Syrian civil war: Why the endless conflict is at a decisive point

Talks in Geneva may produce little of substance, but winners and losers are starting to emerge

Patrick Cockburn

Sunday 24 January 2016

The Syrian peace talks between government and opposition will begin in the next few days in Geneva in an atmosphere of almost undiluted gloom about the prospects for success. The two sides hate each other and have spent five years trying to kill each other, making it unlikely that they will agree to share power in any way except geographically, with each side keeping the territory it currently holds and defending it with its own armed forces.

This pessimism is difficult to contradict, given that several of the most powerful groups doing the shooting will not be present in Geneva. Neither Isis nor the al-Nusra Front are invited, not that it was ever likely that they would turn up even if they were. There are disputes about who exactly is a terrorist, with Saudi Arabia pushing the Army of Islam that controls the rebel stronghold on the eastern side of Damascus and Turkey insisting on the exclusion of the Syrian Kurds, America’s most effective ally against Isis.

The problem about ending the war in Syria and Iraq is that there is a multitude of players who are too strong to lose but too weak to win. Countries and movements such as Iran and Hezbollah see themselves as fighting for their very existence in a war they cannot afford to lose. Others, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey have invested too much credibility in the struggle for Syria to admit they are not going to achieve their aim of ousting President Bashar al-Assad.

Wars sometimes end by exhaustion rather than agreement, and that may be the best that can be expected for Syria. Local ceasefires and armed truces would be put in place, like the 600 or more that periodically interrupted the 15-year civil war in Lebanon. The difficulty here is that cult-like movements such as Isis and al-Nusra exist to fight for and live up to their Islamic faith by fighting what they see as demonic enemies. They are not like the Lebanese warlords who used to occasionally find it in their mutual interests to stop trying to kill each other.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syrian-civil-war-why-the-endless-conflict-is-at-a-decisive-point-a6829891.html