The continuing Syrian peace talks in Vienna caused a strong reaction in regional Arabic newspapers over the past week. In the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, editor-in-chief Ghassan Charbel set the scene for the talks, writing “the Syrian map was laying on table, sick and soaked in blood. International and regional doctors had called it to Vienna”.
“The world could have abandoned Syria to self-destruction, were it not for two resounding issues. The first is ISIL, which harmed the opposition more than it harmed the regime of Bashar Al Assad. The second is the introduction of Russian jets, which has given the conflict a dangerous new international dimension,” he wrote.
The writer went on to describe the millions of refugees waiting in camps in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, while waves of Syrians have sought refuge in Europe. Large parts of Syria have transformed into training areas for suicide-bombers and extremists.
In other words, according to the writer, Syria has become a grave danger for the region and for the international community.
The world is unanimous in its Syria diagnosis: the patient suffers multiple cancers – terrorism, massacres and intervention. The only point of disagreement is the type of treatment and its phases. Some countries are actively participating in the conflict, while others have placed their own interests above the patient. How difficult it is to save a patient when the individual interests of the doctors diverge, argued Charbel.
“Syria’s tragedy is that its war is greater than the country itself and that any solution will reform the regional balance of power and draw a new regional order. The process will be lengthy and complex and more blood will be shed until the belligerents and their doctors let go of their stakes and illusions. The matter goes beyond the so-called Assad knot,” he noted.
Charbel concluded that “for the patient to swallow the medication prescribed in Vienna, a reconciliation between the principles of Geneva and local, regional and international developments must be achieved”.
In the Abu Dhabi-based Al Ittihad, the sister newspaper of The National, Abdel Wahhab Baderkhan pointed out that intelligence agents seldom make public disclosures, and when they do, their points contain clear data, analysis and provisions. This was a segway to describe recent statements about Syria from western intelligence services.
During the Intelligence Conference held in Washington last week the heads of US and French intelligence shed light on the quest for a political solution in Syria two days after the second round of peace talks in Vienna. Baderkhan remarked that Bernard Bajolet, head of the French secret services, clearly stipulated that “the Middle East that we know has gone and I doubt it will ever return” during the conference.
“The agent was not seeking sensationalism. He was simply reading the events in Syria and Iraq where political and social geography has been torn into pieces by civil war and terrorism. He did not hesitate to say that the two countries would never retrieve their previous borders.”
However, Baderkhan concluded, Mr Bajolet did not tackle one of the most important questions about the region: is this change limited to Syria and Iraq or will it spread throughout the region? A unified Syria was barely able to ensure the bare necessities of development. What will the future hold when the region breaks down into multiple statelets?
*Translated by Carla Mirza
cmirza@thenational.ae