Fight and talk

The date hasn’t even been set yet for next month’s “Geneva II” conference, but we are in full pre-negotiation mode in Syria.  This means instensification of the fighting, ratcheting up of the assistance flowing from outside, and anxious efforts to get the opposition to hang together, lest they hang separately (in the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin).

For the moment, the fighting is still focused on the ill-fated town of Qusayr, which is one of the keys to controlling the highway that links Damascus to Tartus and Latakia on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.  But the big news came Saturday from nearby Lebanon, where Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah announced publically his group’s undying commitment to keeping the Asad regime in power in Syria and fighting the Sunni “takfiris” there.  A Shia neighborhood in Beirut was ineffectively rocketed in response.

Then Monday the European Union decided to let its self-imposed arms embargo on Syria lapse at the end of the month, opening the possibility of Britain and France deciding to arm the opposition.  While Secretary Kerry seems to think this will help rebalance the military situation, it is far more likely the delayed prospect of European arms for the opposition will cause the Asad regime to accelerate its efforts to consolidate as much control as it can over the Damascus/Mediterranean corridor, which is vital both to the regime’s survival.  The port at Tartus is where the Russians deliver their heavier arms to the regime, and the coastal area has a substantial concentration of Alawite supporters of the regime.

Meanwhile the opposition has been meeting in Istanbul.  It needs to sort out its leadership mess.  Moaz al Khatib, who has resigned as the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) president chaired at least part of the meeting, George Sabra is supposedly the temporary leader, and Michel Kilo is supposed to take over but was apparently blocked from doing so at a meeting that is continuing in Istanbul.  The SOC also needs to broaden its base to include more people from inside Syria as well as representatives of Free Syrian Army units.  It would help of course if the Saudis and Qataris, presumably the main suppliers of money and arms to the opposition, would sing from the same songsheet.

The regime, meanwhile, is making happy noises about participating in a dialogue that its Moscow patrons likely see as a way keeping Asad in power even if the Americans would like it to be the first step on the way to his removal.  Moscow is using the time to beef up Syria’s air defenses, having already moved to strengthen its shore defenses and deploy the Russian navy to Syria’s coast.  Those still arguing for “safe corridors” and the like need to take note.  The Americans are uninterested in fighting a war in Syria, especially one that might show Russian military hardware off to good advantage and provide the Iranians with up-to-date data on American aerial performance.

None of this bodes well for Geneva II.   There is no “mutually hurting stalemate” in Syria.  Both sides are still willing to fight.  The catastrophe they fear most would come from stopping the fighting, not continuing it.  The regime figures that would expose the Alawites to mass murder.  The opposition, while struggling for the moment, figures the setbacks are temporary and the right response is to redouble its efforts.  Anyone who has seen what Asad is capable of would fear losing this war.  If Geneva II happens, it is likely to happen in the context of heightened conflict, not the kind of mutual exhaustion that lends itself to political settlement.

That does not however mean that talking is a bad idea.  “Ripeness” for a settlement sometimes happens suddenly.  Best to be ready when it does.  Being ready can mean many things:  making the needed contacts between opposing forces, testing propositions, developing principles that can be applied when the situation warrants, gaining intelligence on the warring parties and their leadership structures, cultivating constituencies for peace on both sides.

“Fight and talk” is not new.  The European Community (as it was then) convened many conferences on the wars in former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s, when war was in raging in Croatia and Bosnia and repression in Kosovo.  The meetings never produced a peace agreement, or even a ceasefire that held.  That was left to the Americans at Dayton.  But they did produce the Community’s criteria for recognition of the separate republics as independent states as well as the state succession plans, both of which were used to what I would call good effect.

In the best of all possible worlds, we are heading for fight and talk in Syria.  Wisdom lies in using the opportunity well and trying to end a war that is clearly threatening state structures in the Levant and may collapse them in chaos.