DAMASCUS, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) — Syrian analysts and experts have been divided over finding a main reason behind the continuous faltering of the numerous international and regional endeavors that originally aimed to find peaceful solutions to Syria’s prolonged and intractable crisis.
As some blame the administration of not abiding by its international pledges, others hurl accusations at the fractured opposition for not keeping its end of the bargain, while still some others blame the lack of international consensus of being the major reason.
Several initiatives have been put forward — the foremost of which is the one by the outgoing UN-Arab League joint special envoy Kofi Annan, which has called for a cessation of violence by all parties in a bid to pave the way for a political dialogue to settle the simmering tension.
At the beginning, all parties said they will comply with the plan, which has taken hold for hours before the clashes and the urban fighting kicked off once again. But both sides later assigned blame on one another for the failure of the cease-fire.
Annan’s initiative has been preceded with several Arab proposals in addition to regional and international ones. However, none of them succeeded in curbing the violence or bridging the widening crack between Damascus and the rebels.
Yahya Salaiman, a political researcher, expressed his pessimism toward all the various proposals, pointing out that “all endeavors carried their seeds of failure within them.”
Speaking to Xinhua, Salaiman attributed his disappointment to the “content of each endeavor, because they either lack a clear working mechanism for their implementation or they are disconnected from the fever of the Syrian reality and all its contradictions, or the bias of the countries that are sponsoring those initiatives to a certain party in the conflict.”
He said the partiality of the sponsoring countries lead to the infanticide of the initiatives.
For his side, Ammar Rifai, vice-chairman of the oppositional al- Ansar party, said the proposed initiatives are “theoretically ambitious,” but noted that “it’s practically inapplicable.” He held the Syrian government responsible for the failure of most of the initiatives and accused it of non-complying by the items of the plans that it officially agrees on.
However, Sharif Shahadeh, a Syrian parliamentarian, disagreed with Rifai and contended that the Syrian government has abided and committed to all its pledges, holding the Syrian opposition the responsibility for the whole fiasco, as “it doesn’t accept to lay down the weapons and keeps on applying foreign agendas needless to say that is already scattered and fragmented.”
Shahadeh told Xinhua that “every initiative holds its own mines that blast it fast.”
He gave the latest Egyptian initiative as an example, saying it has been buried alive after Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi gave his blistering speech on Syria at the Non-Aligned Movement summit held recently in Tehran, in which he branded Damascus as ” oppressive” and urged the world countries to side with the Syrian opposition.
Morsi has recently proposed that Iran take part in a four- nation contact group including Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia that would mediate in the Syrian crisis.
Meanwhile, Shahadeh said that all the previous plans have not been that different than the Egyptian one “because all of the countries that have sponsored them are actual parties of the conflict and hold grudges toward the Syrian resistive and patriotic regime.”
Even though all endeavors have been rendered useless, the international community seems to keep pressing with the political approach despite some voices that have called for imposing buffer zones in Syria.
The latest move by the United Nations to keep with the diplomatic efforts is the appointment of veteran troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi as a new special envoy to Syria, replacing Annan who resigned last month after the failure of his mediation.
Brahimi on Saturday officially became in charge of picking up where his predecessor Annan left off in mediating the intractable Syrian crisis.
The Algerian figure discussed with Chinese officials Saturday the prospect of the Syrian crisis. He, who will pay visits to several regional and international capitals to garner support for his efforts, is also expected to set foot in Syria by the end of the current week, according to sources who told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
Hasan Abdul-Azim, a prominent opposition leader, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the solution to the 18-months-old crisis in Syria does not rest in efforts of the UN and Arab League envoy but the achievement of a workable consensus among regional and international powers.
Also, Luai Hussain, head of the opposition current “Building Syrian State,” agreed with Abdul-Azim that any true and workable solution requires a wide-scale international effort and a consensus between the superpowers and regional ones as well.
He said the Syrian crisis is more complicated and intractable that makes the sole act of a certain organization insufficient to unravel it.
Experts believe that had the international community was sincere about solving the Syrian crisis without being biased to certain parties, the Syrian bloody crisis would have already been solved.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2012-09/02/c_131822745.htm