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Sunday, October 20, 2013
Syria war updates October 20 , 2013 - Geneva 2 International Conference on Syria set for November 23 - 24 , 2013. Whether Syria Opposition Groups shows up is an open question after they immediately are critical of the Conference going forward at this time and under present conditions in Syria ! As the Syria Opposition continues to splinter , alleged side deals between non Al Qaeda rebels and the Syria Army to defeat Al Qaeda blossom and moderate rebel forces see logistical supplies cut by Qatar , Turkey , Jordan and Lebanon ( anti- syrian government elements ) , the thinking behind why Geneva 2 is being pushed at this time becomes clearer !
The Obama Administration continues to insist that it would like to see a diplomatic solution to the civil war in Syria. But this desire flies in the face of everything we’ve learned about how civil wars have ended over the last 70+ years. Here are four things that President Obama should keep in mind as he considers the feasibility of pushing for a negotiated settlement in Syria.
Civil wars don’t end quickly. The average length of civil wars since 1945 have been about 10 years. This suggests that the civil war in Syria is in its early stages, and not in the later stages that tend to encourage combatants to negotiate a settlement.
The greater the number of factions, the longer a civil war tends to last. Syria’s civil war is being fought between the Assad government and at least 13 major rebel groups whose alliances are relatively fluid. This suggests that Syria’s civil war is likely to last longer than the average civil war.
Most civil wars end in decisive military victories, not negotiated settlements. Of these wars governments have won about 40% of the time, rebels about 35% of the time. The remainder tend to end in negotiated settlements. This suggests that the civil war in Syria will not end in a negotiated settlement but will rather end on the battlefield.
Finally, the civil wars that end in successfully negotiated settlements tend to have two things in common. First, they tend to divide political power amongst the combatants based on their position on the battlefield. This means that any negotiated settlement in Syria will need to include both the Assad regime and the Islamists, neither of whom is particularly interested in working with the other. Second, successful settlements all enjoy the help of a third party willing to ensure the safety of combatants as they demobilize. This means that even if all sides eventually agree to negotiate (i.e., due to a military stalemate or increasingly heavy costs), it’s unlikely that any country or the U.N. will be willing to send the peacekeepers necessary to help implement the peace. The likelihood of a successful negotiated settlement in Syria? Probably close to zero.
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil el-Araby (R) listens as U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi speaks during a news conference at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo on Oct. 20, 2013.Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters Picture Stream / MED
An international conference aimed at ending Syria's two-and-a-half year civil war will be held in Geneva on Nov. 23 and 24, according to an announcement by the Arab League chief on Sunday. However, it is unclear if any of Syria’s opposition groups, which have become increasingly divided, will attend.
Arab League chief Nabil el-Araby made the announcement at a news conference at the pan-Arab organization's headquarters in the Egyptian capital, Cairo after talks with the Arab League-U.N. envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi.
The proposed conference will attempt to convince Syria's rival sides to agree on a transitional government based on a plan adopted in Geneva in June 2012.
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But the fate of the conference is up in the air, as Syria’s fractured opposition has fought with the international community over how to best address the ongoing conflict, which has so far left 100,000 people dead and created more than 2 million refugees.
Syrian opposition groups immediately criticized Sunday’s plan, saying they were not consulted. They said they could not accept any negotiations that allowed for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to remain as head of state in any transitional period.
"This is a conspiracy against the Syrian people," said Bassam al-Dada, an official with the Free Syrian Army. "The most important request of the Syrian people – the distancing of Bashar (al-Assad) from the transitional period – was ignored."
He said the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, the main alliance of political opposition groups, would meet on Nov. 1 to discuss the matter further.
The squabbling comes as Syrians face continued violence, and a widening humanitarian and health crisis caused by the civil war.
On Sunday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported that rebels drove a truck laden with more than a ton of explosives into a post at the eastern entrance of the city of Hama, killing at least 30 people.
The explosion appeared to have set ablaze a gasoline truck nearby, increasing the damage and casualties, according to SANA.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat Al-Nusra, or Al-Nusra Front, had carried out the attack.
It was the second deadly assault on a checkpoint in two days. On Saturday, rebels led by Al-Nusra fighters set off a car bomb while assaulting a checkpoint near Damascus, killing 16 soldiers.
Syria has fallen into increased chaos as rebel groups have become more divided, complicating an already dire humanitarian crisis.
Million of refugees have fled the country as food, shelter and healthcare availability deteriorate.
On Saturday, the World Health Organization reported workers had found two suspected cases of polio in Syria, the first appearance of the incurable viral disease there in 14 years.
"Syria is considered at high-risk for polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases due to the current situation,” the WHO said in a statement.
The peace conference in Geneva on a political resolution of the Syrian crisis may finally start on November 23, says Arab League chief as quoted by AFP. The date of the gathering had been postponed many times amid the opposition’s refusal to participate.
Nabil al-Arabi announced the possible date of the long-awaited ‘Geneva2’ conference after meeting UN-Arab League peace envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi.
"I discussed the Syria file with Lakhdar Brahimi and it was decided that the Geneva meeting would take place on November 23 and arrangements are being made to prepare for this conference," al-Arabi told reporters in Cairo.
