Syrian peace talks:United only by hatred
Jan 30th 2016
PITY poor Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s special envoy for Syria. Talks aimed at ending the five-year civil war that has claimed more than 250,000 lives and displaced 12m people should have started on January 25th in Geneva. But disagreements over who should come and on what terms could not be resolved in time. As
The Economist went to press, it looked as if the talks could at last get under way on January 29th. But as the veteran diplomat ruefully conceded on Monday, threats to pull out should be expected: “Don’t be surprised: there will be a lot of posturing, a lot of walkouts and walk-ins…you should neither be depressed [nor] impressed…the important thing is to keep momentum.”
Even that limited goal may prove dauntingly hard to achieve. Both of Mr de Mistura’s predecessors gave up after peace conferences they had convened got nowhere. Hopes of some progress this time were raised after a meeting of the 17-country International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in Vienna in November, which was followed by a UN Security Council resolution calling for talks to start in January that would lead to a “credible” transitional government in place by July this year. Fair elections based on a new constitution would be held by the middle of 2017.
Besides the start of the talks, it will be a miracle if any of those other milestones are met. Mr de Mistura admits that the participants are united only by mutual loathing. At the beginning of what he sees as a six-month process the groups will be kept in separate rooms, while he shuttles between them in a search for something they can agree on.
The immediate cause of the postponement of the talks was a failure to agree on which groups should be invited as representatives of the Syrian opposition. Gamely, Mr de Mistura sent out formal invitations to his diplomatic dance on January 26th. Hotel bookings have been made and a few TV camera crews have turned up in Geneva, but confusion reigns.
Under the auspices of Saudi Arabia, a High Negotiations Committee (HNC) has been established to represent the many rebel factions at the talks. But although it excludes both Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, it includes hard-line Salafist outfits, such as Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, which collaborate with Jabhat Al-Nusra and which explicitly rule out the principles of democratic pluralism outlined in the ISSG’s Vienna communiqué. The military commander of Jaish al-Islam, Zahran Alloush, was killed by an air strike on December 25th, but the group’s political leader, Muhammad Alloush, has been chosen as the HNC’s chief negotiator in Geneva.
The Syrian government tends to regard any opposition figure who has ever carried an AK47 as a “terrorist”, but it is supported by its allies Iran and Russia in wanting Ahrar and Jaish kept out of the talks. However, Russia is demanding the inclusion of other individuals and groups, such as the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, whose YPG militias are fighting both the regime and Islamic State to carve out an autonomous region in the north-east of the country along the Turkish border. Turkey says it will pull out if the Kurds are at the table because they are allied with a Turkish terrorist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Bowing to pressure, Mr de Mistura did not invite the Kurds.
A further problem is that parts of the Sunni Arab coalition say they will not attend unless there is a halt to air strikes by the regime and the Russians and the lifting of sieges in rebel-held territory where civilians are starving. They point out that these are confidence-building measures required by the UN resolution. But although Mr de Mistura bemoans the squabbles over participation as a distraction from more important issues, he is pleading for people to turn up in Geneva without preconditions.
Hopes for anything more than sporadic local ceasefires are faint, especially since Russia’s air campaign has strengthened the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Russian planes have carried out nearly 7,000 sorties in the four months since they entered the fray, killing many of Mr Assad’s enemies. Government forces last week seized control of Rabiaa, the last big town in western Latakia province held by the rebels, and crucial for their supply lines from Turkey. Intransigent even when faced with imminent defeat last summer, Mr Assad now believes he is winning.
http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21689582-just-getting-right-people-negotiating-table-proving-fraught-united