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With Brahimi’s Exit, What Becomes of the Peace Process?

The U.N.’s Syria envoy has resigned, leaving doubts about the continuation of efforts for a negotiated peace in the country.

Written by Karen Leigh Published on Read time Approx. 4 minutes

On Tuesday, Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.’s special envoy to Syria and mediator of the Geneva I and Geneva II peace talks, officially resigned his post, citing frustration with the country’s ongoing stalemate and the international community’s inability to make a difference.

“It’s not very pleasant for me. It’s very sad that I leave this position and leave Syria behind in such a bad state,” he said, after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced the departure. “Everybody who has responsibility and an influence in the situation has to remember that the question is, How many more dead? How much more destruction is there going to be before Syria becomes again the Syria we have known?”

Brahimi is the second diplomat to resign the post since the start of the conflict; Kofi Annan left in 2012 after just six months on the job. The announcement has led to questions about the future of an internationally negotiated peace process, as laid out by the Geneva plan, and as to who, if anyone, will replace Brahimi.

“It’s a pretty damning indictment of the U.N. Security Council that the prospects for a political settlement look worse after three years of U.N. effort than they did earlier,” says Steven Heydemann, vice president of Applied Research on Conflict at Washington’s U.S. Institute of Peace.

We asked Heydemann and Ayham Kamel, Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group, to weigh in.

Syria Deeply: What is the future of the peace process without Brahimi taking the lead?

Ayham Kamel: I definitely think that Geneva I is dead, and so is Geneva II. So we have two processes that have been structured to fit the balance of power (at a specific time) between the regime and the rebels, and they are both unlikely to be implemented any time in the future.

It’s very difficult for me to imagine that at this point, anyone is interested in a peace process like this. Three years into the conflict, I think the international community has reached a point of fatigue. Discussing, mediating or paying attention to Syria is a liability. It’s a really lose cannon no one wants to deal with.

Steven Heydemann: The Brahimi resignation makes explicit what we’ve all known for some time: there are no prospects for any kind of meaningful political process, certainly in the near term, and perhaps longer. Brahimi said earlier this year that if Bashar went to elections it would mean the end of the political process, and he’s now acted in keeping with that statement.

What happens to the Geneva Protocol of June 2012 is an interesting question. Is it dead? As a practical too, most likely. But as a set of underlying principles, it remains the only framework to have secured the approval of the U.N.Security Council (UNSC), and this is likely to keep it alive. There is no alternative, none is likely given how badly Russian-Western relations have deteriorated, and the principles themselves are sound. So I see it as more likely than not that Geneva will remain a reference in principle.

Kamel: This is less an issue of Brahimi as a mediator, because I think he has reached out in a pretty effective way between the government and the opposition, and technically he had the tools and was competent. But the reality of what was happening on the ground in Syria made it very difficult for him to sell the regime on the idea that it should hand over power. At the time of Geneva II, the regime was advancing, and so it was reluctant to hand over anything at that time. So the regime’s inability to cooperate or accept compromise is reflected in its belief that it’s moving forward, it can win, and it doesn’t need to hand anything over to the mediator.

Syria Deeply: Who could replace him?

Heydemann: Whether Ban Ki-moon appoints a successor, how long it takes for him to do so, and at what level, will be meaningful in assessing how the lead powers in the UNSC view the political landscape. It may well be that the UNSC will want a successor in place as a symbol of its commitment to a political solution of the Syrian crisis, in effect, as a placeholder to give the U.N. member states political cover and to obscure their failure to do anything meaningful on Syria. I have not heard anything concerning the future of the “dual envoy” arrangement or whether the Arab League would want to remain associated with an envoy in the future.

Kamel: The next person who takes Brahimi’s post will be someone who is not necessarily aiming to end the conflict, but aiming to freeze it, or to prevent further escalation. He or she will be looking to mediate more on a humanitarian level. I don’t think the time is right for another Geneva convention to succeed; at this time, the regime wouldn’t accept it, and the opposition is not ready. The stars are just not aligned for Geneva III.

Syria Deeply: Was this resignation expected?

Kamel: Brahimi has been talking to a few people for the past month or two, people that he trusts, about resigning. It’s not necessarily because of the lack of progress in Geneva, but because of the fact that there is nothing that could emerge in the near future that could make it easier for him to implement [peace]. He cannot implement the Geneva II accord in the current environment. The military advances Assad has made will make it difficult for any negotiator to get him to share power.

Geneva I was all about a handover of power, Geneva II was all about sharing power and the next mediator will prepare for Geneva III by focusing on the conflict’s humanitarian dimensions, rather than structuring a grand bargain.

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