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Executive Summary for January 30th

To give you an overview of the latest news, we’ve organized the latest Syrian developments in a curated summary.

Published on Jan. 30, 2014 Read time Approx. 4 minutes

Movement Seen in Syria Talks 

The New York Times reports that “after five days of deadlock and dispute in the Syrian peace talks, opposition negotiators on Wednesday seized on hints of government willingness to discuss political transition as evidence of progress.” But mediators expressed caution.

“At the end of a day in which he met the delegations together and separately, the mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, the special United Nations envoy for the Syria conflict, expressed satisfaction over their willingness to talk to each other. At the same time, he acknowledged, ‘the gap between them is quite large.’

“Mr. Brahimi instead expressed hope that the next round of talks, if and when they resume, would be more productive. A date will be discussed Friday, he said. An opposition spokesman, Louay Safi, sounded more optimistic. He reported “a positive step forward” because the government had for the first time agreed to negotiate within the framework of the communiqué issued at the end of the first Geneva peace conference in June 2012. The agreement calls for the formation of a transitional government with full executive powers.”

With Peace Talks, Syrian Stalemate is Relocated to Geneva

Liz Sly of the Washington Post observes tensions between opposing parties in Geneva.

“The rival delegations enter and leave the room through separate doors. They don’t shake hands. They avoid eye contact and address one another only through their U.N. mediator to avoid replicating the bitterness of the battlefield in this first-ever effort to negotiate an end to Syria’s war,” she writes.

“That the delegations have communicated at all in the past five days can be counted as an achievement, diplomats say, given the hatreds engendered by a conflict that escalated from protests to shelling, ballistic missiles, beheadings and chemical weapons.

“So far, however, the brief encounters here have yielded little beyond reminders of the breadth of the divide between those seeking to end the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and those whose declared goal is to preserve his power. It is as if the negotiations have merely relocated the bloody stalemate to the refined environment of Geneva, where the talks are taking place at the European headquarters of the United Nations.”

Syria Has Shipped Out Less Than Five Percent of Chemical Weapons

Reuters reports that the Syrian government “has given up less than five percent of its chemical weapons arsenal and will miss next week’s deadline to send all toxic agents abroad for destruction.

“The deliveries, in two shipments this month to the northern Syrian port of Latakia, totaled 4.1 percent of the roughly 1,300 tons of toxic agents reported by Damascus to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said the sources.

“‘It’s not enough and there is no sign of more,’ one source briefed on the situation said. The internationally backed operation, overseen by a joint OPCW-United Nations mission, is now six-eight weeks behind schedule. Damascus needs to show it is still serious about relinquishing its chemical weapons, the sources told Reuters.

Failure to eliminate its chemical weapons could expose Syria to sanctions, although these would have to be supported in the U.N. Security Council by Russia and China.”

Growing Concerns Over Returning European Jihadists

The Washington Post reports on the dangers posed by hundreds of European jihadists currently in Syria.

“British officials have expressed growing alarm in recent days over the possibility that returnees from the Syrian war, hardened and trained by their experiences in battle, will seek to carry out terrorist attacks. The head of Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism command said recently that it is ‘almost inevitable.’ That concern is matched by a fast-rising tally of arrests, with at least 14 Britons detained on charges related to travel to or from Syria this month, compared to a total of 24 last year.

“Security officials say the several hundred Britons who are known to have joined the fight in Syria eclipses the totals for either Afghanistan or Iraq — two other conflicts that attracted radicalized young fighters from the West but that were more difficult to reach. They also acknowledge that there could be many more fighters who have slipped into Syria undetected, given the relative ease of travel by air to Turkey and then over land into the war zone.”

But the New York Times paints a different picture, at least in the case of one social media-savvy Dutch jihadi.

“In an English-language interview broadcast Sunday on [the] program ‘Nieuwsuur,’ the Dutch jihadist said that he was fighting for an Islamic state and to liberate ‘the oppressed Syrian people,’ but firmly rejected the idea that he or the other foreign fighters he has been training in marksmanship have any interest in returning to their home countries to carry out terrorist attacks.

“’No, no,’ he said, ‘I came to Syria for Syria only. I didn’t come to Syria to learn how to make bombs, or this or that and to go back. That’s not the mentality many of these fighters here have.’”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team:

Reuters: Damascus Detainees Languish While Syria Envoys Talk

Reuters: Demolitions in Hama and Damascus Target Civilians

NY Times: Despite Decades of Enmity Israel Quietly Aids Syrian Civilians

Telegraph: Syria May Be Able to Produce Biological Weapons

Washington Post: Europeans are Flocking to the War in Syria. What Happens When They Come Home?

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