U.N. Envoy to Syria Steps Down, He Always Had an Impossible Task

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has
accepted the resignation of the U.N. and Arab League’s special
envoy to Syria,
Lakhdar Brahimi, who has been unable to make any significant
progress toward ending Syria’s bloody civil war.

The news came on the same day French Foreign Minister Laurent
Fabius expressed regret over the fact that the Obama administration
had not carried out strikes in the wake of the Assad regime using
chemical weapons in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in August. Fabius
also said that there are “indications” that since the Assad regime
agreed to give up its chemical weapons it has carried out 14
chemical attacks.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Brahimi has been unsuccessful in
working toward a conclusive peace agreement between warring parties
in Syria. He had an impossible task given the diversity of the pro
and anti-Assad forces and the diplomatic entanglements involved in
trying to secure an agreement involving Western powers and a regime
supported by Russia (which has a permanent seat and veto power in
the U.N. Security Council) and Iran, which backs the pro-Assad
Lebanon-based group Hezbollah.

Even if Brahimi had been able to secure some sort of agreement
between the Assad regime and the represented opposition at the
Geneva II conference meetings earlier this year it is unlikely that
it would have led to an end to the bloodshed in Syria given that
the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria and the al-Nusra
Front, both anti-Assad jihadist groups, rejected the
negotiations.

How the conflict in Syria will end will almost certainly be
decided by the fighting between pro and anti-Assad forces, and not
an international agreement that the U.N. has a role in shaping.
This was true before Brahimi assumed his special envoy post, and
remains true now.