High hopes and unrealistic expectations mar the Geneva Syrian peace talks seeking to stop the five-year-old Saudi proxy war that’s killed 270,000, displacing millions more to neighboring countries and Europe. U.N. officials, led by 69-year-old Syrian peace envoy Staffan de Mistura, repeats the Saudi Arabian talking points that the conflict is a legitimate “civil war” when, in fact, it’s a Saudi-funded proxy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia, with U.S. and European Union backing, decided March 11, 2011 to topple al-Assad’s Shiite government to set up a Sunni Wahhabi regime to replace it. Backed by Russia and Iran, al-Assad has no intention of allowing Riyadh to change sovereignty dating back to the post-WW!, Ottoman rule March 11, 1920. Declared independent from French colonial rule Oct. 24, 1945, al-Assad won’t surrender sovereignty to Saudi Arabia.
Opening a new round of Geneva-based peace talks, de Mistura walks a razor’s edge backing Saudi Arabia’s claim to determine Syria’s sovereignty, insisting al-Assad must go in any “transitional governing body.” Saudi-funded “High Negotiation Committee” demands that any transitional body not include al-Assad. Once the Syrian opposition leader 45-year-old Zahran Alloush was killed in a Russian air strike Dec. 25, 2015, his opposition group Jaysh al-Islam was in retreat. When Syrian forces were on the verge of wiping out Jaysh al-Islam and other Saudi-backed rebel groups, the High Negotiation Committee accepted Feb. 27 Secretary of State John Kerry’s call for a ceasefire. When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced March 14 he’d withdraw his forces, the U.S., EU and Saudi Arabia completely misread his intentions of abandoning al-Assad.
Putin thought announcing a troop withdrawal would help de Mistura’s Geneva peace talks. Unlike the U.S., EU and Saudis that demand al-Assad step down, Russian wants a permanent ceasefire to prevent Saudi-backed rebels from continuing the fight against al-Assad. Once Alloush was killed, 53-year-old Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir fully exposed the Saudi’s dog-in-the-fight. Years of calling the Syrian conflict a “civil war” was openly exposed as a Saudi proxy war. When the first round of peace talks collapsed Feb. 4, de Mistura didn’t admit it was over Saudi Arabia’s High Negotiation Committee’s insistence that al-Assd must go. De Mistura hopes Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov can advance the Saudi position of regime change in Damascus. Convening today’s talks, de Mistura gave Kerry and Lavrov homework to find a solution.
No matter how much the Saudis, Turks, U.S. and EU despise al-Assad, it’s an open question whether the U.N. can force al-Assad from sovereignty. De Mistura hopes to create a “better understanding” of how to proceed to political transition, a code word for evicting al-Assad. “We need to see concrete results,” said de Mistura, showing his bias from the get-go of getting rid of al-Assad. Head of the High Negotiation Committee Asaad al-Zoubi insisted on a “transitional government body with full executive powers,” demanding that al-Assad must step down. Blaming the five-year-old conflict on al-Assad shows the extent of de Mistura’s bias against Syria. Watching Tunisia, Egypt and Libya fall at the height of the Saudi-backed “Arab Spring,” al-Assad decided he’s fight to the death to preserve his sovereignty. Without Russian and Iran’s help, he would have fallen long ago.
No one in the West questions Saudi Arabia’s right to fund a proxy war to topple a U.N.-recognized sovereign government. President Barack Obama fully backs Saudi Arabia’s proxy war seeking regime change in Damascus. Despite meeting with Putin and Lavrov Dec. 15, 2015 and agreeing to let al-Assad stay in power, the U.S. continues to rubber stamp the Saudi proxy war trying to topple al-Assad. De Mistura doesn’t understand why the Syrian government has been reluctant to participate in talks to sabotage al-Assad’s Shiite rule. Saying that he hoped “Syria would have gone from destruction to reconstruction” by the sixth anniversary of the war, al-Zoubi mentions nothing about Saudi Arabia’s role in Syria’s destruction. Without Russia and Iran abandoning al-Assad, de Mistura must level with the Saudis and Turks that they can’t call the shots in Syria.
Fighting rages between Russian fighters and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] around the ancient city of Palmyra. “Government troops and patriotic forces with the support of the Russian air force are carrying out a large-scale operation to liberate Palymyra,” senior Russian commander Sergei Rudskoi told reporters. “On average Russian planes are flying 20 to 25 combat sorties each day,” said Rudskoi, completely repudiating Saudi, U.S. and EU reports that Russia doesn’t go after ISIS. When it serves Saudi’s purposes, they blame Russia for interfering with the Saudi-and-Turkey-backed proxy war against al-Assad. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Turkey have any real interest in battling ISIS. Both seek to topple al-Assad’s Shiite regime and replace it with a Sunni Wahhabi government controlled by Riyadh. Unless de Mistura figures this out, the Geneva talks are bound to fail.
