Negotiating a political solution
The
Geneva
negotiations of January 2014 lasted two weeks and failed to address the two key
items on the agenda: fighting jihadism and
establishing a transitional governing body. The Syrian regime’s
delegation refused to discuss any
political change and gave exclusive priority to the
anti-terror fight, while the opposition delegation remained committed to the June 2012 Geneva
text that
a transitional political actor should be established
before the fight against extremists can be waged effectively.
Assad’s fate was the elephant in the
room. It was clear that the regime’s delegation had no mandate to discuss
anything beyond “fighting terrorists”, which is the official line that
Assad has clung to for four years. One year later the fight against OIS has become a global priority. While the
Syrian opposition acknowledges this reality, it sees the two problems as
inextricably linked. Thus a negotiation that
starts off on
two
parallel tracks is a valid proposition.
Idlib, Syria. Emma Suleiman/Demotix. All rights reserved.
Many
in the opposition have come to understand that concessions will be needed
not
to save Assad
but for
the sake of ensuring a safe future for the Alawite community. There are
many indications that the Alawite community is living out a tragedy, that the
death toll among its male youth is intolerable, and that it lives in fear and
isolation, convinced that it has no other choice but to fight for its survival.
The
close surveillance and crippling fear it experiences have effectively
deterred members of the regime from engaging in meaningful contacts with the opposition. In order to
secure the participation of
influential figures from the
regime any negotiations will have to be
official and Assad will have to be forced by his allies to allow it according to an agreed
agenda.
Given
the complexity of the issues and the failures of past attempts, a
negotiation process will necessarily take time. It should be convened without
any publicity and held in a safe space where options can be discussed and ideas
tested without risk to their proponents.
A
strong mediator and influential deal broker will be required.
Thus a renewed Russian initiative would
certainly be welcome, provided the Geneva
document remains the framework of reference for the negotiation. Once they are
engaged in the process, the parties might consider trade-offs and
possible changes to the Geneva parameters, but not before.
It
will be important to send out a clear message to all parties—and especially the fighters on both sides—that a process is
starting which enjoys strong
international support and that they may benefit from if they support it. This
should help discipline the opposition and lay out options for the settlement.
Opposition
representation
The
divisions within the Syrian opposition have been a major source of frustration
for Syrians and non-Syrians alike. Some
are due to ideological differences, others to divergent views on strategy, but many
result from parochial, partisan rivalries, and
a lack of experience in organising collective action.
The
Syrian National Coalition (SNC) has never risen to the level of
an organised front and is riven by regional influences
that play on personal ambitions. The smaller National Coordination Commission
for National Democratic Change (NCCDC) is believed to have influence within the
silent opposition inside Syria, but has hardly any
contact with armed groups on the
ground and is on the verge of breaking up.
These
divisions have undoubtedly served Assad’s discourse about the absence of an
alternative to himself. But while the opposition’s weaknesses are real, it is also the
absence of any operational strategy on the part of any combination of actors
that has compounded its ineffectiveness. No path has ever been planned that could have given a
sense of direction to the opposition (and probably parts of the loyalists camp) to mobilise either for military
action, to engage in a serious political process or to follow the legal path to
international justice.
The
meeting in Cairo in January 2015 of independent figures
and representatives from the two main opposition coalitions (the
SNC and NCCDC)—which issued a ten-point statement ahead of
the dialogue organised in Moscow—offers a promising model
on which the opposition intends to build. A possible next step could be to organise a broad national conference in which all movements and
parties, however small, are represented and
agree on a common platform. The existence of such a national conference
would
serve to protect the negotiating team from regional interferences and would
ensure the
minimal
political integrity of the process and the resulting
transitional institutions.
A
parallel effort would be to form a small team of experts with good negotiating
skills who would be involved in a
quiet negotiation process and would report back to the representatives of the national conference. These experts would not need to be representatives of any
one section of Syrian society. Their role would be to untangle the
various aspects of the conflict, agree on the sequencing of the negotiations and define compromise
options on the difficult issues.
If, however, the national conference fails to produce a
joint stance on negotiations, a de
facto opposition might result from the two processes
described above of building the stabilisation force, on the one hand, and developing the path of a
negotiation process, on the other hand.
These will operate as vetting processes in which only relevant figures
committed to the political solution will be retained.
Dealing
with Assad
That
Assad’s departure should not be a precondition is now accepted by the national coalition of the
opposition. In a document released in early February 2014, the coalition describes the
size, composition and roles of the transitional governing
body without mentioning Assad’s departure, signaling
that it understands and accepts the rules of a workable negotiation.
