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So Now What? Breaking Down The Syrian Peace Talks

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, flanked by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, gavels open the Geneva II conference in Montreux, Switzerland, on January 22, 2014.
U.S. Department of State
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Flickr Creative Commons

A United Nations mediator announced Friday a Syrian government delegation and the Western-backed opposition will meet Saturday “in the same room.”

Joshua Landis, the author of the widely-read blog Syria Comment and the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, says this week’s peace conference in Switzerland shows both sides understand there has to be a political solution.

“If they thought they could win militarily, they wouldn’t have gone to Geneva,” Landis says. “The opposition still hopes the United States is going to get rid of Assad for them at some level, and the Syrians still hope that Russia is going to come through, and they’re going to be able to conquer the country.”

Geneva II Conference Gets Underway in Switzerland.
Credit U.S. Department of State / Flickr Creative Commons
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Flickr Creative Commons
The Geneva II Conference Gets Underway in Switzerland.

Secretary of State John Kerry opened the talks by saying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should step down, despite the Syrian delegation saying Assad would run for re-election later this year.

“We have diplomacy, and that’s what Kerry is trying to work on, but nobody can figure it out,” Landis says. “It’s a mystery how he can say that Assad has to step down without sending F-16s to Syria.”

Landis says a larger question will be how external players, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, using Syria as a proxy settle their differences.

“Most of the money and arms going into Syria are coming from these two actors,” Landis says. “Until they sit down and begin to agree on what’s acceptable to them in Syria, their clients are going to have a hard time sitting down and agreeing.”

So what can the two sides get out of this?

“Greater movement for aid workers, and perhaps some ceasefires,” Landis says. “The problem is once you begin negotiating a ceasefire, if you leave Assad in place, you’re partitioning Syria, and ‘partition’ is the word that nobody wants to use.”

Landis says most wars only end when sides recognize they can’t conquer their enemy, but with battle lines clearly drawn, the likely stalemate in Geneva shows Syria isn’t there yet.

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Brian Hardzinski is from Flower Mound, Texas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. He began his career at KGOU as a student intern, joining KGOU full time in 2009 as Operations and Public Service Announcement Director. He began regularly hosting Morning Edition in 2014, and became the station's first Digital News Editor in 2015-16. Brian’s work at KGOU has been honored by Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRNDI), the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters, the Oklahoma Associated Press Broadcasters, and local and regional chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists. Brian enjoys competing in triathlons, distance running, playing tennis, and entertaining his rambunctious Boston Terrier, Bucky.
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