Lakhdar Brahimi: “It’s very complicated”

International troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi today held talks in Damascus, the last leg of a Middle East tour to lobby for a Syria peace conference, dubbed Geneva-2.

I am personally of the opinion he will keep huffing and puffing well into 2014 without getting up the steep Geneva-2 hill.

According to the Geneva Communiqué of June 2012, the principal objective of the proposed peace conference is to set up by mutual consent a transitional governing body with “full executive powers.”

I will come back to the prospects of Geneva-2 in a subsequent blog.

But here are highlights of what Brahimi told the Paris-based weekly newsmagazine Jeune Afrique in a 3,000-word interview published on the day of his arrival in Damascus yesterday.

The interview is fittingly titled “Mission Impossible”:

Jeune Afrique: Didn’t the agreement between the Russians and Americans [to remove Syria’s chemical weapons] put Bashar al-Assad back on the saddle?

Lakhdar Brahimi: He was an outcast; he became a partner… Bashar was never put off his stride -- so there is no reason to think that.

JA: Do you think he seriously considers running for re-election in mid-2014?

LB: Many of those around him take his running for another term as an accomplished fact.

He deems it as his absolute right, but that he would come to a decision in due time. He is adamant about completing his current term.

What I proclaim aloud and to all Syrians is this: History teaches us that after a crisis like this, there is no turning back.

President Assad could therefore significantly contribute to the transition from the previous Syria -- which is that of his father and his own -- to what I call the New Syrian Republic.

JA: What about the Syrian opposition?

LB: They are to consider who could represent them [at the peace table]. This is one reason why it takes time. Some of them even feel they should stay away from Geneva.

It's very complicated!

In this type of situation, there are many camps. Armed and unarmed opposition, opposition based outside and inside [Syria], Islamists, seculars, etc... We must realize Geneva-2, unlike the conference held in 2012, is not an end in itself but the beginning.

We hope the opposition will manage to agree on a credible and representative delegation. We must not delude ourselves: the whole world won’t be represented. However, the carry-over of this process will include as many people as possible.

JA: If the powerful Islamist rebels choose to boycott Geneva, it will be a real problem...

LB: Probably, but mind you there are two sorts of Islamists: those interested in the quest for peace, and those in the orbit al-Qaeda – such as Jabhat al-Nusra, for example. The latter wish to bring down the regime; they are not fighting to build a New Syrian Republic, but to set up an Islamic state. So they don’t give a hoot about Geneva.

JA: Is Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a reliable partner?

LB: Absolutely – we know each other well.

He was ambassador to the UN and is an outstanding professional. He is also extremely knowledgeable about the Middle East.

Where Syria is concerned, there is much talk about Moscow's influence and the Russians’ political relations with the regime.

The Russians have had a significant, longstanding and uninterrupted presence in Syria.

Everyone bears in mind the Russian officers who are out there, but there are chiefly a lot of engineers. Remember, there are nearly 20,000 Russian women in Syria married to Syrians.

The Russians know Syria very well. When [Tunisia’s  Zine al-Abidine]  Ben Ali, [Egypt’s Hosni] Mubarak and [Libya’s Muammar] Gaddafi fell, few thought Bashar would survive more than three months.

Only the Russians kept saying: "Careful -- this is not the case, we are familiar with the country, and we know how it works. Syria is more complicated. "

Some thought this was pretentious, that it was an unconditional expression of support for Bashar.

JA: Do you think Syria’s national fabric can still be patched up?

LB: Yes, I think so. What threatens Syria is not the country’s partition. I would be surprised if the Alawites really want to create some sort of a bunker in their small mountains. They know very well it won’t be viable.

The real danger threatening Syria is a kind of "Somalization," one which will be more sustainable and profound than what we’ve seen in Somalia so far.

JA: Does the idea of ​​a Shiite crescent fighting Sunnis across the Arab and Islamic worlds seem pertinent?

LB: Effectively, we do have a problem, which is far from being new. I remember discussing it with [the highest ranking Shiite religious leader in Iraq] Grand Ayatollah [Ali] Sistani, when I was in Baghdad in 2004. I explained to him we might have on our hands a Shiite-Sunni problem stretching from Indonesia all the way to Morocco.

He answered me saying Iraq was not Pakistan, where internecine strife was rife. He was wrong... We're not yet at the stage of a general confrontation, although [Shiite-Sunni] tensions are numerous in Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan or Bahrain. But we must be vigilant because we’re not too far off.

JA: What role is Iran playing in the Syrian conflict today -- that of a facilitator or an obstacle?

LB: You know, from my point of view, everyone represents an obstacle... Seriously, I met the new president, Hassan Rouhani, and his minister of foreign affairs in New York.

Iran's position is clear: there is no military solution to this conflict; an entente must be reached between the government -- towards which the Iranians are very close -- and the opposition that will result in free elections supervised by the United Nations.

I’m under the impression they [Iranians] think Bashar would win the ballot hands down.

JA: From [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad to Rouhani, have you noticed a change in Tehran’s discourse and positions?

LB: On other issues, such as relations with the United States, certainly. But on the Syria crisis, no, absolutely not.

JA: What about Israel in all this?

LB: I feel that whatever the case, Israel is in a win-win situation. If Bashar goes, Syria will take a long time to stabilize. If Bashar stays, he will be broken-down. And if the internecine strife continues, it will be good for Israel... Moreover, chemical weapons were the only strategic weapons the Israelis feared. In short, Israel is in a win-win situation and I'm not sure the Arabs are aware of this...