But there
is a difference between maintaining Assad and his system unchanged, on the one hand, and keeping
Assad in power for a given period of
time until his departure can be scheduled as part of a planned democratic
process based on constitutional mechanisms, on the other. The
latter opens the way for a political solution that may resemble the transition
plan for Yemen, while the former would amount to a return the status quo ante, in other words the absence of a settlement.
Getting
the sequence right:
the military and
security first
The
Assad system is best described as a securitocracy—a common model in the
Arab world with weak political institutions that serve as a façade for an all-powerful military and security
apparatus. Syria presents an added difficulty because the army and the
security agencies are intertwined. The obvious implication of this is that the solution
must start with the security sector.
The
deal on key points of agreement that begin to untangle
the conflict will need to be struck with key military, security and social
leaders from the Alawite community based on a
set of principles: firstly, a commitment by all stakeholders that a solution to the
sectarian problem will never be sought by force; and, secondly, an acknowledgement that the sectarian
concerns that characterise the conflict require special
arrangements to ensure the security of all Syrians. This does not imply that
the solution lies in power sharing on a sectarian basis. Special transitional
arrangements would be agreed between the
two negotiating parties that would guide the restructuring
of the security apparatus only.
The
first joint committees to be established should be the military and security
committees, whose task it will be to define the
rules for the restructuring of the army and security agencies; the merging of the
opposition forces with the regular army (the existence of a stabilisation force would facilitate this process); the decommissioning,
disarmament and reintegration programme and all other aspects
of security sector reform; and the priority areas for stabilisation force deployment, etc. Any sectarian considerations that are included should be
provisional and limited to the security sector.
This
in turn will make it possible to design the other (civil) institutions of the
transition (the constitution, the institutions of governance, the legislative system, local government, etc.) on the basis of equal
citizenship. Syrians (including many in the Alawite community) are strongly
opposed to power sharing on sectarian lines and do not want an Iraq-like
settlement where the removal of the
dictatorship led to the dismantling of the political entity.
In
the process of designing the plan for the transformation of the
security institutions, Syrian negotiators will need to carefully assess their capacities,
discuss the extent to which they will need outside assistance and define the
level of involvement of the international community that is needed to make an agreement
implementable. In particular, they will have to decide whether an international
peacekeeping force will be needed, as well as its mission and the geographic areas where
it will have to be deployed.
Withdrawal of foreign
forces
The
withdrawal of foreign forces is a critical aspect of any security arrangement. It includes defining a schedule for their withdrawal and negotiating modalities
and commitments by outside players. To the extent that
governments that support the opposition can
control what flows across their borders—in terms of money from the Gulf monarchies and
fighters from
Turkey—there are good reasons
to believe that a coherent US strategy led with determination will bring
these governments into line and resolve an important part of the problem.
As
for the forces fighting alongside the regime, Iran is the key interlocutor to
obtain the withdrawal of Hizbullah, Iraqi and other
Shia fighters. If it is to be a full partner in a solution to the Syrian
conflict, Tehran may find that
an opposition-led
government is willing to accommodate certain legitimate concerns, but Iran will also need to
commit not to support the creation of a Hizbullah-like force in Syria as this will mean a
form of occupation by proxy, which would clearly not bring back stability to
Syria.
Once
a plan exists to resolve the military and security issues, including the
withdrawal of foreign forces, it will become possible to address the other
aspects of a settlement. Chief among those are the following:
A constitutional
framework
A constitutional
framework is an essential part of the transition process, but it should be seen
as an instrument to implement a political compromise rather than the entry
point to a solution. This is
why the four point plan (a
mere declaration
rather) of spring 2014 proposed by the Iranian
government does
not seem applicable, as it suggests redefining the
prerogatives of the president and devolving more powers to the legislature, thus allowing Assad
to remain in power with diminished powers.
Several
research projects (e.g. USIP, 2012) have discussed the
various options for a constitution in the
transition period, including using the existing constitution of 2012 after
changing some of its problematic articles; reverting to the
constitution of 1950, which Syrians say
symbolises a democratic era in
the history of the country; or drafting a new
constitutional declaration that would symbolise a clear break with the
past.
Examples
of other post-conflict or post-dictatorship contexts suggest that the use of the
existing constitution to initiate the transition process has served to reassure
the governing authorities that some continuity is respected, while serious changes are
introduced to the text along the way, until a constituent assembly can draft a permanent
constitution.
It
will be interesting to see what political system Syrians eventually choose.
While some see the need for a strong president at the head of the executive as the
best option to bring back stability, others are wary of the past concentration
of power in the hands of one leader and call for a parliamentary system. All
agree that strong checks and balances on the powers of the president will be
necessary. The creation of a Higher Assembly (or a Senate) is also under discussion as a body that
would ensure better representation and guarantees for minorities.
