The Day After project was a cooperative movement by members of the Syrian opposition to outline a plan to rebuild the country and end the Syrian Civil War once Bashar al-Assad is ousted from power. [1] The 45 members of the group held covert meetings in Berlin to determine the set of principles that should be used to construct a democracy in Syria. Members came from both official bodies such as the Syrian National Council and the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, as well as members who belonged to neither of these groups. On August 28, 2012, the group published its plan in a paper titled "The Day After Project: Supporting a Democratic Transition in Syria.
The Day After Association is an independent, Syrian-led civil society organization working to support a democratic transition in Syria. In August 2012, TDA completed work on a comprehensive approach to managing the challenges of a post-Assad transition in Syria. The Day After Project brought together a group of Syrians representing a large spectrum of the Syrian opposition—including senior representatives of the Syrian National Council (SNC), members of the Local Coordination Committees in Syria (LCC), and unaffiliated opposition figures from inside Syria and the Diaspora representing all major political trends and components of Syrian society—to participate in an independent transition planning process.
The TDA report, "The Day After: Supporting a Democratic Transition in Syria", provides a detailed framework of principles, goals and recommendations from within the Syrian opposition for addressing challenges in six key fields: rule of law; transitional justice; security sector reform; constitutional design; electoral system design; and post-conflict social and economic reconstruction. TDA has since shifted its focus from transition planning efforts to implementation of recommendations presented in the TDA report, opening its office in Istanbul to support this mission.".
Between January and June 2012, members of the Day After project worked on a report that would attempt to address the major aspects of the future transition. They were aided by experts in international planning and diplomacy. The purpose of the report was not to be a rigid directive for restructuring the Syrian government but rather to spark further conversation about the transition. [2] [3]
Six working groups each focused on an individual aspect of the new government that is to be set up, from restructuring the legal and justice system, to reforming the Syrian military, to writing a new constitution and setting up the system for electing a new Syrian legislature.
The project was jointly overseen and supported by the United States Institute of Peace and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
The German Institute for International and Security Affairs is a German think tank in international relations and security studies. A semi-official organization with close links to the federal government, it advises the Bundestag and the federal government on foreign and security policy issues, and also advises decision-makers in international organisations relevant to Germany, above all the European Union, NATO and the United Nations. SWP is regarded as one of Europe's most influential think tanks in international relations. It is headquartered in Berlin and incorporated as a foundation.
Diplomatic relations between Syria and the United States are currently non-existent; they were suspended in 2012 after the onset of the Syrian Civil War. Priority issues between the two states include the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Golan Heights annexation, alleged state-sponsorship of terrorism, etc.
The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided conflict in Syria involving various state-sponsored and non-state actors. In March 2011, popular discontent with the rule of Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by the government's security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the insurgency had escalated into a full-blown civil war.
The Syrian National Council, sometimes known as the Syrian National Transitional Council or the National Council of Syria, is a Syrian opposition coalition, based in Istanbul, Turkey, formed in August 2011 during the Syrian civil uprising against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC), or National Coordination Body for Democratic Change (NCB), is a Syrian bloc chaired by Hassan Abdel Azim consisting of 13 left-wing political parties and "independent political and youth activists". It has been defined by Reuters as the internal opposition's main umbrella group. The NCC initially had several Kurdish political parties as members, but all except for the Democratic Union Party left in October 2011 to join the Kurdish National Council. Some opposition activists have accused the NCC of being a front organization for Bashar al-Assad's government and some of its members of being ex-government insiders.
The Syrian opposition is an umbrella term for the groups that opposed the Assad regime in Syria. In July 2011, at the beginning of the Syrian civil war, defectors from the Syrian Arab Armed Forces formed the Free Syrian Army, a name that was later used by several armed factions during the conflict. In November 2012, political groups operating from abroad formed the Syrian National Coalition (SNC). In turn, the Coalition formed the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) which operated first as a government-in-exile and, from 2015, in certain zones of Syria. In 2017, the Islamist group Tahrir al-Sham, unaffiliated to the SNC, formed the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) in the areas it controlled. Rebel armed forces during the civil war have included the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, affiliated to the SIG, the Southern Operations Room and the Revolutionary Commando Army. Other groups that challenged Bashar al-Assad's rule during the civil war were the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, and the jihadist organization known as the Islamic State.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to April 2012, during which time the spate of protests that began in January 2011 lasted into another calendar year. An Arab League monitoring mission ended in failure as Syrian troops and anti-government militants continued to do battle across the country and the Syrian government prevented foreign observers from touring active battlefields, including besieged opposition strongholds. A United Nations-backed ceasefire brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan met a similar fate, with unarmed UN peacekeepers' movements tightly controlled by the government and fighting.
