As the Brits, the USA and France consider some sort of action in Syria - triggered by the recent use of chemical weapons in the on-going war - Patrick Coburn, veteran reporter in the Middle East, suggests in a piece in The Independent, that talks would be the preferable course than some sort of military intervention.
"While the world has been focusing on the horrors in Damascus over the past week, anti-government rebels have been carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Syrian Kurds in the north-east of the country, forcing 40,000 of them to flee across the Tigris into northern Iraq in less than a week. So many are trying to escape in what the United Nations says is the biggest single refugee exodus of the war that the pontoon bridge across the Tigris they were using is near collapse and has had to be closed, trapping tens of thousands of terrified Kurds inside Syria.
The sense of urgency among foreign powers generated by the present crisis should be used to launch the much-delayed peace negotiations in Geneva. A peace conference between the warring sides was proposed by the US and Russia in May, but has been repeatedly postponed. It is unrealistic to imagine for now that negotiations between people whose prime aim is to kill each other will lead to any long-term political solution for Syria. The priority should rather be to prevent the continuing escalation in the violence and the further disintegration of Syrian society.
A ceasefire is the greatest need, in which power-sharing would be geographical with each side holding the territory it controls. Such a truce should put in place and monitored by UN teams. It might not cover all the country and would no doubt be frequently breached, but it would be better than the present bloody anarchy. There were hundreds of ceasefires during the Lebanese civil war and they were regarded with cynicism by the Lebanese, but thousands more people would have died without them."
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"Peace conferences have the best chance of succeeding when one side knows it has won and wants to formalise its victory while the defeated want the best terms possible. Alternatively, peace negotiations may be productive when both sides are exhausted and come to realise they are not going to win a complete victory. The danger of supplying more weapons to the opposition is that it is not going to enable them to win but will simply fuel the level of the fighting.
Syria has a failed government and a failed opposition. As the country disintegrates it is being overrun by warlords with no interest in peace. “They stole all our things, our home, our possessions so even the children start to hate life,” lamented one Syrian Kurdish refugee fleeing to Iraq this week. Another talked about those who had driven her from her village: “We don’t know them. They just come, take power and give themselves a name.”
"While the world has been focusing on the horrors in Damascus over the past week, anti-government rebels have been carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Syrian Kurds in the north-east of the country, forcing 40,000 of them to flee across the Tigris into northern Iraq in less than a week. So many are trying to escape in what the United Nations says is the biggest single refugee exodus of the war that the pontoon bridge across the Tigris they were using is near collapse and has had to be closed, trapping tens of thousands of terrified Kurds inside Syria.
The sense of urgency among foreign powers generated by the present crisis should be used to launch the much-delayed peace negotiations in Geneva. A peace conference between the warring sides was proposed by the US and Russia in May, but has been repeatedly postponed. It is unrealistic to imagine for now that negotiations between people whose prime aim is to kill each other will lead to any long-term political solution for Syria. The priority should rather be to prevent the continuing escalation in the violence and the further disintegration of Syrian society.
A ceasefire is the greatest need, in which power-sharing would be geographical with each side holding the territory it controls. Such a truce should put in place and monitored by UN teams. It might not cover all the country and would no doubt be frequently breached, but it would be better than the present bloody anarchy. There were hundreds of ceasefires during the Lebanese civil war and they were regarded with cynicism by the Lebanese, but thousands more people would have died without them."
***
"Peace conferences have the best chance of succeeding when one side knows it has won and wants to formalise its victory while the defeated want the best terms possible. Alternatively, peace negotiations may be productive when both sides are exhausted and come to realise they are not going to win a complete victory. The danger of supplying more weapons to the opposition is that it is not going to enable them to win but will simply fuel the level of the fighting.
Syria has a failed government and a failed opposition. As the country disintegrates it is being overrun by warlords with no interest in peace. “They stole all our things, our home, our possessions so even the children start to hate life,” lamented one Syrian Kurdish refugee fleeing to Iraq this week. Another talked about those who had driven her from her village: “We don’t know them. They just come, take power and give themselves a name.”
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