If Lakhdar Brahimi, the veteran Algerian diplomat and joint UN/League of Arab States mediator on Syria, apologised to the Syrian people for the failures associated with the Geneva 2 conference, and if he chiefly blamed Damascus for its intransigent positions, both Washington and Moscow deserve opprobrium as well.
To be sure, neither accepted responsibility, with US Secretary of State John Kerry holding the Syrian government accountable for the deadlock and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissing such assertions. Kerry hammered that it was the Al Assad government that blocked progress, evidently intensifying “its barbaric assault on its civilian population with barrel bombs and starvation” without, however, distancing Washington from the Nero-like figure. Instead, he expressed the US commitment to the Geneva process, which was mimicked by Lavrov, who affirmed that Moscow had “done everything [it] promised,” referring to efforts to get the Damascus regime to hold direct peace talks with opponents.
It is difficult to foresee significant progress as long as the two foreign policy gurus talked past each other. Kerry elucidated that the Syrian opposition “put forward a viable and well-reasoned road map for the creation of a transitional governing body and a viable path by which to move the negotiations forward,” while Lavrov refocused his outlook on terrorism. “Statistics clearly showed,” claimed the Russian diplomat, “that the main problems are created not by the regime but by the terrorist and extremist groups that have spread across Syria and that do not answer to any political structure.”
No wonder Lakhdar Brahimi apologised. After two rounds of apparently meaningless discussions, few were hopeful that any progress would be recorded anytime soon, lest conditions on the ground changed dramatically. Ironically, while conversations — one is loathe to call Geneva 2 as anything resembling negotiations — dragged on, several thousand Syrians continued to die, as Damascus pursued its attacks on rebel-held areas with its crude barrel bombs that killed indiscriminately and flattened steel and stone buildings galore.
To be sure, an intermittent evacuation of civilians occurred in Homs — though thousands more remained cut off from humanitarian assistance in that one city alone. Battles in Yabroud, close to the Lebanese border town of Arsal, raged as the Baath regime and its Hezbollah allies mounted sustained assaults under Iranian Revolutionary Guard supervision to retake the last rebel-held stronghold on the Damascus-Latakiyyah road. Aleppo was not spared either with significant damage to its already strangulated population.
After three years of civil war, it was safe to assume that over 140,000 Syrians perished, countless others are prisoners, millions have become refugees, and the entire country — a centre of culture throughout Arab history — has reached the depths of desperation. With increased arms supplies to opposition and government forces, both sides believed that they were poised to win, with the regime counting on Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah’s assistance, and revolutionary forces beholden to western and conservative Arab Gulf states. Neither side was under any pressure to compromise, which was why Geneva 2 collapsed under its own weight, with little hope for transformation anytime soon.
It was critical to emphasise that President Bashar Al Assad’s government, backed by Moscow and Tehran, did not see a difference between the secular opposition and the Al Nusrah Front, and considered all revolutionaries to be “terrorists.” Of course, Damascus only cares about the survival of the dictatorship, with Al Assad as the keystone in its security structure. In fact, the regime and its acolytes understood that were Damascus to be decapitated, as a post-Al Assad government was likely to guarantee, the Baath Party would be done with that, naturally, that is not a favoured option for any of its members.
For now, the keys to the Syrian quagmire remain in the hands of the two superpowers, as Washington and Moscow score propaganda points and blame each other for the disastrous Geneva 2 conversations. Whether Kerry and Lavrov are willing to come to terms with the post-Al Assad nomenclature and, in doing so, settle geo-strategic differences, are probably the minimum requirements to end the war. Presumably, neither wishes to witness additional catastrophes, which a full collapse of Syria’s institutions is sure to usher in. Moreover, one also assume that neither side wants an extremist victory that, under current circumstances, is a real possibility.
Consequently, while both Kerry and Lavrov reject additional sectarian bloodbath, it behoves both diplomats to offer real solutions to halt the steady march towards a terrible collapse, something that Damascus banks upon as it argues that only a strong hand will keep the country united. It is with that objective in mind that the Syrian government agreed to surrender a portion of its strategic chemical weapons several months ago. That quid pro quo strengthened its putative credentials as a secular regime even if recent developments confirmed the opposite.
Though few raised serious questions about Syria’s voluntary surrender of its weapons of mass destruction — even if only 5 per cent actually made it safely onto ships leaving the Tartus harbour so far — observers concentrated on potential solutions to stop the killings and hoped that the Geneva process would continue. For that to occur, however, it was imperative that a transitional government be formed as first outlined in the original June 2012 Geneva Communiqué that, regrettably, the Al Assad regime flatly refused to discuss.
After 44 years in power that emasculated the nation of its intrinsic capabilities and genius, it is difficult to fathom a new system of government, though one is bound to eventually emerge after sheer exhaustion brought this typical war of attrition to an end. Brahimi achieved a partial consensus on two key issues, to reach local ceasefires and form a transitional government, though apologies to the hapless Syrians were not sufficient to accomplish either. To the dismay of revolutionary forces, Western states severely limited their training and arming of critical supplies, and it is time for Russia and Iran to emulate them — and, in Tehran’s case, to recall its Quds Force military personnel from Syria.
Only then would apologies make sense.
Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is the author of Legal and Political Reforms in Saudi Arabia (London: Routledge, 2013).
