No end in sight to Assad’s atrocities

Beirut — As the conflict enters its sixth year, the embattled regime and the opposition are in Geneva for indirect peace talks hosted by United Nations peace envoy Staffan de Mistura. But the real solution, experts say, is in Russian and American hands. “The two great powers talk among themselves by phone or in meetings around the world. Then they inform their Syrian allies and de Mistura what they’ve decided,” says veteran opposition figure Haytham Manaa. “Then, Russia and the US give the regional powers the red lines they’re not supposed to cross. The US bans the Turks from a ground incursion in Syria. Russia does the same thing with Iran,” Manaa tells AFP. Syria’s conflict began on March 15, 2011 with a peaceful protest movement calling for President Bashar Al-Assad to step down. But the uprising turned violent after the government launched a brutal crackdown on dissent, and its key players became the various armed forces — regime, opposition, Kurdish. Russia and the United States have exerted their influence over opposing sides of the complex war to broker a landmark truce that has been partially holding since Feb. 27. “The US and Russia have taken command of, and have a monopoly over, the Syrian issue,” says Joseph Bahout, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. Bassel Salloukh, political science professor at the Lebanese American University of Beirut, agrees. “Indeed, what started as a non-violent movement demanding reforms metamorphosed into an overlapping domestic, regional, and international struggle over Syria,” Salloukh says. “The notion that we could have... changed the equation on the ground there was never true,” US President Barack Obama has told The Atlantic magazine reporter Jeffrey Goldberg. — AFP