Peace negotiation for Syria could restart

The pandemic slowed the fighting in Syria and this helped the two sides, the Damascus regime and the rebels, to start a resumption of peace negotiations to end a conflict that has been going on for more than nine years. The United Nations, through the current mediator, have announced a meeting in Geneva as soon as health conditions will allow it. This means that both sides intend to jointly resume the path of dialogue. This could also favor the resumption of the journey of the Syrian Constitutional Committee, the body made up of representatives of the Assad government, members who support the rebels and members of civil society, which must build the conditions for a potential electoral consultation. Currently an agreement between Russia and Turkey maintains the suspension of hostilities, which has been more or less maintained. The positions of Moscow and Ankara, with the first supporters of the Assad government and the second of the Islamic rebels, side by side with a view to containing the Kurdish forces, will be fundamental to understand how a possible path of peace can be developed. The actors in the field also include Iran and Hezbollah, the Syrian democratic forces, supported less and less intensely by the United States and the Kurdish population, which with its militias played a fundamental role against the Islamic State, but, which after abandoning US support, they moved closer to the Syrian regime, based on common interests against Turkey and its allied militias. The dream of a free and independent Kurdish state, frustrated by Washington’s change of attitude to keep within the Atlantic Alliance a member not as faithful as the Turkish country, ended. A resumption of the peace negotiations is also a hope for a population suffering from a very precarious health, hygiene and economic situation, even before the pandemic, whose victims reported, however, were only sixty-four. A further variable that will weigh on the development of the negotiations will be the relations that Moscow and Washington will want to establish on the subject. It must be remembered that the United Nations is reporting under its authority a negotiation, which had gone beyond its scope, replaced by the Astana negotiation process in Kazakhstan, wanted by Moscow and Tehran, in support of the regime and Ankara representing only a part of the rebels . The intent of the Astana negotiation was limited to maintaining the boundaries established by the position of the forces on the field, but without any political content capable of allowing a stable future structure of the Syrian country. That is, there was no legitimacy guaranteed only by the patronage of the United Nations. Certainly this is functional to Moscow’s concrete and practical interest in guiding the investments necessary for the reconstruction of the country through funds insured by Russia itself and from funding from international cooperation. Of course, the main political goal of the Kremlin is to allow Assad to maintain power, in the role, however, of Moscow’s subordinate in every sense and the economic means to pursue this goal must replace that guaranteed by the use of weapons, again better if with the approval of the United Nations. In any case, a peace on which it is legitimate to have doubts is better than the continuation of an already too long war; what is sorry is the role of the United Nations that comes to seal a state of affairs unwanted and not shared by the Glass Palace, the fearful and opportunistic American attitude and also not grateful to those who fought on the ground in its place. However the conclusion of the Syrian war goes, as long as it exists, it will not leave any improvements for the people of the country, nor for the international balance, nor for the spread of civil and democratic rights.