The future is shaped in Vienna, with no Syrians in sight

 Seventeen world powers are taking part in the Vienna talks in an attempt to solve the country’s problems. Surprisingly no Syrians are involved.

The launch of the Vienna process in October and the formation of the International Syria Support Group, consisting of 17 states under US-Russian leadership, marks the first serious renewal of international diplomatic efforts to chart a political path out of the devastating crisis in Syria since the failure of the Geneva II talks in January 2014.

Spurred on by a death toll now estimated at more than a quarter of a million people, upwards of 11 million people displaced from their homes – with hundreds of thousands seeking refuge in Europe – as well as the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and growing threats to the territorial integrity of the wider region, international actors have once again come together to see if there is any hope of dampening the flames of this horrific conflict.

The recent series of attacks by IS in Turkey, Egypt (downing a Russian plane), Lebanon and, most significantly for Western actors, Paris have now injected a fresh, critical momentum into the talks. The parties have already agreed on a formal timeline aimed at ending the violence and initiating a process towards a political transition. While this is a significant step forward from the highly contested Geneva Communiqué of 2012, translating the new plans into movement on the ground and solving the question of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s future will remain as devilishly difficult as ever. Notably missing from Vienna, however, were the Syrians themselves. Despite the stated commitment of all participants to a “Syrian-led and Syrianowned” process, the Vienna talks did not include any representatives from the wartorn country. Indeed, apocryphal though it may be, a story making the rounds in Syrian circles is that the only Syrian near the room was a waiter working at the hotel. Such is the fate of Syria today, a country whose future is first and foremost being brokered among external players even as thousands continue to die in the conflict each month. But however distasteful it may seem, the truth is that the make-up of the Vienna gathering accurately reflects the internationalisation engulfing the conflict and the necessity of engaging external parties as a prelude to any hope of mobilising peace efforts on the ground. This is not merely because vicious divisions make intra-Syrian dialogue nearly impossible in the near term. External players have also succeeded in assuming a significant degree of ownership over the conflict. The patronage relationships with external sponsors are, in many respects, keeping the multiple warring parties in the fight and shaping the direction of the conflict.

Russia’s recent military intervention into Syria, initiating an aerial bombing campaign that provided critical support to Assad, represents the latest manifestation of this dynamic. Moscow, however, joins an already crowded field with an array of Western and regional powers deeply immersed in the battle.

When the local struggle against the repressive security regime of the Assad government broke out four years ago, initiated by a group of school children spraying antigovernment graffiti in the southern city of Daraa, few would have imagined that it would become the fulcrum of a fierce international battle which would pay little more than lip service to the genuine welfare of the Syrian people. The sad reality, however, is that while remaining the key actors on the ground, Syrians have in part become pawns, instrumentalised in a zero-sum geopolitical struggle. Even IS has become a convenient tool, used by the respective sides to justify their own narratives and to double down on hard-line positions rather than viewed as a reason to de-escalate the conflict.

The roots of this predominantly regional struggle can be traced back to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 that empowered Iranian influence in the country at the expense of forces aligned with Sunni Arab states, upending the long-standing regional balance in Tehran’s favour. When protests broke out in Syria, which was then allied with Tehran, Saudi Arabia, supported by Turkey and Qatar, saw an opportunity to wrest the country out of Iran’s orbit and redress the regional imbalance. Viewing its regional influence as a forward line of defence against perceived Western, Israeli and regional hostility, Tehran responded predictably enough by escalating the conflict in support of Assad.

Simultaneously, however, Syria has been gripped by further dimensions of regional conflict. On the one hand Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are playing out an intra-Sunni struggle, extending through Egypt and Libya, to shape and control the primary vehicle of Sunni political Islam. Meanwhile, northern Syria has witnessed intensifying tensions between Turkey and Kurdish forces looking to carve out an autonomous region, akin to that of the Kurds in Iraq, which Ankara fears could empower the militant PKK movement.

These divisions among opposition backers have resulted in debilitating fractures and opened the door (though Assad’s brutality remains the key driver) to the proliferation of more extremist forces which have at times been mobilised by regional actors.

Over time, these competing struggles have increasingly assumed a wider international frame as Western states and Russia have joined their regional allies, spurring on an ever intensifying series of escalations. Russia’s recent intervention has predictably been met with deepening Gulf support for the armed opposition, including the provision of new, powerful anti-tank missiles. Reports that the US is actively backing these efforts point to the deepening internationalisation of the great power proxy war, even if there is no denying President Obama’s clear aversion to being drawn into the conflict.

With this backdrop, the prospect of peace seems as distant as ever. Nonetheless, the Vienna process offers perhaps the only glimmer of a path forward, given the clear need to diffuse the proxy dimension of the conflict. Ultimately, four years of vicious fighting have proven that there is no other game in town. For the moment, and in sharp contradiction to the evolving facts on the ground, Vienna represents a renewal of much-needed US-Russian cooperation while also marking the first time that Iran and Saudi Arabia have sat together at the negotiating table. Significant breakthroughs on these fronts would represent key developments in the search for a necessary de-escalation of the conflict and an eventual transition toward a political solution.

Clearly this is only the start of a long process and could in the end prove to be little more than another painful false start, setting off intensified fighting rather than any embrace of a de-escalatory track. But at some point, external actors will have to return the baton to the Syrian people, and the Vienna process should be embraced by Western nations as the beginning of that process.