The merits don’t count

The UN invitation to Iran now withdrawn because it failed to acknowledge the June 2012 Geneva 1 communique call for a transitional governing body with full executive powers, the Geneva 2 peace conference began today in Montreux with “bitter speeches.”  While the acidity is unusually high in this instance, most peace conferences begin with this kind of venting.  The Syrian government representative was anxious to establish Bashar al Asad’s legitimacy while the opposition focused on his atrocities, newly documented in a frightening graphic report purporting to include official photographs of torture victims.

Can anything good come of this Montreux opening and the next few days of meetings?  The primary candidates are a prisoner exchange and humanitarian access.  The former is much more likely to come off well than the latter.

Holding prisoners is not easy or rewarding.  Their usefulness as sources of information declines rapidly after their capture.  In addition, warring parties face strong pressure from families and fighters on their own side to get at least an accounting for prisoners, if not also their freedom.  It is hard to maintain morale if your people know you can’t even get their comrades and relatives back from the opponent.  Supervision of such prisoner exchanges, usually by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), is a well practiced art.

The question of humanitarian access is more difficult.  It requires either established corridors not subject to attack or cease fires, during which humanitarian supplies can be brought in.  Humanitarian corridors break down more than they are maintained.  Cease fires happen in many local situations all the time.  Reportedly Aleppo, where confrontation lines have been largely frozen for a long time, enjoys occasional cease fires that enable a minimum of humanitarian access.

Cease fires are however problematic.  They allow both sides to rest, reorganize and resupply.  As a result, they often break down, as one side or the other decides it had better stop the strengthening of its adversary, or take advantage of its own edge.  Unsupervised cease fires are particularly vulnerable to collapse.

Current conditions in most of Syria would make it extremely dangerous to monitor a ceasefire.  While the chemical weapons inspectors of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have so far been safe from harm, they are entirely stationed on the regime’s side of confrontation lines and under regime protection.  Any serious monitoring of a ceasefire and humanitarian access would require observers also on the revolutionary side, where the presence of multiple armed groups under no central command and control would makes the situation particularly dicey.  Serious monitoring would also require oversight over long-distance sniping, shelling, rocketing and bombing, which the Asad regime indulges in frequently.

Secretary Kerry was correct months ago when he suggested that a satisfactory resolution of the Syrian war requires a change of the military balance on the battlefield.  Geneva 1 was a good idea that reflected the relatively strong military situation of the revolutionary forces at the time.  But the entry of both the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hizbollah into the battle, and the constancy of Russian support, has changed the situation.  Asad is enjoying his advantage.  There has been no comparable help on the other side.  To the contrary, the revolutionary forces have been weakened by fragmentation and fighting among themselves.  They have lost territory as well as momentum.

No one at this point expects an early end to the fighting.  Even if the opposition negotiators in Geneva were to agree to a ceasefire, they have no means of enforcing discipline on all the forces fighting Asad.  The best they can hope for is to use the Geneva 2 bully pulpit to undermine Asad and rally international support.  Bashar’s representatives will likewise rail against their terrorist opponents.  He is trying to survive until a spring election reconfirms his mandate as president for another seven years.

I am tempted to say he won’t last that long.  On the merits he shouldn’t.  But the merits don’t much count.