Peace in Syria?

Twenty nations, leagues of nations and national unions of nations, plus the UN, have signed the Statement of the International Syria Support Group meeting in Munich on February 11 & 12, 2016.  The statement calls for free egress for humanitarian aid, for the 'nationwide cessation of hostilities'  in the next week, under the aegis of a UN Committee chaired by the US and Russia - and for a new Constitution for Syria and a General Election in 18 months. Excluded from all this are the groups defined as terrorist by the UN.

This pocket World War is not over. But the unbelievable destruction of a nation and its people (half the population are displaced; a quarter are refugees and a fortieth - the equivalent of one and a half million in Britain - are already dead) has begun to create new and unbearable realities for the West. Since Russia took over Assad's war this moment was inevitable. Russian fire-power (7 ships, 65 bombers, 8 fighters 12 attack helicopters, 400 ground troops, one huge military base) has tipped the balance towards the Assad regime. Aleppo, the main city of the original opposition, is about to fall and still may do so. It has forced the hand of the western powers.

The reason why the Support Group face an uphill struggle is that while Putin can deliver Assad, the US and its hangers on cannot deliver all the Syrian opposition, let alone the wider forces that are conducting their own wars within the Syrian arena. Like all major wars, the Syrian war contains within it liberation struggles, cultural and religious battles, as well as geo-political power struggles. And while some of these wars, like the war of ISIS against all, and the Kurdish war for national survival against Assad, Turkey and ISIS, are plain to see - others, for example between different factions of the opposition, are more submerged. However, despite delays and disputes and further death and destruction, the ISSG agreement is a new medium term compromise and will form the road map for for the World's powers and that will of itself create a certain and steady pressure on unfolding events in Syria.

The US led West had had to drop any preconditions about Assad's regime. It seems the US is not going to be able to use an uprising to get a new client in the region. And this will be promoted in the West as the growing and increasingly dangerous strength of Putin's Russia. Republican candidate Trump will want to declare war on Russia - and Democratic candidate Clinton will add her denunciation of Obama's weak foreign policy. In Britain, fear and loathing of the old enemy will be ramped up by Trident lovers. Nevertheless, and without the slightest illusion in Putin's 'Great Power' objectives, it is Russian intervention that has forced the West to drop its imperial hopes in Syria for the time being and concentrate instead on consolidating an international crusade against ISIS.

Taken overall of course the various international military campaigns in Syria, initiated by the West, have been an unmitigated disaster for the Syrian people. They have magnified the initial brutalities of the Assad regime against the protesters a hundred fold. They have turned large parts of the country into a 'no mans land' and the Syrian skies into a playground for lethal military hi-tech. The hand-wringing terminology and carefully moulded paragraphs in the ISSG text about Humanitarian Aid are simply breathtaking hypocrisy in that regard. Nevertheless, the weakness of Western imperialism encountering new resistance from an emboldened Russia and unable to smother and choke the progressive and reactionary movements emerging across the whole region, has had to give way. The US will wriggle and squirm to find new means to advance against its obstacles, however the current deadlock between the powers who today loom over Syria and its people opens a small window of hope for Syrians that a space may yet emerge within which their own national and political wishes might visible again.