The appalling cost of the Syrian civil war, with more than 200,000 dead, and some three million displaced and living abroad and six million internally displaced, is leading analysts and governments to seek out of the box solutions. It is a given that outside powers are supporting opposing sides, but the entry of the dreaded ISIS is concentrating minds as never before.
In strategic terms, it is a stalemate between pro-Assad and anti-Assad forces. And the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the prestigious Washington think-tank has come forward with a simple solution. Let the two sides in the civil war cease fire without any precondition in the areas they control as a first step. This is based on the assumption that that they are both in “a state of weakness”.
This suggestion comes against the backdrop of the topsy-turvy state of relations the outside backers have come to assume. Iran, the pariah state in Western eyes, is on the same side as the US in fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies and Turkey, responsible in various ways for events leading to the creation of ISIS are now recognising that the terrorist organisation represents a threat to their own countries.
One of the knottiest problems is the future of President Bashar al-Assad. Iran and Russia are backing him to the hilt for their own reasons while the Western objective is to have him removed. The entry of ISIS has dramatically changed the picture. American bombing runs on ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq are indirectly helping President Assad, a bone of contention with Turkey whose priority is to replace the Assad regime before it will cooperate fully with the West in opposing ISIS.
Jessica Mathews, head of Carnegie Endowment, is now suggesting a way out of this dilemma. She says that Mr Assad be allowed to stay in a titular role as his executive powers are distributed among Parliament, other institutions and the military. Whether he will be agreeable to this is another matter. A cause of great international concern for policy makers, including those in India, is that the longer the Syrian civil war proceeds yielding place to an ISIS seeking to expand the state it has proclaimed across Syria and Iraq, the greater the danger of the disintegration of these two countries and the beginning of a new phase of violence. For India, of course, the region is a vital trading partner and provides employment to some six million Indians.
An essential part of the jigsaw puzzle is the future of Kurds spread across Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. In Iraq, they enjoy autonomy in the northern Kurdish region and were sufficiently excited to seek independence until brought down to earth by advancing ISIS forces. But the Kurds in Iraq are being helped militarily by both Iran and the US and remain in disputed Kirkuk after Iraqi forces ran away from ISIS.
To complicate the picture further, Turkey has a friendly relationship with Iraqi Kurds while fighting its own Kurds at home. Indeed, the sale of Iraqi Kurdish oil to Turkey through a pipeline outside the ambit of the Iraqi government is a bone of contention with Baghdad. Kurds across borders constitute some 30 million people without a homeland of their own, thanks to major power interests and the quirks of history after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
As so often in the history of the UN, the Security Council remains helpless because of the conflicting interests of veto-vielding countries. The low ebb of relations between the US and Russia does not help although there are signs of cooperation on Iran and over the West seeking a solution of the nuclear issue with the West.
In a broader sense, the question the mess in Syria and Iraq raises is the future map of the Middle East and its consequences on other nations largely following the Westphalian model. There have been two jolts to this model in the post-World War II era. The West carved out Kosovo from the ruins of Yugoslavia through military means, and, more recently, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, the home of its Black Sea Fleet, from Ukraine. The extenua-ting factor is that Crimea was part of the USSR and was gifted to Ukraine by Khrushchev and has a Russian majority.
None of the major powers want to see the troubled region converted into an alphabet soup of countries. The Carnegie Endowment proposal is based on the premise that the advent of ISIS represents a common meeting point. The critical point, of course, is how to square the circle. Indeed, a complete ceasefire by the opposing parties could be a starting point. Who will bell the cat? If the major powers agree, the ball could well be thrown back into the UN’s court with clear guidelines.
The possible end of fighting by all except ISIS can lead to high-powered committees of heavyweights to begin an exercise to tackle each segment of the problem.
The main focus would need to be Syria and a way to the solution would be the wellbeing of the people, rather than point-scoring by opponents.
In today’s climate, such problem solving would appear to be a dream. But the desperate situation is crying out for sanity.
The writer can be contacted at snihalsingh@gmail.com
