Kerry initiative to end Syria carnage

S Nihal Singh

It took US Secretary of State John Kerry four years of civil war in Syria in which more than 200,000 died, millions were forced to become refugees in neighbouring countries, millions more internally displaced and a country largely in ruins to say he is willing to talk to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. True, there were no easy options as Washington sought to help overthrow the Alawite President of a Sunni-majority state. After two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans had no appetite for another war in the region.

As the Syrian carnage continued with Turkey, among others, rooting for President Assad's overthrow, it became clear that there were divisions in the opponents' ranks and it soon transpired that the most potent opposition came from the al-Qaida-linked factions, rather than the favoured moderate opposition. And while President Barack Obama hesitated and even saved retaliatory attacks in the face of chemical use, he opted for Russia's deal to destroy all of Syrian chemical weapons.

President Assad, meanwhile, seemed untroubled by the scale of the carnage and the destruction of much of the country to conduct an election of sorts to have himself re-elected for an extended period. Meanwhile, the picture had changed dramatically by the transformation of the various extremist groups going under the name of the ISIS into the Islamic State (IS), installing a caliphate on extensive territories seized in Syria and later in Iraq.

As the world knows to its cost, the IS’s distinguishing features have been the extreme cruelty of its supporters and media sophistication in telecasting its staged beheadings. It enforced its version of Sharia laws where it ruled and was well funded through extortion and capture of oil wells. In short, the caliphate behaved as a ruler of vast slabs of land in Syria and Iraq.

With the induction of the IS in the already devilish brew of Syria and Iraq and President Obama gaining the tag of being a reluctant warrior, he was forced to change tack and begin a series of strikes on the extremists in Syria and Iraq. The irony, of course, is that while Iran has been giving political and military support to President Assad, a fellow Shia, for his survival,t Iran and the US are on the same side against the Islamic State.

There are other ironies. On the larger Middle East stage the US and Iran, together with major European powers, are trying to hammer out a last-minute nuclear deal which would be President Obama's main foreign policy legacy, to Israeli opposition and frowns from the Sunni ruling kingdoms. Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, is vociferous in its opposition to President Assad and has been letting its border with Syria being liberally used as a funnel for Sunni extremists, until recently. It has also been seeking a no-fly zone (with Western military air patrolling) in Syria to house Syrian refugees. The Gulf monarchies led by Saudi Arabia are also looking sceptically at a US-Iran rapprochement.

Mr Kerry’s announcement has meant that the original plan to get rid of President Assad as soon as possible to form a new government with the support of the moderate opposition is nowhere near accomplishment even as the ruler has dug his heels in at the cost of horrendous deaths and destruction of many cities. Increasingly, the world looks askance at the scale of the carnage and the misery of the people in refugee camps and in broken homes. The Syrian tragedy is no longer a geopolitical issue but a great humanitarian tragedy.

Yet there is no hiding the larger role of the US-Iranian dialogue now nearing its make or break point. Iran, with its influence in Damascus, can certainly help smooth the proposed American outreach to President Assad. Apart from the apoplectic reaction of Israel, it remains to be seen how the Sunni Gulf monarchies will react, with speculation growing that Saudi Arabia might borrow from Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. If the framework deal does go through, the schedule is to wrap up the final deal  by the end of June this year.

Judging by the scale of the disasters in the Middle East, the region is on the boil. Apart from the Syrian disaster, the spectacular failure of the Arab Spring, apart from where it started in Tunisia, has led to a reversion to regimes of military men or warlords. In Egypt, a new military man is in command. Libya is little more than tribal and military conglomerations seeking power, In Yemen, the minority Houthis, a Shia sect, is dominating the scene and with Saudi air strikes on Houthis, we might be at the beginning of a wider regional proxy war. Bahrain remains on edge because a minority Sunni monarchy is ruling a predominantly Shia country.

Indeed, a singular irony is that the mood in Egypt varies between despair and hope for stability. At an international conference hosted by Egypt, President el-Sisi was unveiling the mega project of a new capital for the country not too far from Cairo.

Yet the Syrian civil war grabs the attention of the world for the scale of the tragedy, the deep suffering of the people and a spectacle we had thought had ended with the last World War outside the African continent. The fact that such a tragedy exists at a time relations between the West led by the US and Russia are at their lowest end is a sobering thought. One has to be grateful for small mercies. The fact that Mr Kerry has given a new signal to President Assad, obviously welcomed by Damascus and opposed by Turkey, among others, can set in motion a new process that could conceivably bring the tragic civil war to an end.

How long the process of a compromise will take is anyone's guess, but if the two sides can begin to talk, leaving the more contentious issues for the present, they can start the long march to sanity in a region sorely in need of healing.