By: Dr. Adnan Bozan

In Damascus, they gathered to shape the contours of a nation, yet the nation was not among them. It was not merely absent; it was deliberately excluded—just as the free voice is silenced in the arena of truth, and as dissent is crushed under the weight of tyranny.

The conference was nothing more than a political theater, where roles were meticulously assigned, and hollow slogans were adopted to justify the unjustifiable. The only undeniable truth was that the greatest absentee was the nation itself, just as it had been absent from decision-making for decades.

There, in that hall that claimed to represent Syrians, there was no place except for those who had mastered the art of crime and tyranny under new labels. Dialogue was not the goal, nor was reconciliation the purpose. Rather, the scene resembled a political score-settling and a superficial legitimization of exclusion, to the extent that the nation seemed reduced to mere negotiation documents, stripped away from its people by the ink of external agreements rather than the will of its own citizens.

When the nation looked upon what was being done in its name, it saw itself torn between prisons and exile—shackled within its borders, pursued beyond them—as if its fate were to remain suspended between those who seek to monopolize it and those who strive to confiscate it. The irony of the scene was that its absence surprised no one, for the conference’s agenda had been designed from the outset to ignore it, as though Syria could be built by those present, even if most of them were mere witnesses to the assassination of the last remnants of the inclusive national identity.

Any political project that fails to recognize all of Syria’s components and does not put their rights on the negotiation table is nothing more than a reproduction of a failed approach that has brought nothing but devastation to the country. Ignoring the Kurds and other active forces, and insisting on imposing unilateral visions, will only lead to further divisions. A nation cannot be built on exclusion, nor can it be governed by a mindset of denial.

History has proven that regimes that disregard the diversity of their people and suppress their legitimate demands ultimately pave the way for their own downfall. A nation is only a nation when it belongs to all its people—not when it is tailored to fit the ambitions of a single faction seeking to monopolize it.

To those who gathered in Damascus and chose to overlook the nation, remember: Syria cannot be reduced to your decisions, and the future cannot be built on the ruins of exclusion, but rather on the foundations of justice and equality.