Regional turbulence ahead, fasten your seatbelts

Waddah Khanfar

Waddah Khanfar, 45, is the president of Al Sharq Forum, an independent network dedicated to developing long-term strategies for political development, social justice and economic prosperity of the people of the Middle East. He previously served as the Director General of the Aljazeera Network. In 2011, Foreign Policy Magazine ranked Khanfar first in “The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers.” In 2009, Forbes Magazine named him one of the most “Powerful People in the World.” He penned this think piece in Arabic for aljazeera.net:

The Syrian regime having turned to Scud missiles, and with Russia and Iran keeping up their arms supplies to the Damascus government, the British and French assume that providing some weapons to the rebels would somewhat level the sides’ firepower and prod the regime to negotiate with the opposition.

The idea by some in the West of working for a peace settlement by redressing the military balance won’t work. It won’t help stop the violence.

It would simply gain the regime more time and lay the first stone for greater and more vengeful violence. The move would inflame the situation and broaden the field of conflict to engulf the whole region.

Many reasons are at work to expand the Syria crisis and give it a regional dimension.

The Arab Mashreq is one of the world’s most diverse regions in terms of sects, ethnicities and religions.

The Syria crisis is getting deeper and thornier because of gory terrorism by Syria’s sectarian regime, Russia’s accolades and Iran’s giveaways to Assad, America and Europe’s hesitation and the Arab states’ muddled disposition towards the multiple Syrian revolution sides.

Regional amplification of the crisis has thus become a matter of time. This is to say the Syria crisis will become, in the course of its third year, an open-ended trans-boundary conflict posing the biggest challenge yet to the stability of the region since its current borders were mapped out a century ago in the aftermath of the First World War.

Mushrooming of the Syria crisis will first envelop Lebanon, which is closest to Syria.

The strategic axis extending from Tehran to Baghdad, to Damascus, and on to Hezbollah in Lebanon believes the Assad regime’s fall will reconfigure the region’s strategic balances.

That’s what drove Hezbollah to be the first Lebanese side to stick its nose in Syria and give political and logistical support to Assad’s regime. That’s what prompted other Lebanese sides to back the Syrian revolution.

Tension and polarization peaked in Lebanon after its internal two-year rope war. The country is now exposed to the fire and brimstone of the Syria crisis with all its bloody violence and sectarian overtones.

Despite the seriousness of an eruption of violence in Lebanon, a spread of hostilities in the direction of Iraq is the more ominous development in the making.

The preliminary signs are evident in the mounting political strains between the Maliki government, which is prone to sectarianism and backs Bashar al-Assad, and all the predominantly Sunni provinces on the one hand, and between Maliki and Iraq’s Kurdistan Region on the other.

It seems the three months of ceaseless protests in the Sunni areas have reached a dead-end.

The Maliki government did not meet the demonstrators’ demands for greater sectarian evenhandedness in Baghdad. Instead, the government escalated its repression of protesters and embraced violence.

This risks opening the Iraqi arena to a new cycle of grisly violence that will find its natural extension in the inflamed Syrian mainland.

Iraq, which is yet to recover from a civil war that tore to pieces its national unity between 2007 and 2009, is expected to take sectarian strife in the region to unparalleled levels.

Iraq’s neighbors – Iran, Turkey and the Arab Gulf countries – will find themselves drawn into the inferno.

The struggle over Iraq will not only be over its huge oil resources, but also over the heart and soul of the upcoming Middle East. The latter will determine the weights of the regional powers and chart the region’s new political map.

Is such a bleak scenario preventable?

The answer lies in what regional and international players do in the few months ahead, starting with the United States precluding its past mistakes and making removal of the Syrian regime its top priority.

Although direct military intervention is not welcome, the prerequisite is to provide the Syrian revolution with the necessary qualitative weapons without engaging prematurely in side issues over the local balance of power post-Assad Syria.

The U.S. administration was nonplussed and undecided on Syria in the past two years. It blocked the flow of qualitative weapons to the rebels in Syria under different pretexts. These included Washington’s apprehension of post-Assad scenarios and of Islamists ruling in Damascus at Israel’s doorstep.

America also did not want to see such weapons “fall into the wrong hands,” meaning Jihadists and groups close to al-Qaeda.

Such American hesitance proved disastrous. It failed to prioritize the removal of a terrorist regime bent on killing, destroying and raping for fear of a potential terrorism threat.

The U.S. made the mistake when the Syrian revolution was miles away from the influence of al-Qaeda and its offshoots.

This emboldened the regime, allowing it to raise the level of its violence against civilians to unprecedented heights.

Likewise, the international community’s dawdling and indecision on supporting the Free Syrian Army and the moderate rebel brigades allowed Jihadist groups to join the fray.

It is atypical not to see oppression victims turn to whoever can defend them. It took Jihadist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. designated as terrorist, more than a year to make their entry into the Syria scene.

The U.S. decision was also misguided in that it shifted the international community and regional forces’ priority from bringing down the regime to fighting Jihadists.

Moreover, U.S. blacklisting of al-Nusra empowered the group further after it proved to be more disciplined than the other armed groups and refrained from antagonizing Christian, Druze and Alawite minorities.

The lack of a clear strategy vis-à-vis the Syrian revolution sent conflicting signals to regional countries. Those fearful of the “Islamist threat” chose to arm groups of no consequence in Syria, which served the regime well and embittered the revolution’s mainstream.

The most important thing the countries of the region need to do is formulate a common position on the Syria priorities.

Downing the regime posthaste is the imperative step liable to stop the slide towards unbridled violence.

Focusing on the attendant post-Assad fears and trying to meddle in the rebel groups’ political and military balance of power will work for the regime and for the scenario of full-blown chaos and sectarian strife.