{"id":30965,"date":"2013-06-24T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=30965"},"modified":"2015-05-06T09:00:14","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T08:00:14","slug":"from-times-of-war-to-times-of-peace-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/06\/from-times-of-war-to-times-of-peace-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"From Times of War to Times of Peace in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

International Peace Initiative for Syria<\/i> \u0645\u0628\u0627\u062f\u0631\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0633\u0644\u0627\u0645 \u0627\u0644\u062f\u0648\u0644\u064a\u0629 \u0644\u0633\u0648\u0631\u064a\u0627<\/a><\/p>\n

No idea and no ideal, however heroic it might be, can possibly justify the death of thousands of innocent people. Nothing is important enough to justify the fact that millions are fleeing their homes just because they want to survive. And no war should continue if it results in the destruction of one\u2019s own country.<\/p>\n

This is the lesson of nearly every war and this is also the lesson of the war in Syria, which already took the lives of 70,000 Syrians. However, the big question remains: How to stop this vicious circle of violence, which has dominated the country since almost two years? Syria is situated in a multicultural environment; there are many people on both sides of the political spectrum who just want democracy and social justice to be built from the ground in their urban and rural communities. But just this right of self-determination is systematically denied by those who erroneously consider war the only way to achieve their political goals.<\/p>\n

Some efforts have been made to break the spiral of violence from the outside, especially by the United Nations, which demanded a cease-fire and negotiations aiming at the eventual formation of a transitional government. Such a transitional government could promote and ensure a political process leading to free elections, in which the real will of the Syrian people would find expression. So far those efforts have not been very successful, which is to a large extent due to the fact that they are essentially relying on the geostrategic balances and imbalances of the so-called global powers as well as the regional states which are stakeholders in the conflict.<\/p>\n

We, a movement of peace activists, intellectuals and members of the international civil society, have been following a different logic: instead of waiting for the big and small powers of the region and of the world to find an equilibrium which enables them to generate a cease-fire from the outside, we established contacts with those Syrian political forces that are willing to engage in a POLITICAL DIALOGUE under conditions which eventually could lead to a cease-fire and a political transition acceptable to all people who truly want peace in Syria and in the whole area. We also established contacts with members of the Syrian civil society and people on the ground.<\/p>\n

In our pursuit of this common goal we wish to show, first of all, our solidarity with the victims of the war. Therefore we have constituted a delegation of renowned members of the international civil society, elected parliamentarians and peace activists from all over the world to go to Damascus with a number of concrete proposals which aim at protecting and supporting the civilian population in their daily struggle for survival:<\/p>\n