Does peace in Syria mean living with Assad?
Does anyone think there can be a negotiated peace in Syria that doesn’t include President Assad and his loyalists?
Four and a half years ago, when the Arab Spring was still young enough to be promising, predicting Assad’s end - and then demanding it - seemed the right thing to do.
Back then, the Western powers were at pains to be "on the right side of history."
Already, one of America’s staunchest Middle Eastern allies, Hosni Mubarak, had found himself thrown under a bus. Assad had never been such a close friend, so promoting his downfall was easy by comparison.
I remember well Cairo’s Tahrir Square on the night Mubarak relented and stepped down.
"Tonight the sky is crackling with fireworks and possibilities," I said during a News at Ten live.
And it was. The electric atmosphere in Cairo was very similar to that in Baghdad on April 9, 2003, the day the US Marines rolled in. I dare say those who were in Tripoli on the night Gaddafi was toppled know what I’m describing. The same goes for Kabul when the Taliban were routed there in 2001.
And yet, in all those four instances - Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Libya - those nights of liberation were a high-water mark that would be tragically short-lived.
Obviously not all those countries are the same, but the absence of a viable alternative to the regimes being changed was one big reason why failure followed in each and every case.
As we still wrestle with what to do about Syria, it is surely the lessons from Iraq that are most salutary.
A quick digression first. In Belfast in the early nineties, the only path to a peace deal was a talks process that involved the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein. If they didn’t sit down together - something made possible by the IRA ceasefire - there couldn’t be a negotiated settlement.
Soon after direct talks began David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionists, was asked how he could stomach talking to former Provos who had murdered or tried to murder his friends.
Trimble’s answer was brilliant - "because someone has a past doesn’t mean I can tell them they don’t have a future."
Isn’t that exactly what the Americans - and by extension we Brits -told the Sunnis of Iraq?
The invasion got rid of Saddam Hussein and the puritanical neo-cons in power in Washington decreed that all those connected with his regime could not feature in the new governance of Iraq. De-Baathification, it was called.
The Baathists were the only ones who knew how to run the country. They also knew where the guns were buried. Excluded and demeaned they decided to make the new Iraq ungovernable.
Eventually a civil war was ignited. Bad Shia governments alienated the Sunnis yet further and ISIS was spawned.
If you ever think that things in the Middle East can’t get any worse, remember the Islamic State, which didn’t exist three years ago.
We used to think there could be nothing worse than Saddam, or Assad. And we were wrong.
Syria is now emptying and they’re heading our way. ISIS is growing stronger, which makes it more likely that they’ll be heading our way.
Propped up by Russia and Iran, Assad and his clan, the Alawites, have done unspeakable things, but they remain a force to be reckoned with.
For the sake of any hope of saving any part of Syria there needs to be a diplomatic push for peace that includes Assad and a comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS.
We’ve been unable to write or wish Assad out of Syria’s future. We did that with the Sunni Baathists in Iraq. Look where that ended up.