The world’s leading powers wasted their time when they met in Geneva on Saturday and came up with a plan for a government of national unity to manage a transition in Syria. This might sound fine in a conference room in Geneva, but no one got the Syrians to agree to it. It is unfortunate that the world’s diplomats can feel so good about a plan which will not work, because Syria needs help as it slips closer to civil war with each passing week.
It is unconscionable that Bashar Al Assad should stay in power and this means that the international community should work hard to bolster the ability of the opposition to find a team that is ready to take over governance.
The fractured and incoherent opposition needs to be supported to build a clear alternative to Al Assad’s regime. The opposition will have to reach out to reassure the Alawite community that it should be an integral part of Syria’s future.
But these desirable aims were not part of the Geneva plan, despite US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, saying that the document paved the way for a “post-Al Assad unity government,” and Kofi Annan, the UN’s special envoy to Syria, welcoming the international community’s promotion of a plan for political transition in Syria.
The plan outlines a scheme to get both opposition and government figures into a new unity government which is then supposed to get a popular mandate.
But at the same time, no one expects the Syrians to “select people with blood on their hands to lead them”, as Annan put it. This is a problem for the plan’s vision of a government of national unity with full executive powers requires both the inclusion of government figures as well as the departure of Al Assad.
The reality is that Al Assad has shown no signs of giving up and he apparently still believes that he can tough it out by killing more and more of his people every week.