The Syrian peace process is the ensemble of initiatives and plans to resolve the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011 and spilled beyond its borders. The peace process was moderated by the Arab League, the UN Special Envoy on Syria, Russia and Western powers. The negotiating parties were representatives of the Syrian Ba'athist government and Syrian opposition. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria was excluded at the insistence of Turkey. Radical Salafist forces including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have not engaged in any contacts on peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Bassma Kodmani was a Syrian academic who was spokesperson of the Syrian National Council. She was the executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, a network of independent Arab research and policy institutes working to promote democracy in the Arab world.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from May to August 2012. The majority of death tolls reported for each day comes from the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition activist group based in Syria, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, another opposition group based in London.
The Popular Front for Change and Liberation is a coalition of Syrian political parties. It briefly participated as the leader of the official political opposition within the People's Council of Syria, the state's unicameral parliament. Following Assad regime's decision to conduct the 2016 parliamentary elections during the Geneva talks, the front withdrew its participation.
The Democratic Union Party is a Kurdish left-wing political party established on 20 September 2003 in northern Syria. It is a founding member of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change. It is the leading political party among Syrian Kurds. The PYD was established as a Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in 2003, and both organizations are still closely affiliated through the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK).
The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, commonly named the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), or the Syrian National Revolutionary Coalition (SNRC) is a coalition of opposition groups in the Syrian civil war that was founded in Doha, Qatar, in November 2012. Former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Moaz al-Khatib, considered a moderate, was elected the president of the coalition, and resigned on 21 April 2013. Riad Seif and Suheir Atassi, both prominent democracy activists and the latter a secular human rights advocate, were elected vice presidents. The post of a third vice president will remain vacant for a Kurdish figure to be elected. Mustafa Sabbagh was elected as the coalition's secretary-general. The coalition has a council of 114 seats, though not all of them are filled.
A number of states and armed groups have involved themselves in the Syrian civil war (2011–present) as belligerents. The main groups are the Syrian Arab Republic and allies, the Syrian opposition and allies, Al-Qaeda and affiliates, Islamic State, and the originally mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces.
The Geneva II Conference on Syria was a United Nations-backed international peace conference on the future of Syria with the aim of ending the Syrian Civil War, by bringing together the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition to discuss the clear steps towards a transitional government for Syria with full executive powers. The conference took place on 22 January 2014 in Montreux, on 23–31 January 2014 in Geneva (Switzerland), and again on 10–15 February 2014.
The Vienna peace talks for Syria, as of 14 November 2015 known as the talks of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), were negotiations of foreign powers that began in Vienna, Austria in October 2015 at the level of foreign ministers, to resolve the conflict in Syria, after unsuccessful previous Syrian peace initiatives.
The Conference for Change in Syria, or Antalya Opposition Conference, was a three-day conference of representatives of the Syrian opposition held from 31 May until 3 June 2011 in Antalya, Turkey. Since the early days of the Syrian civil uprising, it was the second of its kind, following the Istanbul Meeting for Syria that had taken place on 26 April 2011.
The Geneva peace talks on Syria, also known as Geneva III, were intended peace negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition in Geneva under the auspices of the UN. Although formally started on 1 February 2016, they were formally suspended only two days later, on 3 February 2016.
The High Negotiations Committee (HNC) is an umbrella body which was created to represent the Syrian opposition in the planned Geneva peace talks in 2016. It is led by Riyad Farid Hijab, who was Prime Minister of Syria from June to August 2012. It is considered to be Syria's main or broadest opposition bloc.
Volker Perthes is a German political scientist, academic and writer. Apart from his focus on research, writing and teaching about the Middle East, he was director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). From 2021 to 2023, he served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations (SRSG) for Sudan and Head of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS).