Chances uncertain for peace talks in near future
Few people will be surprised to hear that peace talks in Geneva aimed at bringing an end to Syria’s bitter civil war have stalled, but many will be disheartened. The five year sectarian conflict, which has killed more than a quarter of a million people, looks set to continue well into and beyond 2016.
Triggered by a local protest against the authoritarian rule of President Bashar Al-Assad in 2011, Syria’s internal struggle has spiraled into a regional conflagration affecting states throughout the Middle East and in Europe. Refugees fleeing the violence and the persecutions of the Islamic State (ISIS), whose number is currently over 10 million, represent just one consequence of the conflict which is creating instability across the region.
António Guterres, who until recently headed the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, warned of the dangers of allowing the violence to continue when he addressed the UN Security Council in December. Guterres urged that the sectarian violence not be allowed to escalate in a repetition of the brutality suffered by Europe in its religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.
“The lessons of history show that peace cannot wait. The world needs a surge in diplomacy for peace,” Guterres said.
But for the time being that surge has not come.
Talks scheduled to take place between the government of Syria and various opposition factions in Geneva broke down after just three days without any visible signs of progress. Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, insisted that this did not represent a failure and that talks would renew on the 25th of February.
Yet such a timeframe appeared unrealistic, Angelique Lecorps, a senior consultant with Strategic Risk Advisory G4S Risk Consulting, told The Media Line. “The fact that they’ve stalled is not good news although it was expected.” Lecorps was understandably cautious about predicting an end to the conflict, noting that, “eighteen months is quite optimistic.”
One reason for this is the likelihood of unforeseen obstacles creating a delay. “New threats or new challenges are likely to emerge and replace the existing ones,” Lecorps explained.
An example of this is the central role currently played by the Russian military, a force whose presence few would have predicted twelve months ago. The emergence of the Islamic State too was largely unforeseen and unexpected.
A second issue is disagreement on the core objective, the eradication of the Islamic State or the removal of Assad, Lecorps said.
The fragmented nature of Syria’s armed opposition can be seen as one reason for the difficulty in bringing about a peace deal, Martin Griffiths, the director of the European Institute of Peace, told The Media Line. “I think it’s true to say that Syria has had more armed groups than any other conflict in history – at one time as many as 5000 groups.”
The failure of the armed opposition to produce a single unifying leader, the disparate ideologies of the organizations and the cosmopolitan nature of Syrian society, could all be held accountable for this division, Griffiths, who spent time in Syria in 2012 with a UN observation mission and has experience in conflict mediation, said.
More pressingly, Griffiths emphasized, was the position of the Syrian government. They are “not interested in serious negotiation on the substantive issues, whether ceasefire or political transition… (as) they feel there is more to gain on the battlefield,” the mediator said. Buoyed by the air power of the Russian military and successes on the battlefields around Aleppo, the Syrian government was not truly interested in talking and had come because they were pressured to do so, Griffiths stated.
Lecorps too cited recent Syrian gains on the ground as a reason for the regime’s lukewarm attitude to talks. “It’s quite encouraging for the government, there’s no reason why they would stop what they are doing,” she said.
For Jasmine K. Gani, a lecturer in international relations at St. Andrews University, this is emblematic of the internationalization of the conflict which is “no longer really a civil war.” Any chance for a peace deal has been complicated by “Russia, the US, UK, France, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Hizbullah and foreign fighters… (as) all these parties have some stake in the war,” Gani told The Media Line.
Successful peace talks are something that takes time and discretion, Martin Griffiths explained. “There’s a tendency, and I think we saw that in Geneva this week, to want to move to negotiations even when the circumstances aren’t right for it,” he concluded.