Today, the sixth of March 2020, Mikhail Bogdanov, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Middle East and African Countries, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia received the representative of the leadership of the Syrian opposition Front for Change and Liberation, the head of the Moscow Platform of the Syrian opposition, Kadri Jamil.
The collapse of the already precarious living situation of the overwhelming majority of Syrians has accelerated in the past two weeks. The catastrophic collapse of the Syrian pound is one of the important indicators of this collapse, which is a direct result of the delay in serious engagement in the process of political solution, a delay that deepens the Syrian humanitarian tragedy and worsens the bleeding Syrian wound, threatening to re-open the doors to all dangerous possibilities for the people and the country.
Many years have passed since the debate over which is first: the political solution or the fight against terrorism. That debate proved to be futile. Subsequent developments have shown that the extremists on both sides, who held up to one of the answers, implicitly agreed to extend the duration of the crisis because of the immaturity of "quelling" [the opposition by the regime] nor "overthrowing" [the regime by the opposition] – as their slogans claimed, at a time when the obvious answer was that the two processes [of political solution and fighting terrorism] constitute one integral whole, and cannot be approached except together and in parallel.
The 13th round of Astana concluded its work last Friday, affirming the general line of the Astana meetings, which seeks to complete untying the military knots in order to open the door wide to a political solution.
Many years have passed since the debate over which is first: the political solution or the fight against terrorism. That debate proved to be futile. Subsequent developments have shown that the extremists on both sides, who held up to one of the answers, implicitly agreed to extend the duration of the crisis because of the immaturity of "quelling" [the opposition by the regime] nor "overthrowing" [the regime by the opposition] – as their slogans claimed, at a time when the obvious answer was that the two processes [of political solution and fighting terrorism] constitute one integral whole, and cannot be approached except together and in parallel.
The blockers of political solution, the Westerners and their followers and supporters in the various parties, have been accustomed to be in solidarity with each other along the past bitter years. Their plan has always been to keep the suspended files on hold, while using one file at a time as the main tool for hindering, while pretending to be flexible with the other files.
«According to the materialistic conception of history, the production and reproduction of real life constitutes in the last instance the determining factor of history», Engels wrote in to Joseph Bloch in a letter on historical materialism in 1890*.
In the morning of the 30th of December, 2018, a press release was issued on behalf of the Information Office of the Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC), protesting against the return of relations with Syria by some Arab countries, calling on those countries to review their positions and asking for their support to stand with the SNC.
The decision taken in the National Dialogue Conference in Sochi to form the Constitutional Committee, was a gap in the wall of the political solution, which the West had to recognize and deal with, devoting efforts to eviscerate the initiative in order to close this gap and return to point zero, seeking to extend the war indefinitely.
The extremists live in a state of reassurance about the internationalization of the Syrian issue. They know, as everyone knows, that the international clash is not only about Syria – though Syria has become at the top of its agenda – but also about a new reformulation of the whole international relations. It is a clash that will not end in the near future, but will take several more years to reach its logical ends.
