Summary:

The first part of the national consensus index contained its methodology and it included a special part for the methodology that is related to the revolutionary and opposition forces as its stages are explained starting from specifying the counted sides that are about 38 sides divided between militarily forces, political forces and public bodies with political activity.  It also explained the political stances towards the surveyed cases and events and clarified the mechanism of investigating and classifying stances and how to transform them in to a numeric measurable shape and finally it put basics of analyzing the power stances and specifying the “consensus” and “inconsistence” standards from the point of view of the revolutionary and opposition forces.

The first part also contained an explanation for the authorized methodology in the new index of this issue and it includes: Inserting the stance of the popular incubator towards a group of most important events in 2020 as the data was collected using a “Google Form” link, stating the specifications of the sample, choosing the events included in the form to be questioned, adding a methodology of classifying its stances which relied on the same numeric classification that is used in classification stances of the revolutionary and opposition forces, in addition to adding a sixth option that allows the person to refuse to answer for not being interested.  The survey was answered by 300 persons where the percentage of males was 83% and the percentage of those who live inside Syria was 45% and the percentage of those who have university degree or master’s degree was 66%.

In this part we displayed the percentages of consensus between the revolutionary and opposition forces towards 59 events related to the Syrian cases in 2020 and they were classified in 13 groups. The most significant results can be summarized as follows:

• The stance from the popular movement in the areas under the control of the Regime: The demonstrations in As Suwayda obtained the highest percentage of consensus among the revolutionary and opposition forces and the percentage decreased regarding the protests Daraa while the popular uprising in Kanaker achieved the lowest consensus percentage which reached 3%. The percentage of silence towards these events by all forces reached 58% and 97%.
• The stance from the elections of the Regime and its policies in the areas under its control:  It was noticed that the state of silence was the major stance among the military forces and popular bodies that have political activities and this indicates the lack of interest among these sides in the policies of Alasad’s regime. It shall be indicated also that the political powers showed general consensus towards these events.

Regarding the stance of the popular incubator towards the announcement of the Syrian Civil Defense that it is ready to participate in fighting the fires in the forests in the areas under the control of the Regime, the consensus percentage (complete and implied support) was relatively high 63% and the percentage of inconsistence (complete and relative refusal) was 27%.

• The stance from the international prosecution for Alasad’s regime and its supporters: The report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and accusing Al-asad’s regime of using these weapons gained the highest consensus percentage (complete and implied support) 18% and we also found that the popular incubator clearly supports this report as the consensus percentage for the report has reached 74% and the percentage of inconsistence didn’t exceed 21% knowing that inconsistence wasn’t against what came in the report but for the distrust of the incubator of its effect on Al-asad’s regime.  Regarding the willingness of Netherlands to file a suit against Al-asad’s regime in the International Court of Justice, the percentage of consensus reached 5% compared to 95% of silence.
• Regarding the stance from the track of political solution and the developments of the Syrian constitutional committee: The Syrian constitutional committee is still a place of inconsistence between the Syrian forces as the percentage of consensus reached 8% and inconsistence 5% and the percentage of silence reached 87%. Regarding the national coalition of elections, the percentage of consensus (refusal) was 24% compared to (neutrality) 3%.
• The stance from the American policy towards the Syrian file: The support for the American law Caesar gained a consensus percentage of 24% compared to inconsistence percentage (neutrality and refusal) of 5%.  Regarding the stance of the popular incubator towards this event, the consensus percentage “supporting the law” was 74% and inconsistence percentage was 21%.
• The stance from the Russian policy towards the Syrian file: The Russian-Turkish ceasefire agreement in Idlib gained a consensus percentage of 5% compared to 95% of silence and this is completely opposite to what the numbers indicated regarding the popular incubator which showed division towards this event (percentage of consensus was 54% and percentage of inconsistence was 33%).

We concluded the index with the total numbers of consensus of the popular incubators as well as the political and military forces and the popular sides as well as their inconsistence and the general consensus index. The most significant results were:

• Regarding the general indexes related to the popular incubators:  A high percentage of consensus appeared towards the report of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well as high percentage of inconsistence towards the Turkish Russian truce agreement and the announcement of the civil defense of its readiness to participate in fighting fires in the forests in areas under the control of the regime.
• Regarding the indexes of political forces consensus: The stance from the popular movement in the areas under the control of the regime gained the higher percentage of consensus as it was 24% while the inconsistence percentage was focused in the stance from the tracks of the political solution and the developments of the constitutional committee and the silence dominated some stances like international prosecution against Al-asad’s regime and its supporters as well as the series of events that happened in the areas under the control of the regime.
• Regarding the general consensus index between military forces: The military developments related to the Syrian case gained the highest consensus percentage as it was 40% while the silence percentage was very high 100% towards four events on top of them:  The stance from the developments of the political process and the track of the Constitutional Committee and also no inconsistence stances were recorded among military forces.

