic situation, in terms of more electricity hours or whatever, that you would support people to recover, and keep Syria off the table,” she says. “We do need to support people, but we need to be very sensitive in our approach so that we don’t empower the wrong elements.”
Sawsan compares the refugees issue to the captagon narcotics issue. “The Syrian government does not want to address this,” she says. “They just want to use it to extort aid and to exercise pressure. And we see how people who were forcibly returned from Lebanon were immediately taken to detention centres, and many of them were killed under torture.”
Sawsan points to failed efforts by Arab states to offer Assad diplomatic relations and incentives. “Through that, we can learn a lot about the nature of the Syrian government. They do not want to collaborate. On the contrary, there’s a track record of how everything will be weaponized and manipulated.”
The violence of the Assad regime is so overwhelming that it’s hard to comprehend. “We’re talking about an industrial scale of violations against individual liberties,” Sawsan emphasises. “It’s not just living under an authoritarian regime. We’re talking about a narcotics state, manipulating institutions and state resources to enact this, so we need to be very careful of how sometimes, just simply by giving aid, we’re feeding into that.”
If all this seems overwhelming and impossible, Sawsan insists there is a way forward. “There are still people who have the capacity, the technical expertise, and the willingness to contribute. We need to support them to be in the centre of decision making, and to maintain a principled, human-rights-based position. To remain value-driven, knowing that this is a harder way, but also knowing that there are a lot of people who are willing and able to make it work.”
And the cost of not doing this hard work? “I really think the Gaza scenario works best to illustrate how dangerous it is to have a containment policy only.”
Madaniya’s website: https://www.madaniya-csn.org/