Over nine million Syrians displaced and more than 130,000 killed, yet those who claim to speak on their behalf at the Geneva 2 meet are behaving like adolescents more interested in hurling insults than seeking meaningful solutions. Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Mua’alem accused countries represented in the conference as having “Syrian blood on their hands”. Leader of the Syrian National Council Ahmad Jarba accused Al Assad of committing Nazi-type war crimes. UN mediator and veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, desperate to find common ground, has an unenviable job. He’s been placed in the role of a schoolmaster, at times cajoling, at times forced to resort to knuckle-rapping. On Friday, confronted with an imminent Syrian regime delegation walkout, Brahimi succeeded in smoothing Mua’alem’s ruffled feathers. He admits that until now little has been achieved but still hopes to garner humanitarian concessions in terms of temporary ceasefires permitting aid to reach people in dire need as well as prisoner exchanges.
An appeal by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for Syrians to “come together to save their country, protect their children and find a peaceful path to a better future” fell on deaf ears. His invitation to Iran to engage in the talks, withdrawn under objections from the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), which said it would not participate if Iran was part of the process, only served to sour Geneva 2 from the get go. Like it or not, Tehran is a major player. Iranian Revolutionary Guards are in the country advising the regime while the military wing of Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah is fighting on the ground to keep Al Assad in power.
It took great efforts on Brahimi’s part just to get the protagonists in the same room. But they still refuse to address each other directly; instead, they are communicating via an intermediary, something I admit to doing in my early childhood following a fallout with a pal from school. Surely, Syrians shivering under canvas in neighboring countries deserve more. The toddler pulled out alive from the rubble of his home in Aleppo, bombed by government forces a few days ago, deserves much more. A little girl in a Lebanese refugee camp, who hides her face and no longer smiles after losing a leg, needs to recover in a place she can call home. But do any of the squabbling sides in Switzerland have those children’s interests at heart?
If you want to make peace, you must talk to your enemies; that’s an inescapable reality without which there would never have been an end to apartheid in South Africa or the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. More recently, Iran stands to benefit greatly from talking with the nation considered to be ‘the Great Satan’ for almost 35 years. The Syrian regime escaped US attacks at the nth-hour because it chose to negotiate the demise of its chemical weapons programme. Unfortunately, the regime is being inflexible over opposition demands that President Bashar Al Assad and his cronies must be ditched before any transitional government can be formed. Indeed, Al Assad insists that he intends to stay in power until elections when he might run for president once more. From his perspective, the opposition forces are terrorists armed and funded by foreign powers, but despite that conviction, a benevolent leader would realise that his presence was the main obstacle to reconciliation and would make a dignified exit.
The SNC has little to boast about either. Its members had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Montreux where peace talks are underway after initially refusing to attend unless their preconditions were first met. Their U-turn was the result of heavy pressure from their state backers, raising fears they could be thrown under a bus in the event of non-compliance. Today, the SNC is a skeleton of what it once was. Its main bloc, the Syrian National Council, averse to any negotiations before Al Assad steps down, quit the coalition just days before peace talks were due to begin.
A far bigger obstacle to a roadmap leading to the establishment of a transitional government representing all political sectors is how little sway the SNC has over extremist militias that have swarmed like flies over Syria’s carcass. Several, such as the Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS) are linked to Al Qaida. Those fighters are not there to promote democracy or freedom, but rather to impose Sharia law throughout territories they’ve slated to form part of an Islamist caliphate stretching from northern Syria into Iraq.
It may be a bitter pill for both the regime and the SNC to swallow, but unless they can settle their differences, the well-armed, well-trained jihadists, currently seizing towns and villages, may get their wish. It would be a very sad day not only for the Syrian people but also for the entire Arab world were this ancient Arab land to be sliced into sectarian cantons just because those who hold their nation’s future in their hands are too selfish or too immature to admit mistakes and make necessary compromises. There is no side without blood on its hands. There are no heroes. At stake are the victimised millions who have little left but hope.
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com
