Wanted: The next Syrian envoy
UN and Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi had toyed with the thought
for a long time before the chief diplomat for Syria took the step and
announced his
resignation, effective at the end of May 2014.
“He has faced almost impossible odds with the Syrian nation, Middle
Eastern regions and the wider international community that have been
hopelessly divided in their approaches to ending the conflict,” UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said. “He has persevered with great
patience and skill because he knows that without efforts toward a new
Syria, the Syrian people will be condemned to further suffering.”
-snip-
“I think now is not the time to even think about some kind of diplomatic
solution until there seems to be a very fundamental shift,” Genevive
Abdo, Mideast expert at the Washington-based Stimson Center, told DW.
“The Syrian opposition is very discouraged.”
Several factors led to the current desperate situation, Abdo said,
including the disunity among the Syrian opposition that only served to
strengthen Assad’s belief that extremists would create chaos without his
regulative hand. The international community also made many mistakes in
dealing with the powers in the region, Abdo said; for instance, when
Iran was first invited to the most recent round of Geneva peace talks
and then disinvited again due to US pressure.
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