External intervention deprives Syria of peace prospects

External intervention deprives Syria of peace prospects

The two strongest military powers in the world pressed the ‘pause’ button together. If the guns will be silent for a week in the Syrian civil war, then Moscow and Washington can start cooperation in the fight against the Islamists and, finally, will help the country to find a common political future after five years of atrocities, hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of people for whom even an unknown future as a refugee seemed safer than being at home during the war.

The Geneva Accord between the US and Russia, in theory, was supposed to be good news for Syria. Who, apart from the mighty US, could pressure strongly enough the fractured opposition to restrain it, while its soldiers do not trust the Assad regime? What, apart from the clear words of Vladimir Putin, could keep the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad from further bombing of the residential blocks, hospitals and markets controlled by the rebels, with the use of cluster bombs and in some cases even chemical weapons?

But many experts are skeptical regarding the imminent onset of peace in Syria. The first, even the slightest rash act of one of the lower-level actors can destroy the fragile peace structure of the world powers. Moreover, the basic structure of the civil war indicates that the slaughter will continue for a very long time. An unbiased statistical analysis of civil wars of the past decades dispels hope. The ‘pause’ button was pressed by the two world powers, but not by the direct sides of the civil war in Syria. Conflict management proves the existence of a simple, but, unfortunately, very effective link: as soon as there is an interference in external conflicts, they tighten significantly. Most of these conflicts are not terminated voluntarily by the participants in the war, but when the morale and resources of one or all factions are fully depleted.

In the case of Syria, this has not happened. On the contrary, more and more weapons and fighters have been flooding into the country as long as it does not become one big battlefield. When the regime was on the defensive in 2012, Iran intervened. As a counterbalance to Iran the Persian Gulf countries sent more weapons to the rebels. A little later the United States intervened in the conflict. Since 2015 Russia has been active in Syria, both in the air and on land. Since August of this year Turkey has also started to conduct its own game in Syria. The sub-state group Hezbollah from Lebanon and Shiite groups from Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as individuals from all over the world fighting for the jihadists or the Kurdish side, should also be added to the above-mentioned states. The only common interest shared by absolutely everyone is that no one wants to leave the field as the losing party. And even if the present stalemate doesn’t bring victory to anyone, it is much better than a defeat.

Even if the truce lasts, and it leads to peace negotiations, statistics again do not provide grounds for much hope. In civil wars peace negotiations lead to a stable peace in two in three cases. But if  several groups were fighting against each other, only one quarter of the cases have been successful: a lot of different interests made it impossible to find a consensus. In the Syrian case it isn't even barely possible to determine accurately the number of parties in the conflict.

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