Abstract
This chapter examines how changes in the types of conflicts, the variable availability of mediators, and the international environment affect current mediation. In so doing it looks at external forces that support or undermine a nascent peace process; the complications associated with such issues as legitimacy, state capacity, perception, and the internationalization of civil/regional conflicts, as well as the number, quality, and coherence of institutions willing to undertake a mediation effort. This chapter analyzes these three challenges in the context of the Syrian conflict and explores how they affected the attempts to bring parties to the Syrian conflict to the negotiating table from March 2012 through December 2013. The chapter concludes with the argument that addressing the supply challenge through the effective coordination of different mediating bodies delivers a key component but notes that a mediation’s external, geopolitical environment will have a critical—and possibly negative—impact on even the best resourced mediation effort.
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Notes
- 1.
One dataset estimates that between the end of World War II and 1995, there have been over 1,900 international mediation attempts (Bercovitch 1999).
- 2.
The literature ranges from the scholarly (see for instance the many books by I. William Zartman, Jacob Bercovitch, and others) to practitioner oriented (i.e., the publications by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and the European Centre for Policy Development Management).
- 3.
These three mediation challenges are elaborated upon in Crocker et al. 2015.
- 4.
In an infamous video recorded in May 2013, a commander from the Farouk Brigade carved the heart and liver from a dead pro-Assad fighter, and then declared to the camera, “I swear to God, soldiers of Bashar [al-Assad], you dogs—we will eat your heart and livers!…Oh my heroes of Baba Amr [Homs], you slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them!” (Human Rights Watch 2013a).
- 5.
During the spring of 2012, there were reasons for both the Assad government and the opposition to believe that momentum was on their side: the Syrian government still had a clear advantage in terms of armed force, while the opposition had the Libyan example, which offered the hope of an armed intervention by one or more outside actors. This created a situation where negotiating was not necessarily the most attractive option, since each side could hold out hope that by continuing to fight, the scales would tip in their favor. So while the government or the opposition may have tentatively agreed to participate in a mediation process, each side still had an incentive to defect from the mediation process and continue to fight.
- 6.
Russia’s refusal to help tip the scales in favor of the Syrian opposition was compounded by the opposition’s own hard-line position in summer 2012. As the Annan plan floundered, the Syrian National Council (SNC) made it clear that “no dialogue with the ruling regime is possible. We can only discuss how to move on to a different political system” (Agence France-Presse 2012a). Instead, the SNC endorsed the Arab League’s plan which called for Assad to relinquish power to a transitional government (RIA Novosti 2012a; United Nations Security Council 2012a). The SNC also refused to entertain the notion of Assad stepping down in return for immunity from prosecution, since “he has his hands stained with the blood of Syrians” (Interfax 2012). In June 2012, the National Coalition also called for “a resolution under Chapter VII, which allows for the use of all legitimate means, coercive means, embargo on arms, as well as the use of force to oblige the regime to comply” (Agence France-Presse 2012d). The SNC was also vocal in rejecting the Action Group’s June 30 Geneva communiqué, including its reiteration of support for Kofi Annan’s SPPP. Since the Geneva communiqué did not explicitly exclude Assad or members of the Ba’ath regime from participating in the proposed transitional process or any postwar government, the SNC criticized it as ambiguous, while Haitham al-Maleh, a prominent regime critic, described the agreement as a “farce” (Karam 2012). Finally, the SNC rejected any possibility of a regime figure leading the transitional government (Agence France-Presse 2012c).
- 7.
Former Belgian PM and European Parliamentarian Guy Verhofstadt was particularly pointed in his criticism of EU policy in 2011, when he remarked that EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, would rely on the opinions of all 27 EU foreign ministers, rather than decisively leading on policy matters (De Redactie 2011). In the face of these criticisms, it is important to note that EU diplomacy and policy was at least consistent. This policy rested on two planks: first, economic sanctions on Syria and, second, the repeated insistence that all parties halt the violence in Syria and begin fashioning a negotiated transition to a new government. What the EU could (or would) offer to bring about a cessation in violence was never broached. A common refrain from the EU throughout 2012 was that the EU has been ready to provide support to any peace initiative, once it begins (Ashton 2012). However, throughout this period there was no peace process for the EU to support or facilitate.
- 8.
This same logic helped drive US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to broker the deal with the Syrian government to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and destroy its chemical weapons arsenal under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). While the Ghouta attacks forced the White House to react, given President Obama’s earlier vows that the use of chemical weapons would constitute a “red line” that would prompt American action, the Ghouta attack also brought greater coherence to the international environment by focusing the United States and Russia on a common point of concern.
The tripartite deal to have Syria eliminate its chemical weapons was a compromise that worked for three principal reasons. First, there were only four parties involved: the Syrian government, the US, Russia, and the OPCW. The fractious international environment that was making mediating an end to the war difficult simply did not apply for the chemical weapons issue. The Syrian opposition, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Hezbollah, and the like could all be bypassed and did not need to be consulted. This meant, secondly, that the dynamics of the conflict—namely, the sectarian nature and Assad’s lack of legitimacy—did not matter. Instead, there was a severe disagreement between the United States and Syria about whether Syria would be allowed to use chemical weapons. This was not an existential disagreement, but a political one. This opened up the range of mutually acceptable potential solutions. Finally, there was no lack of mediators in this case. Since both Russia and the United States had a clear interest in containing the violence in Syria and trying to manage it down to some acceptable level, both had clear motives to do something about Syria’s chemical weapons.
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Crocker, C.A., Hampson, F.O., Aall, P., Palamar, S. (2015). Why Is Mediation So Hard? The Case of Syria. In: Galluccio, M. (eds) Handbook of International Negotiation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10687-8_11
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