In comments just days ahead of the Astana peace talks, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister has announced that his government is opposed to the participation of either Saudi Arabia or Qatar in the talks, saying their attendance should be conditioned on them ending their support for “militancy.”
That opposition seems very much beside the point, as Turkey announced both nations had been invited weeks ago, and they likely are not going to let the Syrian government veto invitations at the last minute like this, much as other nations’ recent comments on attendees haven’t been taken seriously.
In addition to the ceasefire’s three sponsors, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, officials had initially said Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Qatar would be invited. This was expanded to include the United States, with the invite coming to the incoming Trump Administration. Iran expressed opposition to US involvement earlier this week.
“Moderate” rebel factions are also being invited to the talks, and they have agreed to attend, with the leader of the rebel delegation a top figure in Jaish al-Islam. Neither ISIS nor the Nusra Front is invited, and at Turkey’s behest no Kurdish faction will be allowed to participate either.
Is there anyone out there in the ether who can give me a rational explanation of why Turkey is dictating to the Syrian government who may or may not attend a meeting for the purpose of ending a civil war in Syria? Or has rationality become obsolete in our new post-fact world?
It would be because Saudi are now US clients and would be doing the bidding of the US. And there’s little doubt that the US will be erecting all the roadblocks it can to prevent the talks from succeeding.
This is the status quo for the US and it’s not going to change overnight as Trump steps in. In fact, it won’t change a bit because after Trump is briefed on the gameplan, he will be onside completely.
All the election talk was from a position of complete ignorance! i though this should be mentioned in case anybody had some wild ideas of Trump putting US negotiators on the side of a successful peace deal for Syria.
luv from Canada.
p.s. hope you like it but if not find an American to spin it better for ya!
While the ideal notion of any peace process is to get all invested factions to the table to talk instead of fight, nearly every invested party strongly prefers that at least one other not be included. Yet no faction fully believes in representative democracy, including the US. In practical terms hope for diplomacy to achieve some kind of peace in this situation rests on enough factions agreeing on a way forward that can be quickly imposed on the excluded factions. That could happen fairly quickly I think.