No deal without Assad

For less than 24 hours, it looked like there was a possibility of a halt to hostilities on the horizon in Syria. Not a truce as such, but a pause for humanitarian efforts to relieve some of the worst of the civilian suffering. On February 11, at a meeting of interested nations in Munich, agreement was reached on the delivery of food, medicines and other essentials to civilians in the many besieged areas. By midday the following day, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose forces are on something of a roll, particularly in the north of the country around Aleppo, appeared to torpedo the agreement saying his forces would attempt to retake the entire country. By midday on February 13, the US State Department had responded by saying that Assad was “deluded” if he thought there was a military solution, and the various rebel and opposition groups were almost unanimous in saying that they, too, would fight to the bitter end.

So near and yet so far. The yawning trust deficit on all sides is largely impermeable to the workings of distant groups in Munich, and it is what happens at local commander level that determines the possibility of humanitarian assistance getting in. Rebel groups have powerful backers in the form of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the Saudis in particular are in bullish mode with talk of their ground forces being sent in as support — a seismic event were it ever to happen. President Assad has been much-bolstered by Russian air strikes which initially were supposed to be against the forces of the Islamic state (IS) but were quickly revealed as primarily targeting opponents of the Assad regime. The battle against the IS went to the sidelines — temporarily — and it continues to consolidate its borderless caliphate. The newly-born formal peace talks were suspended on February 3, after just three days, and may or may not restart on February 25. The crisis in the European Union brought about by the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War is a powerful driver of peace initiatives — but it is clear that there is no deal without President Assad, and thus far he is signing nothing beyond the death warrants of tens of thousands of ordinary Syrians.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 15^th,  2016.

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