Is the Syrian conflict really winding down? Astana: A Short Take on the Big Picture
Dispatches from Deena Stryker
As the Syrian war moves toward a long, drawn-out resolution, the UN representative for Syria Stefan Di Mistura, stated today on RT that the two-day meeting organized by Russia was an achievement if only because the opposing factions accepted to meet in the same conference room and stay in the same hotel. Further, mechanisms were set up to ensure that the cease fire lasts, boosting the chances that a meeting in Geneva will carry the process forward.
The New York Times reported on the two-day meeting in Astana, Kazakstan, in a reasonably accurate way, though unable to resist presenting the Kazakh president in a nasty light: “Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former Communist boss … has been the country’s president since it became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. He has a reputation as a pragmatic strongman and enjoys good relations with Russia and Turkey.”
Pres. Nursultan Nazarbayev
Though drawing attention to the last significant fact, the Times failed to report that the conference has not two, but three conveners: Russia, Turkey and Iran. Is this because President Trump appears determined to maintain a bellicose stance toward the Shi’te led country with whom his predecessor concluded a crucial nuclear-related treaty? The Times could help him revise his attitude toward the P5+1 Treaty, which is a cornerstone of the Middle East edifice, if it could allow itself to point out that Russia and Iran are natural, and long-standing allies. Natural because although Iran is governed by clerics (the preferred word of the US press is the foreign ‘mullahs’) its system came into being through a left-wing revolution. A cleric named Ali Shariati, a friend of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, was an important theorist of the events that took place in 1979, and although they have had their ups and downs, Iran’s close ties to the Soviet Union carried over to Russia. The idea that Trump could get along with Vladimir Putin while dissing Iran is ridiculous.
But there is another important fact that the Times article ignores: Russia, Iran and Turkey form a new and hugely important trio, Iran being the rising Shia power in the Middle East, in opposition to the leading Sunni power, Saudi Arabia, while Turkey, another Sunni power, has been a close ally of the US since it joined NATO in 1951, but is now moving toward Russia.
The meeting in Astana would rate star billing in itself, as would anything that contributes to ending the six year long Syrian war. However, the identity of the three conveners suggests that while dealing with the past and the present, it laid important milestones for the future of the Eurasian continent. It suggests that the Sunni-Shia divide can be overcome, removing a major obstacle to development across the world’s largest landmass, where the US presence will continue to decline, largely as a result of the ruination it has brought upon Afghanistan and Iraq, and its failure to be a fair player in Syria.
DEENA STRYKER, Senior Contributing Editor
Born in Philadelphia, Stryker spent most of her adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, her latest being
CUBA: Diary of a Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia Sanchez
America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World
A Taoist Politics: The Case For Sacredness
She began her journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome, spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbados were Communists before they made the revolution (‘Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young’). After spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, she wrote the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of the Soviet Union (“Une autre Europe, un autre Monde’). Her memoir, ‘Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel’, tells it all. ‘A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness’, which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and modern science and what this implies for political activism; and ‘America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World” is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from the City on a Hill’.
MAIN IMAGE: Delegates from Russia, Iran and Turkey lead talks on Syrian peace in Astana, Kazakhstan, where U.S. involvement is minimal compared to other recent attempts to end Syria’s civil war.
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