Tag: United Nations
Hang together, or hang separately
Hadi Bahra, of the Syrian Coalition political office, is anxious to call attention to UN Security Council resolution 2118, which not only provided for removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons capability, but also endorsed
…fully the Geneva Communiqué of 30 June 2012 (Annex II), which sets out a number of key steps beginning with the establishment of a transitional governing body exercising full executive powers, which could include members of the present Government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.
The problem is that the Russians are far from agreeing that this should be the over-riding purpose of a “Geneva 2” conference. Nor is Bashar al Asad preparing to send a delegation to the January 23/24 Montreux/Geneva conference empowered to hand over all executive authority.
The Syrian Coalition is right to insist, but the question is what it should do if it doesn’t get its way, as it won’t. Does it still go to Montreux/Geneva, or does it refuse?
Refusing would mean stiffing John Kerry, endangering American and other Western support and handing a propaganda victory to Bashar al Asad. That’s not a good outcome.
Attending means daring the Syrian regime to show up, gaining a bully pulpit for the opposition’s own interpretation of UNSC resolution 2118, and giving the Americans some satisfaction. Many in the opposition hope the regime will not take the dare and embarrass itself by not showing up. That would be a satisfying outcome, but just for that reason unlikely. The Russians will deliver the Syrians, just as the Americans will deliver the opposition.
What will happen at Montreux/Geneva, assuming both sides do turn up? The Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG) recently ran a simulation intended to find out. The simulation focused on establishing a ceasefire, forming a transitional government and accountability for wartime abuses. To make a long story short, the Syrian opposition was fragmented going in and the pressure of negotiation made things worse. A unified Syrian government delegation with strong Russian support had a field day reinforcing the notion that President Asad is indispensable. The Americans and Russians conspired to keep Asad symbolically in place while a technocratic government took over. Only a walkout–not something that will gain any points with the international community–saved the opposition from getting its clock cleaned.
Simulations are just that. They are not reality. PILPG spins the outcome in positive directions: the opposition needs to come to Geneva 2 unified around its own plans for security, transitional governance and accountability.
That does not appear likely. Pressed hard on the battlefield, the opposition continues to shatter. While the Syrian National Coalition is reported to be meeting Monday in Turkey to elect its president (or re-elect the current one), other groups are meeting in Spain. The Islamic Front fighters have not supported either group as yet, and it is unclear whether they will turn up in any form Montreux/Geneva. The extremists associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Jabhat al Nusra are uninterested in the talks. Syrian Kurdish attitudes are divided.
There is a lot of preparatory work still to be done. Hang together, or hang separately.
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The 2013 vintage in the peace vineyard
2013 has been a so-so vintage in the peace vineyard.
The Balkans saw improved relations between Serbia and Kosovo, progress by both towards the European Union and Croatian membership. Albania managed a peaceful alternation in power. But Bosnia and Macedonia remain enmired in long-running constitutional and nominal difficulties, respectively. Slovenia, already a NATO and EU member, ran into financial problems, as did Cyprus. Turkey‘s long-serving and still politically dominant prime minister managed to get himself into trouble over a shopping center and corruption.
The former Soviet space has likewise seen contradictory developments: Moldova‘s courageous push towards the EU, Ukraine‘s ongoing, nonviolent rebellion against tighter ties to Russia, and terrorist challenges to the Sochi Winter Olympics. Read more
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A decent Syrian election: result, not prelude
Jimmy Carter and Robert Pastor propose an election to resolve Syria’s civil war. They suggest three principles that would have to be accepted as preconditions for negotiating the war’s end:
● Self-determination: The Syrian people should decide on the country’s future government in a free election process under the unrestricted supervision of the international community and responsible nongovernmental organizations, with the results accepted if the elections are judged free and fair;
● Respect: The victors should assure and guarantee respect for all sectarian and minority groups; and
● Peacekeepers: To ensure that the first two goals are achieved, the international community must guarantee a robust peacekeeping force.
And they spell out first steps: Read more
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What could go wrong?
Tucked away in Fred Hof’s latest post on Syria, is an extraordinary condemnation of the Obama adminsitration’s ineptitude on Syria:
The Obama administration did not anticipate that the Assad regime would use the Washington-Moscow agreement on chemical weapons as a free pass to terrorize civilian populations. When the administration pressed for the setting of a conference date, it did not intend for the regime to treat that date as an interim finish line, as it sprints for military advantage with the critical assistance of Iranian-raised militias and Russian rearmament. When the administration urged the nationalist Syrian opposition to commit itself to attending the conference, it had no inkling that Islamist rivals to the West’s opposition of choice would humiliate the recipients of US meals-ready-to-eat, medical kits, and pickup trucks.
None of these setbacks was difficult to anticipate. Many commenters wrote about how the chemical weapons agreement would make the Asad regime an essential partner to the international community and stabilize its hold on power. The speed-up of military efforts is canonical behavior before peace negotiations. The takeover of the opposition by Islamist forces had been widely anticipated, even if the particular seizure of supplies was not.
Now let’s anticipate the possible negative consequences of the January 22 (Montreux) and January 23 (Geneva) meetings, assuming that the Syrian opposition follows much Western advice and goes into them with a sincere list of nationalist figures, heavily loaded with minorities and not too offensive to the Russians, to staff the post-Asad regime. What might go wrong? Read more
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Peace picks, December 16-20
DC is beginning to slow down as the holiday season is fast approaching, but there are still some great events this week. We won’t likely publish another edition until January 5, as the year-end doldrums will likely last until then:
1. The Middle Kingdom Looks East, West, North, and South: China’s Strategies on its Periphery
Monday, December 16 | 9:00am – 10:30am
Woodrow Wilson Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Fifth Floor
China’s recent declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea and its territorial claims over 80% of the South China Sea are focusing renewed American attention on Chinese strategy. To understand China’s policies, deployments, and ambitions in the Western Pacific, we must analyze China’s attitudes toward all of its 14 border States and Pacific neighbors, and toward its near and more distant seas.
The Kissinger Institute’s 2013 series of public programs will conclude with a talk by renowned author Edward Luttwak, who will lead a discussion of China’s strategy throughout its periphery, with an emphasis on the Diaoyu/Senkakus and other regional disputes.
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Will benefits of Geneva II outweigh its costs?
Yesterday’s Friends of Syria Statement from the UK chair tries to clarify the attitudes of leading supporters of the Syrian opposition in light of the Islamic Front’s recent moves to claim exclusive leadership of the military effort. This threatens to leave out in the cold both the Supreme Military Council, a CIA-backed funnel for support to armed moderates, and its political leadership, in what is now being called the National Coalition.
The overriding concern of the Friends of Syria is who will be at the table for the January 22 co-sponsored Geneva II conference on the conflict and whether they will be able to speak authoritatively for the armed opposition. Any hope of success requires that the Islamic Front, or at least part of it, join the National Coalition at the negotiating table. The statement reiterates the opposition’s most important demand, on which both Islamists and secularists are agreed:
We reaffirmed that the aim of Geneva II was to implement a negotiated solution on the basis of the Geneva communiqué, by establishing a Transitional Governing Body with full executive powers agreed by mutual consent. This is the only way to end the conflict. Assad will have no role in Syria, as his regime is the main source of terror and extremism in Syria.
But the Friends of Syria rightly leave the door open to Islamist participation in Geneva, so long as they operate under the political authority of the National Coalition: Read more
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