via IPS News
The surprise accord reached by the U.S. and Russia in Moscow Tuesday to try to convene an international conference to resolve the two-year-old civil war in Syria as soon as the end of this month has been greeted with equal measures of hope and scepticism.
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via IPS News
The surprise accord reached by the U.S. and Russia in Moscow Tuesday to try to convene an international conference to resolve the two-year-old civil war in Syria as soon as the end of this month has been greeted with equal measures of hope and scepticism.
If nothing else, the agreement apparently persuaded at least one key party, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, to put off his previously reported intention to resign in the very near future.
“This is the first hopeful news concerning that unhappy country in a very long time,” he said in a statement issued by his office Wednesday. “The statements made in Moscow constitute a very significant first step forward. It is nevertheless only a first step,” he added.
Analysts here, however, said that even with Tuesday’s accord, getting the two principal parties to the table would be extremely difficult under current circumstances.
“The more you learn about Syria, the more you realise how intractable the conflict is, and thus the more attractive a political solution appears to be,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “But you also realise the odds of putting one together are very long.”
The joint decision to revive the long-dormant Geneva Communique, which laid out the core elements of a political solution to the conflict war after a meeting of the U.N.-sponsored Action Group for Syria last June, was reached after deliberations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The communique called for an immediate cease-fire, the creation of a transitional government mutually agreed by representatives of both the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and his opposition, and the holding of new parliamentary and presidential elections.
But the process never got underway, in part because of the opposition’s demand – tacitly and sometimes explicitly backed by Washington — that Assad step down as a pre-condition for any negotiation and Moscow’s firm rejection of that position.
But the administration of President Barack Obama appears to have narrowed its difference on that score with Moscow.
At the time, many U.S. analysts, particularly those on the hawkish side of the spectrum, believed that the balance of power on the ground was moving in the opposition’s direction, and that it was simply a matter of time – months, if not weeks — until the regime crumbled.
But after months of bloody stalemate, it appears that the government’s forces have recently regained the initiative by systematically retaking control of strategically located towns and cities.
“If that’s true, the administration may have assessments to that effect in hand and feels it’s worth a try to see if the opposition can be compelled to engage while it still holds a reasonably strong hand,” according to Wayne White, a former top Mideast analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Indeed, Kerry appears to have accepted Moscow’s position that Assad does not have to step down in order for negotiations to get underway.
“(I)t’s impossible for me as an individual to understand how Syria could possibly be governed in the future by the man who has committed the things we know that have taken place,” he said during a press conference with Lavrov after the meeting.
“But…I’m not going to decide that tonight, and I’m not going to decide that in the end, because the Geneva Communique says that the transitional government has to be chosen by mutual consent by the parties …the current regime and the opposition.”
For his part, Lavrov, without mentioning Assad by name, said he was “not interested in the fate of certain persons”.
While Damascus remained silent Wednesday about the prospects for a negotiation, some opposition leaders rejected the initiative, while others expressed deep scepticism.
“Syrians: be careful of squandering your revolution in international conference halls,” warned Moaz al-Khatib, a former leader of the Arab League-recognised National Opposition Coalition (NOC).
At the same time, Col. Qassim Saadeddine, a spokesman for the rebel Supreme Military Council (SMC), the U.S. backed group through which Washington is currently funnelling intelligence and “non-lethal” military aid to fighters in the field, told Reuters that he didn’t believe “there is a political solution left for Syria. …We will not sit with the regime for dialogue.”
Whether that was the opposition’s final word remains to be seen, according to analysts here who noted that Amb. Robert Ford, who accompanied Kerry in Moscow, was on his way to Istanbul to talk with opposition representatives, apparently in hopes of bringing them around to a more positive response.
U.S. officials said they were hoping that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, the rebels’ main regional backers, would also cooperate in helping to persuade opposition figures to come to the table.
Two weeks ago, Obama hosted Qatar’s emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, at the White House, when he reportedly stressed the importance of a political solution in Syria and called on his guest to cease providing military assistance to the more-radical Islamist factions in the opposition. He will also be meeting here with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the most important regional player, later this month to more closely align the two countries’ parties.
All of this comes amidst growing pressure here on Obama to escalate U.S. intervention in the crisis, particularly in the wake of still-unconfirmed reports that Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons against rebel forces and growing fears that the war’s continuation threatens to destabilise neighbouring countries, particularly Lebanon and Iraq, as well as Jordan which is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the more than 500,000 Syrian refugees who have flooded into the country.
Support is building in Congress for legislation calling on Obama to provide lethal military aid and training to the rebels, an option that the administration has said it is actively considering on its own if the chemical weapons charges are confirmed.
Obama has previously resisted increasing Washington’s military backing for the opposition and has tried to confine U.S. aid to humanitarian assistance, more than 500 million dollars of which has been provided to date.
Re-invigorating a diplomatic process for resolving the conflict thus looks increasingly attractive to the administration, although most analysts believe prospects for any immediate progress are dim.
“The chance of a diplomatic breakthrough coming out of the projected conference is at best modest,” according to Paul Pillar, a retired CIA veteran who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia.
“But it represents a more realistic hope for bringing a modicum of peace and stability to Syria in the foreseeable future than does stoking the civil war with more outside involvement in the military conflict. The fact that the United States and Russia could agree on any of this is a breakthrough of sorts,” he wrote in an email to IPS.
