Geneva 2 won’t bring end to Syria’s ordeal

It now appears that a peace conference on Syria, the so-called Geneva 2, will be held next month, according to Syrian, Arab League and UN sources. The target date is Nov. 23. Previous attempts to hold the assembly had met with failure. The road to Geneva will be fraught with challenges. The two major interlocutors, the US and Russia, are in agreement over a political end to the Syrian crisis. The embattled regime of President Bashar Assad has already announced its readiness to attend. But it made it clear that it would not consider any deal that required the president to step down. Pressure will now turn to the Syrian opposition to show up in Geneva. But that’s another story.
Last week the Syrian National Council (SNC) announced that it will boycott the peace conference and that it will quit the National Coalition (NC), the main platform for the opposition, if it participated. SNC president George Sabra said his group would not negotiate before the fall of the regime. The NC is yet to decide on the matter, but the objection of the SNC, which is the biggest bloc, will make it difficult to join. The Syrian opposition has failed over the years to present a united front. It suffers from internal divisions and outside interferences. It has lost the support of key rebel groups fighting the regime. Its attempts to create a provisional government in “liberated” areas had failed. Its repeated calls for arms and munitions from the west were never treated seriously.
On the other hand the regime is using the changing political climate to bolster its position. Last week in Moscow Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said that “Geneva is a way out for everyone: The Americans, Russia, the Syrian regime and the opposition. Whoever realizes this first will benefit. Whoever does not realize it will find himself overboard, outside the political process.” This new sense of confidence by the Syrian regime has frustrated the opposition, especially when the US shifted its position in the past few weeks and embraced an offer by Damascus to dismantle its chemical weapons. The threat of a US military strike against Syria soon dissipated. And recently US Secretary of State John Kerry commended the Assad regime for its cooperation with UN inspectors.
The Syrian crisis, two and a half years old, had challenged the US and its western and Arab partners. Washington was never able to chart a consistent policy on Syria, especially on the issue of arming the resistance. The lack of a coherent policy has stymied the influence of the moderate Syrian Free Army (SFA) and allowed religious extremists to play a more decisive role. Today, Al-Qaeda affiliated groups are in control of many Syrian regions, especially in the north and east. Furthermore, they have turned their guns against the SFA and wrenched some areas from them. Their goal is to establish an Islamic state in these areas.
Fear of Jihadists taking over in Syria has thwarted plans to send arms and equipment to the rebels. Washington’s about face has angered its regional allies including Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The latter has demonstrated its frustration with policies over Syria by refusing to take its seat in the UN Security Council.
Washington and Moscow now agree on the need to hold a peace conference on Syria next month in Geneva despite the fact that the opposition is unlikely to attend. No one is talking about regime change anymore and the best that can be expected out of this conference is to adopt a road map that will create a transitional government that will prepare for elections down the road. Such a course of action will not be rejected by the regime. But it falls short of anything that the opposition has been fighting for.
Prospects for a deal that would loosen Assad’s grip on power in Syria appear weak at best. But the regime will press its case that it is fighting terrorists on behalf of the world. The opposition’s goals for Syria are contradicted by the actions of Jihadists on the ground. And if they fail to show up in Geneva, the US and its Western allies can always claim to have tried their best to find a political solution.
The real losers in all this are the Syrian people. As events have shown in the past weeks neither the regime nor the rebels are able to deal a decisive blow to one another. Fighting continues in Damascus and its suburbs, in Allepo, Hums, Derra’, Idlib, Deir El Zour and others. Thousands are dying of starvation in besieged Moadamiyah and calls for a humanitarian pause in hostilities have been rebuffed. Sectarian killings have become the norm and Al Qaeda linked groups are making gains in many regions.
Geneva 2 will not end the conflict. It will further erode any influence the exiled opposition has on the ground. The regime may even receive support as it battles the Jihadists. The Syrian uprising is over as Syria turns into a battlefield between extremists and moderates. Geneva 2 could pave the way for the rehabilitation of the Assad regime at a time when American attention is shifting toward concluding a historical deal with Iran over its nuclear program.

• Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.
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