And regarding the index related to the popular sides with political activity, the most significant thing in this index was that these sides are the most silent sides towards the events investigated in this index.

• Regarding the index of the general consensus: The index shows that total percentage of silence reached 90% and the consensus percentage reached 9% while the inconsistence percentage reached 1% only.

Introduction:

The Syrian arena during 2020 witnessed field, military, political and legal events that generally affected the Syrian file.

 On the internal level of Syria, the areas under the control of the Regime witnessed an apparent popular movement in As Suwayda, Daraa and Al Qunaitra countryside in addition to performing the elections of what is called “People’s assembly”.  Also the areas under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces faced important developments like launching Kurdish- Kurdish dialogue between the National Kurdish Council and “Democratic Union Party” as well as a popular uprising against the forces of Syrian Democratic Forces because of its try to impose educational curricula that contain the thoughts of the Kurdish Labor Party in addition to anger tribal state against Syrian Democratic Forces and its way of managing the region.  In areas under the control of the revolutionary and opposition forces and areas of “reconciliations” the main topic was the security breach and assassination and bombing operations that happened in the first areas in specific.

The Syrian file also witnessed many developments on other levels, for example on the political level, the Turkish operation “Spring Shield” has an important effect in repulsing the operations of Al-asad’s regime in the north west of Syria and make a change in the field.  This is in addition to targeting the camps of “Sham Legion” with a Russian air strike. And on the legal level, the most important event was issuing a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that accuses Al-asad Regime of using chemical weapons.  On the political level, the third and fourth sessions of the constitutional committee were held in addition to launching “Elections commission” by the National Coalition.

On the international level, the Syrian file is still largely controlled by the policies taken by USA and Russia which were represented in many movements on top of them activating Caesar’s law and putting it into force for the USA, and entering into an agreement of truce regarding Idlib for Russia.

The national consensus index investigates the stances of a group of revolutionary and opposition forces towards /59/ cases and events during 2020 divided into thirteen main groups:

• Popular movement in the areas under the control of the Regime.
• Elections of the Regime and its policies in the areas under its control.
• Events that happened in areas under the control of Syrian Democratic Forces.
• Assassinations and security breach in the areas of “revolutionary forces and reconciliations” .
• Military developments related to the Syrian case.
• The international prosecution for Al-asad’s regime and its supporters.
• Refusal of extending the decision of passing the assistance through the borders.
• The track of political solution and the developments of the Syrian constitutional committee.
• Policies of countries regarding normalization with Al-asad’s Regime.
• The American policy towards the Syrian file.
• The Russian policy towards the Syrian file.
• External events that affected the humanitarian and legal stances of the Syrians.
• Internal events that affected the Syrian case.

The report is consisted of three main parts:

• Methodology of national consensus index: This part explains the methodology it relied on in this work starting with specifying the monitored sides moving to specifying the political stances towards cases that will be monitored and the methodology of monitoring and classifying stances as well as how to transform them into a measurable numeric shape and finally specifying the “consensus” and “inconsistence” standards, all that from the side of the stance of revolutionary and opposition forces.

From another side, this part contained the methodology related to the stances of the popular incubator starting from the method of data collection, specifications of the sample, choosing the events that are the topic of the survey for the incubator and the methodology of classifying its stances.

• Percentages of consensus of the Syrian forces towards events: This part mainly displays the results of numeric analysis on a shape of percentages and then transform these percentages into “consensus stances” or “inconsistence stances” through which the percentages of consensus between the Syrian components around the monitored cases can be clarified.

In addition to that, there is a partial comparison towards some cases between the stances of the popular incubator and the stances issued from the forces monitored in the index.

• Final consensus indexes: The final indexes of the consensus includes:  The popular incubator, political and military forces and popular sides that have political activity in addition to the index of general consensus.

Updates of the index:

In addition to the points that we focus on in the previous issues, we worked in this issue on benefiting from some notes and recommendations obtained from the interaction of the experts, consultants and audience with previous issues and that is through the following:

• Inserting the stances of the popular incubator towards four events in order to compare them with the stances of the forces that are monitored in the index as we established a special methodology to analyze these stances in addition to inserting a partial index related to the stances of the incubator towards these events in a try to analyze them.
• Reinserting the consensus index for the networks of Syrian civil society organizations which was inserted in the previous third issue. The stance of these organizations regarding refusal of extending work according to the mechanism of passing assistance through three crossings which are:  Ar-Ramtha, Al-Ladiqiyah and Bab Al-salama.
• Monitoring the stances of a number of new revolutionary popular forces that showed interest in the political event and comment on it and authorizing some of them according to the declared methodology.
• The monitoring Team related to the index officially communicated with all monitored sides and asked these sides to clarify their stances from the monitored events but there was no interaction.

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