Yesterday afternoon, the Syria peace talks in Geneva produced their first breakthrough. The UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi reported that both parties have agreed upon conditions under which women and children are allowed to leave the besieged city of Homs, Syria. Although this deal marks an important first step in these talks, it falls critically short of both what was expected and what is needed. Indeed, Brahimi conceded that it would take time “to bring Syria out of the ditch in which it has fallen.” If the peace process takes too long, President Bashar al-Assad will be left appearing as a partner in the process while continuing to decimate his people.
The Geneva II Conference’s aim is to make steps toward a transitional government in Syria. The meeting comes more than a year after the initial discussion on peace in Syria began. In June 2012, an action group, with the support of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council, devised an outline for international intervention in Syria and the goals any potential political settlements would need to meet. With those guidelines in place, Geneva II has resulted in several peace talks between Syrian opposition and the incumbent government, but the efforts seem worryingly perfunctory.
The talks are unlikely to precipitate a regime change with the current ineffectual Syrian delegation. Assad seems to have played his political cards just right. By sending a powerless delegation to Geneva II, he may hang on to the presidency. The only deals without Assad’s involvement will be minor guarantees of further humanitarian relief and brief ceasefires in return for western aid.
While political talks have continued, the death toll has risen dramatically. Recently, evidence was uncovered that revealed the systematic killing of roughly 11,000 detainees. Many of the corpses showed signs of torture. The evidence is more detailed than most other documentation of the war crimes in Syria and could be used to indict Syrian officials.
While the developments of Geneva II may appear conducive to Syrian peace, spectators must remain cognizant of the looming risks with feeble rewards. Although the talks may have produced a minor victory for women and children, true progress cannot be achieved until the negotiators stop ignoring the actual problem. Warfare is waged by the Assad regime on its own citizens, from relentless blockades to air strikes to inhumane imprisonment. Discussions that fail to produce meaningful action against these jarring realities are not only woefully neglectful of civilian suffering but also perpetuate Assad’s crimes against humanity.
A version of this article appeared in the Monday, Jan. 27 print edition. Email the WSN Editorial Board at [email protected].
Arafat • Jan 27, 2014 at 10:45 am
For the last hundred years the best and brightest of the
civilized world have been engaged in the business of peace. In the days before
the Nobel Peace Prize became a joke, it was expected that scientific progress
would lead to moral progress. Nations would accept international laws and
everyone would get together to replace wars with international conferences.
Instead technological progress just gave us better ways to
kill each other. There have been few innovations in the moral technology of
global harmony since Immanuel Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” laid out a plan to grant
world citizenship to all refugees and outlaw all armies, invasions and
atrocities with the whole shebang would be overseen by a League of Nations.
That was in 1795 and Kant’s plan was at least more
reasonable than anything we have two-hundred years later today because it at
least set out to limit membership in this body to free republics. If we had
done that with the United Nations, it could conceivably have become something
resembling a humane organization. Instead it’s a place where the dictators of
the world stop by to give speeches about human rights for a show that’s funnier
than anything you could find eight blocks away at the Broadway Comedy Club.
Arafat • Jan 27, 2014 at 10:43 am
This reminds me of how well the UN did/has done in Sudan. Now the Muslim jihadists are waging a slow war of attrition against Southern Sudan.
………………..
No, the UN is not a club of morons. It has become a
multi-billion-dollar bureaucracy of career wonks, parasites, moochers, useless
diplomats, well-paid support staff, professional courtiers, ass-kissers,
flesh-eating zombies, and altruist snobs, paid for largely by U.S.
contributions and dues. The UN is a signal instance of how we are paying for
our own destruction.
There isn’t a single UN agency that has done a lick of good. It
has never solved the “problems” of hunger, disease, and poverty, and
never will, because it has a vested interest in perpetuating those things. The
only good thing it has done was to approve the creation of Israel, and that was
in the way of an apology for the West not having opposed Nazi Germany early
enough to prevent WWII, as a kind of compensation for the Holocaust.
No good could ever come from a formal association with what has
become a clique of dictatorships, authoritarian régimes, welfare states, and
feudal monarchies, for the alleged purpose of advancing “peace.” But
ever since its creation the world has seen more strife, turmoil, butchery,
misery, and slaughter than in any other period of human history, except perhaps
during the Dark Ages, when the competition in death was between disease and
savages.