UN mediation in the Syrian Crisis: From Kofi Annan through Lakhdar Brahimi to Staffan de Mistura

Ira William Zartman is Professor Emeritus at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. He earlier directed the school’s Conflict Management and African Studies programs. He holds the Jacob Blaustein Chair in International Organizations and Conflict Resolution. He is a founder and current Board Chairman of the International Peace and Security Institute (IPSI).

Caterina Barbi is one of the MECACS interns and MLitt student at the University of St Andrews. Her research interests revolve around terrorism, migration and gender.

In his seminar “UN Mediation in the Syrian Crisis: From Kofi Annan through Lakhdar Brahimi to Staffan de Mistura”, William Zartman discussed the strategies and failures of the three UN Personal Envoys to Syria, arguing that the conflict has yet to ripen for mediation to be successful in both conflict management and resolution. 

Mediation theory posits that there are five main challenges mediators encounter in their work: agency, inclusivity, strategy, entry and leverage. These do not only define the relationship between the mediating figure and the parties at war but also the one between the mandating agency and the conflicting sides. In the Syrian case, the inability of the United Nations Security Council to follow through with the support for the three envoys’ endeavors proved to be one of the main pitfalls of the mediation efforts. To best understand the work of Annan, Brahimi and de Mistura, who took up their mandates, at different times, between 2012 and 2019, it is also fundamental to point out that there are three levels of actors that should be included in mediation: parties, patrons and powers. In the Syrian context, this refers to respectively the Asad government and the opposition, the regional powers- Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Qatar and Turkey- and finally, Russia and the United States.

Having provided the necessary tools to understand the fine art of mediation, Zartman highlighted that it will only achieve its goals where the parties to the conflict believe that a military victory is impossible, and this still does not seem to be true in Syria. Indeed “Statistical research suggests a hurting stalemate is most often reached 130 months and 33,000 battle deaths into a conflict; in Syria battle deaths by far exceeded this in less than half the time (220,000 by January 2015 according to UN figures)”. The un-ripeness of the Syrian case has also been dictated by the Machiavellian stance of the Asad government, who will go to any lengths to survive, and the maximalist demands of the opposition regarding the fall of the regime, as well as their inability to come together under one banner.

This should not be mistaken for a total intractability, which has nevertheless so far been proven true. Indeed, there have been windows of opportunity, starting in 2011 with the Arab League initiative to the Spring of 2012, before the conflict escalated. Further, while a conflict may not have reached a hurting stalemate, the mediator can also convince the parties that a military victory may not be possible and that the costs of upkeeping the conflicts are soon to become unbearable. These are all strategies that the three Personal Envoy have exploited in different ways during their mandates. 

Annan, who served from February to August 2012, focused his strategies on the third circle, as the conditions were clearly not ripe for negotiations. This mostly translated in ensuring Russian help to pressure Asad to accept the 6-point conflict management plan, which revolved around the ceasing of troop movements and the use of heavy weapons, as well as ensuring adequate access to humanitarian assistance. At a later time, he also pushed forward a cease-fire, which he deemed would open the possibilities for political negotiations. His work culminated with the June 2012 Geneva Communiqué, drafted by the Action Group on Syria (without the Syrian government and Iran), which called for a national dialogue and was designed to be enticing for the regime, as it did not openly call for the departure of Asad and it stressed the importance of continuity of institutions. Nevertheless, the Communiqué was not implemented, and the situation worsened in July, with China and Russia vetoing a UNSC resolution that would have permitted non-military sanctions on the regime, in case it had not stopped employing heavy weaponry and adhered to Annan’s plan.

While the Communiqué is still considered as the standard for conflict resolution in Syria, its failure was driven by many factors, including the escalating military campaign of the opposition and the lack of pressure on second level players, to stop financing insurgent groups. It also bared the disunity of the UNSC and lack of leverage of the mediators.

By the time Lakdhar Brahimi took up his mandate, the conflict had severely escalated, with militarization and sectarianization wreaking havoc in the country. While this made his job understandably harder, it also helped ripen the conflict, an idea he very much exploited to convince the parties to go back to the Communiqué. At the same time, he pushed for more localized conflict management measures, including a four-day ceasefire around Eid al-Adha, with the aim of reducing the violence. When such a strategy failed, he brought the parties back to Geneva for a second round of talks. The process was, however, severely impaired by the hardship Brahimi faced in finding a legitimate negotiating partner in the fragmented opposition. This led him to follow the steps of his predecessor and focus on the outer ring, Russia and the US. While the two powers did seem to reach a break-through in the spring of 2013 and the chemical attack on Eastern Ghouta impelled their intervention in the stalemate, another Geneva conference held in February 2014, where for the first time, opposition and regime sat at the same table, did not lead to a breakthrough. 

The roots of the failure of the second Personal Envoy are very much the same that caused the failure of the Geneva Communiqué. Further, as Zartman argued, Brahimi focused his strategy on the outer ring because the second level, which usually offers space for mediation, reflected the intransigency of the warring parties, with external political motives leaving little to no room for the development of a common policy. 

With Staffan de Mistura, the strategy partially changed. The third Personal Envoy, who was appointed in the summer of 2014, focused his work on the first level, aiming at breaking the deadlock. The three initiatives he brought forwards were a representative constitutional committee, substantive informal discussion sessions, and local ceasefire freezes. De Mistura coupled these bottom-up efforts with the continuation of the Geneva talks, but with little success. He mostly blamed the consecutive failures on Damascus, citing the regime’s intransigence on the role of Asad in the transitional government, their questioning the opposition leadership, and finally the YouTube video the regime diffused, in which it specified that until Syrian sovereignty would be fully re-established, and the territory rid of terrorism, it would not engage in a constitutional review process or elections.

As the bottom-up approach failed and the Geneva process came to a halt, Russia and Turkey sought to fill the vacuum offering Astana as a neutral ground for talks. While not even Astana was able to deliver results, Zartman argued that the inability to couple the efforts in Astana and Geneva further impaired mediation.

In short, why has mediation in Syria failed so far?

Zartman underlined that to best understand the failures, one ought to look at the five challenges of mediation. Firstly, as to the mandate, the UN and UNSC were unable “to follow through with support for the mediator’s efforts”.  Further, the un-ripe conditions of the conflict severely impaired the entry of the three Special Envoys. Professor Zartman highlighted how any efforts to make them appear ripen actually worked against the mediators by antagonizing the regime. In terms of strategy, then, the author describes the situation as a catch-22: while focusing on the third level seemed the only viable option, the outer ring had actually little interest inmoving. As Zartman says, “Asad and Putin were hiding behind each other”. As to inclusivity, the intransigence of the second circle, a mere reflection of the first, hindered negotiations, creating more spoilers. Finally, the mediators possessed minimal leverage over the parties, a notion that was strengthened by the lack of unity in the UNSC. It is undeniable that negotiations failed because the regime was strong in its survival strategy and mostly uninterested in negotiation so long as it held the upper hand, while the opposition was weak in its disunity and uninterested in negotiation as long as it was the underdog.