I have always been enthusiastic in my support for peace negotiations. All too often, such negotiations have been neglected in internal and international conflicts. But it is clear that the international conference on Syria, which held its first meeting in Vienna on 30 October, is not capable of delivering any peace negotiations, and the Obama administration knew this perfectly well from the start. The US administration has been touting the fact that Iran was invited to participate in the meeting, unlike at the previous United Nations-sponsored gathering on Syria in January and February 2014. That unfortunate conference excluded Iran at the insistence of the United States and its Sunni Arab allies, even though several states without the slightest capacity to contribute anything to a peace settlement, including the Vatican, were among the 40 non-Syrian invited participants. Iran's participation in the Vienna Conference represents a positive step. Nevertheless, the conference was marked by an even more fundamental absurdity: none of the Syrian parties to the conflict were invited. The 2014 talks at least had representatives of the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and some of the armed opposition. The obvious implication of that decision is that the external patrons of the Syrian parties, especially Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, are now expected to move towards the outline of a settlement and then use their clout with their clients to force the acceptance of the deal. The idea of leaping over the Syrian parties to the conflict by having an outside power negotiate a peace agreement on behalf of its clients is perfectly logical in the abstract. The classic case of such an arrangement was the US negotiation of the Paris Agreement with the North Vietnamese in January 1973 to end the war in Vietnam. The US-backed regime in South Vietnam was totally dependent on US assistance, and the weight of the US military ensured it would be forced to accept the arrangement. But it should also be noted that the arrangement did not end the war. The South Vietnam regime was unwilling to abide by either a ceasefire or a political settlement, and the war continued for two more years before a major North Vietnamese offensive ended it in 1975. Even more important, in regard to the applicability of this model to the Syrian conflict, is the stark difference between the US interest in negotiating over the heads of its Vietnamese client and the Iranian and Russian interest in regard to the Syrian government. The United States was negotiating to get out of a war of choice that it started in the mistaken belief that its power guaranteed it control of the situation, but which it was forced to end as a result of domestic political pressure. Iran, on the other hand, is fighting a war in Syria that it regards as vital to its security. Russia's political and security interests in Syria may be less clear-cut, but it also has no incentive to agree to a settlement that would risk a victory for terrorism. The prospect of delivering the anti-Al-Assad forces to a settlement is even bleaker. If the US-supported opposition forces facing the Syrian regime and its foreign allies had enough power to threaten the regime this might be an objective basis for peace negotiations. The Obama administration has tried to create the impression that the “moderate” forces in Syria, meaning those that are willing to work with the United States, are the primary military opposition to the Al-Assad regime. In reality, however, these “moderate” forces have either been absorbed by, or become allied with, the jihadists of Al-Nusra Front and its affiliates. This dramatic shift in the nature of the armed opposition to the Al-Assad regime became apparent in September 2013. This was when the three major “moderate” Islamist brigades unexpectedly joined forces with Al-Nusra Front in opposition to the Syrian National Coalition, which was formed in Doha in November 2012 under pressure from the United States and its Gulf allies. The shift toward the jihadist domination of the war against the Al-Assad regime accelerated between November 2014 and March 2015 when the Syrian Revolutionaries Front and the Harakat Al-Hazm groups, the two main rebel groups which had been getting weapons from the CIA and the Saudis, were attacked and mostly absorbed by Al-Nusra Front. The shift has obvious implications for the possibility of a negotiated settlement. At the Geneva II Conference on Syria in January 2014, organised by United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the only opposition groups at the table were those represented by the US-supported Syrian National Coalition, which no one took seriously as representing a military threat to the regime. Missing from the conference were the groups that did represent such a threat: Islamic State (IS) group, the Al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, Al-Nusra Front and its allies. But neither IS nor Al-Nusra Front-led Islamists were interested in a peace conference. The military head of the Islamic Front, which is dominated by a close ally of Al-Nusra, Ahrar Al-Sham, declared that he would consider participation by any rebel forces in the peace talks as “treason”. The Obama administration has said the Vienna Conference to result in a “road map” for a transition of power in Syria. The administration has made it clear, moreover, that it wants to preserve institutions of the Syrian state, including its military structure. But both IS and the Al-Qaeda-led coalition are sectarian Sunni extremist organisations that have not hidden their intentions to replace the Al-Assad regime with an Islamic state that has no vestiges of the existing state institutions. Because of this, the Al-Assad regime obviously has no incentive to even hint at any flexibility on the demand for the president's departure from Syria: it knows there is no possibility of a ceasefire or settlement with IS and Al-Nusra Front. Similarly, neither the Russians nor the Iranians are likely to force Al-Assad's hand on the issue merely to negotiate with the weakest element in the armed opposition. The Obama administration's policy-makers nevertheless appear determined not to allow such unpleasant realities to interfere with their propaganda line on Syria, which is that it is up to Russia and Iran to take care of the problem by somehow wringing concessions from the Al-Assad regime. “The way to end the war is to ask Al-Assad to help with a transition to a new government,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview with a Kazakh TV channel a few days after the Vienna Conference had convened. He added that Russia had failed to do this and, instead, “is there to simply support the Al-Assad regime.” Kerry went on to say, “The opposition will not stop fighting Al-Assad.” It is doubtful that Kerry mistakes such a patently propagandistic position for the much more intractable Syrian political-military reality. But it is not politically convenient to acknowledge that reality. That would invite unwanted questions about the US administration's decision in 2011 to align its policy with the Syria hawks in Riyadh, Doha and Istanbul who were so bent on regime change in Syria that they were not only indifferent to the jihadist buildup in the country but also saw it as a useful tool for getting rid of Al-Assad. Now the price of Obama's fateful political-diplomatic strategy is a sham peace conference that is misleading the rest of the world about the lack of any realistic solutions to the war. The writer is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.
