I'm not a great expert on Libya, but my understanding is that in that case, you had a relatively unified opposition to the Gadhafi regime, centred in Benghazi, under the umbrella of the TNC, the Transitional National Council. There is no such umbrella body in the case of Syria. There is one that sort of tries to be that, the Syrian National Council, but it has not succeeded. And indeed, it is contested. Others have not accepted its overall leadership, and indeed, some are quite critical of the group.
In addition, and this is a problem that was there initially and has gotten worse over time, there seems to be a rather serious disconnect between those elements of the opposition that are in exile and living abroad outside Syria—they tend to be in Turkey, Egypt, or Europe, and various places here in Canada and the United States—and those who are actually leading the opposition inside the country, who do not accept, acknowledge, or recognize themselves in this exile leadership. They, indeed, don't agree with a lot of what the exile leadership has to say. They do not accept their directives and so on.
Those inside the country, we also know, are quite divided. There are those I guess one would call the free Syrian army, which is not a unified army at all. It's not a unified force. It doesn't have a centralized command and control. Frankly, it's a brand different militias have adopted to describe themselves or give themselves a name. Then, as I said, we're also aware of various quite militant, quite Islamic, radical groups, some of which have carried out these spectacular bombings you've seen. Although they will collaborate with free Syrian army units, certainly they don't accept their direction or leadership or anything like that. It's quite the contrary; it's clear that they are receiving funding as well as ideological guidance from outside the country.
You're absolutely right, sir. It's an extremely fragmented and troubling picture, and it creates difficulties for those who wish to help. They don't know who to back and how to channel assistance in a way that doesn't end up making the situation worse or that doesn't promote an outcome that will actually be quite contrary to our interests and to stability and prosperity in Syria and the region.