Landis agreed. “Whether the situation (for a successful negotiation) is ripe today is still debatable, because Assad still thinks he can win, and the opposition, with hundreds of militias, is too fragmented to negotiate,” he told IPS.
“But you have to get the international community open-minded to this kind of dialogue, and down the line, that may happen.”
]]>by Wayne White
Sen. John McCain’s berating of former Sen. Chuck Hagel for “yes or no” answers as to whether the latter would support intervention in Syria or providing arms to anti-regime fighters reveals just how little McCain understands about how agonizingly complex these issues have been — and remain — [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Sen. John McCain’s berating of former Sen. Chuck Hagel for “yes or no” answers as to whether the latter would support intervention in Syria or providing arms to anti-regime fighters reveals just how little McCain understands about how agonizingly complex these issues have been — and remain — for the US and other Western governments. In fact, perhaps the most profoundly basic need confronting the US and most of its allies (finding a credible Syrian opposition counterpart with which to work) has been elusive.
The Syrian opposition remains in disarray. All along, there have been disconnects between the new National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (more commonly referred to as the Syrian National Coalition) in exile, and the older, now associated, Syrian National Council (SNC) as well as what seems to be quite a few of the various armed rebels operating against the Assad regime inside Syria. Indeed, the National Coalition and its predecessor, the SNC, who now purportedly represent the overall Syrian resistance to the outside world, appear to most experts to be somewhat more moderate than many of the armed elements of what has been collectively known as the Syrian Liberation Army (SLA) fighting within Syria. Consequently, governments considering options as serious as those backed by Sen. McCain lack confidence that they have a reliable partner in the new Coalition.
Late last year, the Istanbul-based SNC was pressured by the US, the West, and many moderate Arab states to formulate an expanded and more thoroughly representative organization (because even some groups in exile remained outside the SNC). Leaders of the various factions in exile met in Doha, Qatar in November 2012 to attempt just that, and a new line-up, the National Coalition, emerged from that conference. If the succession of names and acronyms for the Syrian opposition outside Syria seems a bit confusing to the reader, this comes as no surprise; the opposition remains a disparate, in some cases only loosely associated, and quarrelsome grouping. And most informed observers feel that genuine unity within the Syrian opposition in exile, let alone between its many and varied elements fighting within Syria, had not even been achieved in Doha. Consequently, the US, (which was a key party pressuring the opposition to meet and reorganize in the first place), ironically withheld its recognition.
Further divisions within the council became evident just this weekend when senior opposition leader Moaz al-Khatib not only conferred with Russian and Iranian representatives in Munich, but also agreed to meet with Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa if the Syrian regime would work with the opposition toward a peaceful exit of President Bashar al-Assad. The offer conflicted with the Coalition’s recently reiterated position rejecting talks with the Assad regime, naturally producing grumbling from within the opposition in exile. The reaction on the part of many FSA fighters inside Syria was even more strongly negative, even though al-Khatib told the Russians and Iranians about the anger within opposition ranks over their support for the Assads.
An extremely troubling tendency for practically all outside governments supporting the Syrian opposition more generally has been the rising radicalization of FSA fighters on the battle lines throughout Syria. Indeed, extremist elements such as the al-Nusra Front (strongly suspected of being composed largely of al-Qaeda fighters) reportedly have consistently been in the vanguard of much of the toughest fighting in recent months, although it cooperates with armed rebel groups of differing beliefs out of necessity. So, al-Nusra, although seemingly the most effective anti-regime military force in Syria, was designated a terrorist organization by Washington in December 2012. Al-Khatib, on behalf of the exile Coalition, has urged the US to reconsider, but a change in US policy toward al-Nusra is unlikely.
Consequently, with its external leadership in some measure of flux, some rebel fighters still little known, and other elements battling in Syria considered dangerous, providing a large amount of lethal assistance has become even more problematic for most potential donors. Moreover, military intervention would be a far more difficult, militarily taxing, and costly proposition than it was in Libya for a variety of reasons. And Russia and China’s obstruction in the UN Security Council of any meaningful UN-sanction action against the Assad regime has been yet another major problem. Finally, there is the wide-ranging issue of various uncertain (and several potentially unwelcome) post-Assad scenarios to further complicate decision-making by governments toward providing lethal assistance to an opposition movement with which they otherwise share the goal of toppling Assad & Co. and ending the ongoing bloodshed and destruction.
With 60,000 Syrians already dead and more dying by the day, providing robust military aid to the opposition would appear, at least at first glance, a proverbial “no brainer.” But this abbreviated tour through the complexities of US, Western and moderate Arab considerations concerning this far more vexing issue should underscore why demanding instant “yes or no” answers from Chuck Hagel as to whether the Administration should move boldly toward either military action in Syria or the arms supply business was so inappropriate.
Yet, although unrelated to Hagel, it may have been a mistake for key governments supporting the Syrian opposition not to have started at least supplying greater quantities of arms to the FSA well over a year ago, despite some of the risks at that time too. This could have hastened the fall of the regime while minimizing what has now become widespread anger within the FSA (and among many anti-regime Syrians in general) over the West’s failure to do so. Moreover, at that point, fewer extremist elements of the FSA had emerged as strongly as they are now as the ongoing, savage struggle has radicalized ever larger numbers of opposition fighters. Viewed in hindsight, although this was a very difficult call even back then, it might have been a missed opportunity.
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