Decentralisation
Decentralisation, while it appears
to be of a technical and administrative nature, is in essence a highly
political question. The opposition has gradually come to
acknowledge that the new aspirations and changes on the ground over the last
four years require a reorganisation of the governance
system and the distribution of power
that would retain the country and all its
citizens within its current boundaries.
To
reassure Kurds and encourage the moderates among them, the earlier the issue is
addressed the better. Negotiators will need to explore models of decentralisation and their
political, social, economic and security implications, so that a peace agreement contains
precise policy options for a peaceful reorganisation of the Syrian
system of governance that recognises the diversity of
Syrian society, the emergence of local councils as a healthy development and
the need to devolve power to the local level as an essential
part of democratisation.
Reconstruction and the
return of refugees
Reconstruction
and the return of refugees will require several years and massive foreign
assistance. It will need to be based on a sound distribution of responsibilities and funds among central government,
local governance structures, community-based structures and other civil society
organisations. Failing that,
the return of corruption, bad governance and marginalisation is a certainty.
Transitional justice
programme
A transitional justice
programme is a moral and political
necessity and should be placed at the core of any peace plan. But many
Syrians who wish to see the transition as a period to heal wounds rightly
believe that Syrian society cannot afford to implement a justice
programme any time soon.
Nevertheless, it is vital to formulate a plan for a comprehensive transitional
justice programme, most of which should
be scheduled for implementation at a later date when transitional institutions are in
place and security is guaranteed for all.
In
parallel, an amnesty deal should be made part of the negotiation process with criteria and mechanisms of accountability to be
agreed
between the parties. Although a comparison of numbers
shows the regime being responsible for an overwhelmingly higher level of crimes,
setting these criteria for both
sides of the conflict will provide a strong enough incentive for rebels to
accept the idea of amnesty out of fear of their own
fighters being prosecuted.
Stopping the
fighting
We
have deliberately left the question of a ceasefire out of our
analysis so far. This is not to suggest that a ceasefire would only occur after
agreeing on a full plan, nor that attempts at reaching a
freeze as proposed by the UN special envoy for Aleppo are not
useful. On the contrary, they
should be relentlessly pursued to stop the
suffering as soon as possible.
Experience
in many conflicts (and in Syria with the various failed attempts of the last four
years)
has
shown, however, that the parties tend to ignore or easily
violate a ceasefire as long as they do not see that a political
settlement is a serious possibility. Thus we consider that a ceasefire (whether partial or total)
will become possible as soon as a credible diplomatic process is under way.
Time
frame
It
is both difficult and necessary to define a time frame for the implementation
of all stages of a peace plan even before having an indication of the successful
completion of each step. However, the complications that will
inevitably arise should not be ignored or glossed over for the sake of
respecting a schedule, because this will lead to failure.
The process will need to draw on the lessons of the mistakes in the peace building
processes in Iraq, Yemen
and Libya, where
half-cooked measures, the lack of stabilisation
plans and flawed security arrangements came back to explode in the face of
those who had designed them.
Conclusion
The
challenge of a peace process may well represent a
more serious threat to Assad than the continuation of the conflict. If Assad’s
close aides and his community want him out of power, they will have the
opportunity to voice their position. If they continue to support him, it will be an
indication that the country needs more preparation before the head of the
system can be replaced.
But
for the positive dynamics of politics to play out, the Assad brothers, the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizbullah must be prevented from disrupting
or undermining the process. First and foremost, a peace plan must ensure that the regime and its
allied forces on the ground cease to hold exclusive control over the security
apparatus and that the different steps of
the process are arranged in the correct sequence.
After
experiencing mass crimes against humanity, Syrians certainly want justice, but they are willing to
forgive and turn the page on many horrors. They are therefore ready for many
compromises to save their country from collapse or partition.
They will not forget, but they can wait for
transitional justice if they know that it will come later, after a healing
period.
Among
opposition figures, many realise that they will have to
agree to a deal that does not satisfy all their aspirations. But
repeating publicly that Assad needs to stay in power otherwise there will be no
Syria is not likely to help. This rationale amounts to an endorsement of the
slogan launched by the most extremist figures of the regime (“Assad, or we will burn the
country”).
In
the meantime the conflict has gradually turned into a de facto occupation of the
country by OIS, on the one hand, and by Iran and the forces under its command, on the other. The Assad
that many countries want to hold on to as a necessary partner is
no more than the shadow of his former self and commands very little power to
either fight OIS or deliver
security.
It
is difficult to imagine that the insecurity generated by the Syrian situation
can be left without an adequate response. Without a coherent US-designed strategy, European
countries, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies find themselves facing threats that
Washington does not face. They have every reason to feel entitled to start a
crisis management process of their own, one which goes beyond the mere
containment of jihadis.
The full analysis was originally published by NOREF on 8 May 2015.