Assad Resignation Not Up for Discussion in Geneva – Diplomats

[dipsydoodle]

Source: RIA Novosti

GENEVA, February 10 (RIA Novosti) – Syrian diplomats ruled out the possibility of discussing whether President Bashar Assad should resign, during the second round of international peace talks, which began in Geneva on Monday.

“Naturally, we are not going to discuss Assad’s resignation. This issue is not on the agenda, and has never been. Tell everyone who want to see him leave that they are just wasting our time,” Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Miqdad said.

The Syrian government and the opposition resumed UN-hosted talks in Geneva on Monday after a 10-day break.

The rival delegations are based in different halls and contact each other only with UN intermediaries and Arab league envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

A three-party meeting of diplomats from Russia, the United States and the UN will be held on the sidelines of the conference on Thursday.

Read more: http://en.ria.ru/world/20140210/187397850/Assad-Resignation-Not-Up-for-Discussion-in-Geneva--Diplomats.html

[pampango]

1. The only real question is whether what is good for the Syrian people up for discussuion.

Neither side should be saying (but both are, of course) that "Either I get everything that I want or no deal."

I understand Mr. Assad telling his delegation to rule out the possibility of him resigning. I assume he will play the "you are with me or the terrorists" card that he always plays, but I sense just a touch of self-interest in his insistence on his own continued rule.

Most dictators seem to believe that they are the only person in the country that can be an effective leader and that the country will cease to exist without their enlightened guidance. Something tells me that Syria existed before Bashar Assad (even before his father if you can believe that) and will exist after he is gone whether that is sooner or later. Unless Syria is a singularly stunted country, it is capable of producing other leaders who are not named Assad.

France survived the demise of their king; Germany the fall of the Kaiser and the Fuhrer; Tunisia the fall of Ben Ali; Chile the fall of Pinochet. Syria will survive Assad whether he realizes it or not.

[AngryAmish]

2. Assad thinks that the Alawites will all be killed if the rebels win

(Not that I support Assad - I hold no intelligent reason why any of the parties should rule).

The rebels have a saying - Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the graveyard. It looks like they are intent on that path. (Not that Assad and the Alawites are any better.) Assad thinks that if he goes his tribe will suffer genocide.

[pampango]

4. He and his father have certainly done their part by repressing majority Sunnis for decades.

The rebels have a saying ...

I did not realize that 'the rebels' were united enough to have coalesced behind one saying. If they can unify behind one saying, perhaps that can unify around other, more substantial things as well. Not a good sign for Mr. Assad.

Assad thinks that the Alawites will all be killed if the rebels win.

I don't recall Alawites being slaughtered by Sunnis before Assad's father became the dictator in 1970. Perhaps Assad now understands that 4 decades of repression has created a lot of ill will among Sunnis towards the ethnic group that he hails from. I wonder if, when he tells them "You have to back me or the Sunni terrorists will kill you all!", he goes on to explain why Sunnis may have more hostility towards Alawites now than they did 40 years ago?

Sunni Arabs are not inherently more violent than anyone else in the world. They are the majority in Turkey and Tunisia and have proven to be capable of leading peaceful representative governments. Can they react violently if repressed? Yes, but is the answer to that to keep repressing them to prevent the reaction or to stop the repression to eliminate the cause of a reaction?

[AngryAmish]

8. I won't pretend to know the correct path

You seem a lot more knowledgeable than I. It seems you support partition. If I had to choose (and thankfully no one is asking me) that seem a wise move.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. I'm not sure Syria would survive the fall of Assad.

It looks like the Kurds are already gone. We could end up with an Alawite/Christian rump state from Damascus to Latakia, with Sunnis running the rest of the country.

Remember how Yugoslavia held together once Tito was gone?

[pampango]

5. Yugoslavia did fall apart after Tito, but it has been replaced by smaller, more democratic

governments. I suspect the people that live there prefer the latter to life under the old unified, but repressive, Yugoslavia. Germany unified, Czechoslovakia split apart, the USSR fell apart, Scotland may secede from the UK. Changes in the map of countries can be bad, but it can also be good for real people. Countries exist for the good of the people, not the other way around.

I don't think you could credit Assad or his father with acting in a way that promoted inter-ethnic harmony leading to a cooperative representative government in Syria over the past 4 decades. I don't know how many of us would argue that the borders of the state of Syria (important as they are) are so important that the permanent repression of a majority of its citizens is justified.

[Comrade Grumpy]

6. A lot of people died in the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Remember the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II and all that.

And the Bosnians don't appear particularly happy today.

[pampango]

7. They certainly did. Almost all of that was from state repression and attempts to hold the state

together. Serbian forces in Bosnia were an unfortunate example of this ethnic cleansing in action. As bad as Bosnians may have it today, it is not anything like it was 20 years ago.

People in the newly independent countries, including Serbia and Bosnia, are better off and more democratically governed than they were 20 years ago. The atrocities were not committed, for the most part, by those fighting for independence but by those fighting against it.

[Xithras]

9. Syria has never been an effectively run nation.

Syria was created by the French after WW1. They reused the name "Syria" because it had been around a while, but most of the land in classical Syria belongs to modern Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and Egypt today. The nation we now call Syria was built out of the Ottoman Sanjaks (their rough equivalent of a states or provinces) of Zor, Aleppo, and Damascus. Combining the three into a single nation was the decision of a bunch of European diplomats.

The French effectively ruled it as a mandate from 1920 to 1941, including a brief period of Nazi rule via Vichy France during WW2. It was then run as an occupied nation by the British until 1946. Its democratic government only ran the nation for three years, until it was overthrown by a military coup in 1949. He was overthrown a few months later in another coup by a fellow officer. That dude lasted about a few month until yet another coup overthrew him in favor of another military officer. That guy lasted until 1954, when he ceded power to a civilian government. That government, which went through more than a dozen disbanded parliaments and multiple constitutions, only lasted four years, until the nation of Syria was disbanded and became part of the United Arab Republic (along with Egypt under Nasser) in 1958. That union lasted until yet another military coup in 1961 declared Syria an independent nation (technically, it was this event that created the nation we now call Syria). In 1966 the government created by THAT coup was overthrown by the Baathists and came under the dictator Jadid's rule until 1970. And finally, in 1970 one final coup put the Assad family into power.

Assad rule has ironically been the most stable period of Syrian history following the end of the Ottoman Empire. Whether the disparate peoples of modern Syria can actually come together to form a stable and long lasting nation without a dictator really is an unanswered question. It may yet be that the only way to make the nation stable is to break it up into the quasi-independent nations that existed before the French started mucking around with things.

[pampango]

10. Nice post. Thanks for all the information. n/t