With grinding and bloody conflicts continuing in Yemen, Libya and Syria, the prospect of negotiating an end to the violence seems meagre. But in each case, talks are under way to avoid each country’s fate being determined purely by military might.
It needs to be acknowledged that in each country, the combination of previous experience and recent events leaves little room for optimism. Even as talks about Yemen's future got underway in Switzerland, the Houthis have been accused of breaching the ceasefire on around 150 occasions. In Libya, the rival governments based in Tobruk and Tripoli have delayed signing a UN-brokered agreement to form a national unity government. In Syria, early reports from US-Russian talks suggested that president Bashar Al Assad might remain in power – a position unlikely to be acceptable to any Syrian opposition group.
However, a cautious sense of optimism has to prevail if talks are to have any chance of success. Other seemingly intractable conflicts – such as the Lebanese civil war or the religious strife that blighted Northern Ireland – have found political solutions after years of prolonged and savage violence.
One must also consider the alternative to negotiating an end to the violence: a long and bloody fight that will end with each country in ruins, its institutions destroyed and most of the millions of innocent civilians caught in the middle having either fled or been killed. These are exactly the conditions in which extremist groups such as ISIL tend to emerge.
The only positive aspect to ISIL’s presence in all three countries – and particularly Yemen and Libya, where it is still establishing its presence – is that it creates a powerful incentive to the rival parties to find a solution sooner rather than later, before it can become more entrenched.
Just as the only alternative to negotiations is a continuing cycle of violence, finding a political solution in Yemen, Libya and Syria will be the way to stop each one falling into the hands of evil.