"There are many difficulties that must be overcome for this conference to succeed," he added, however.
Arabi and Brahimi met on Sunday in the Egyptian capital, where the envoy for Syria arrived as part of his Middle Eastern tour to drum up support for Geneva-2.
Brahimi on his part warned that no peace conference can take place without credible opposition participation. He added that Saudi Arabia and Iran’s presence is also needed for a comprehensive representation of parties with invested interests in Syria. He said the date is yet to be officially set.
Earlier this week a similar deadline was mooted by Syrian Deputy Prime Minister, Qadri Jamil, during his visit in Moscow.
But some media reports said the meeting may be postponed again by as far as mid-December due to the refusal of the Syrian opposition to participate.
Convening an inclusive peace conference to tackle the Syrian conflict was given priority in May, after a meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. The goal of the planned event is to find a compromise, which would bring an end to bloodshed in the country and lead to forming a transitional government.
While the Syrian government was quick to agree to the internationally-sponsored initiative, similar support has not been forthcoming from the many opposition groups. A great deal of the groups fighting on the ground in Syria, especially those with Islamist leanings, either rejected the idea of negotiations or ignored the peace effort. Moscow on several occasions complained that countries, which support the Syrian opposition and supposedly have leverage over them, are not doing enough to convince them to sit down at the negotiating table.
The troubled preparation for the conference comes as Syria continues its chemical weapons disarmament. On Saturday, Syrian state TV released footage of members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspecting a Syrian chemical weapons facility. The details on the date and the location have not been released.
The OPCW team is assisting the Syrian government in fulfilling its commitment to dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile. Damascus decided to get rid of its arsenal after being blamed for using the weapons of mass destruction against rebel forces.
Following the August sarin gas incident, the US threatened to use military force against Syria. While Damascus insists that it did not use chemical weapons and calls the sarin attack a rebel provocation, it agreed to declare and destroy its stockpile to defuse tension.
The mainstream Syrian rebel movement is under assault from three directions: the Syrian army, the Al-Qaeda Nusra Front and Al Qaeda in Iraq. Some of the rebel commanders controlling Damascus outskirts are clinching private ceasefire deals with local Syrian army officers, with some of whom they served as comrades in the same units before they defected. This trend is spreading to other cities, including Homs and Hama.
DEBKAfile’s intelligence and military sources report that these local deals are quickly evolving into joint patrols in rebel-held districts. The fusion of the two warring camps presages the prospect of wide areas seized by the rebels reverting to the control of President Bashar Assad’s regime without further bloodshed. Not all the rebel leaders go along with this trend. Some are trying to sabotage it by suicide bombing and shelling attacks. Most of these attacks are the work of Al Qaeda factions, like the suicide truck explosion at a government checkpoint on the edge of Hama Sunday, Oct. 20, which killed 30 people.
This kind of violence is beginning to peter out because the rebels’ main supporters, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and anti-Syrian elements in Lebanon, have slowed their logistic assistance and munitions deliveries. They are following the lead of the US, Britain and France, who never made good on the pledges last month to keep the rebels supplied with arms, instructors and military aid.
The rebels’ last remaining active backer is Saudi Arabia.
The situation in Aleppo in the north, Syria’s largest town, is a special case: Until a few months ago, mainstream Syrian rebel militias were the dominant force in northern and northeastern Syria and the Turkish border region. Today, they are pinned down with their backs to the wall by the various Al Qaeda-allied groups, which have also seized control of the highway links between Syria and Iraq. This enables the jihadists to move back and forth between the two countries and gain ready supplies of military equipment and fighters.
Syrian and Iraqi military units which tried to halt this traffic were thrown back.
The Turkish role in the Syrian mess becomes pertinent at this point.
Amid the mutual recriminations between Israel and Turkey over The Washington Post claim of Oct. 17 that Turkish MIT intelligence chief Hakan Fidan shopped Israeli spies to Iran, Ankara has other fish to fry – on the quiet. Fidan sees Syrian Kurds taking advantage of the havoc in northern Syria to seize control of the Turkish border region. To keep them at bay, Turkey has begun supplying Al Qaeda units fighting the Kurds with weapons.
The discovery that a member of NATO was arming al Qaeda jihadists was greeted in Washington with outrage.
In an effort to bring a modicum of control to the pandemonium in Syria, the UN asked veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi to renew his mediation mission with the Assad regime and the Syrian rebels in an effort to get Geneva II convened on Nov. 23 to work on a political solution.
Assad is working fast to broaden the local ceasefire accords springing up in the battlefield and marshal a new front consisting of the two warring Syrian camps for a combined war effort to stamp out Al Qaeda’s imprint on the country.
The Syrian ruler is thus coming close to achieving his primary war objective, to persuade the West and especially the United States, to back him as the only Arab ruler truly dedicated to stopping Al Qaeda’s encroachments in the Levant and therefore worth cultivating by Washington.
As this process advances, the issue of Assad’s chemical stockpiles is likely to lose its urgency. In any case the UN experts are making little headway in their mission of destruction.
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