Alignments towards the Political Solution

What recently noticed in this regard was the Turkish decision to classify the Al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organization, which means open approval of any military operation against this organization, which would result in a quick process of sorting and selection between the armed groups, in the sense of neutralizing some of them and eliminating others, thus restoring the province of Idlib to the authority of the Syrian state.

In the same context came the visit of the Saudi Foreign Minister, Al-Jubeir, to Moscow, in conjunction with the visit of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Al-Moallem, and the signals carried out by remarks of Al-Jubeir regarding the situation in Syria, which indicate the possibility of a turnaround in the situation.

These positions emerging from the most important regional powers who have been, until recently, obstructing any solution to the Syrian crisis, reinforce the fact that the forces of political solution at the international level, specifically the Russian Federation, are moving steadily forward and that these forces are able to adapt all positions, in order to serve the basic objective, namely: the political solution to the Syrian crisis. In addition, the cohesion of the Astana's Troika, and Washington's inability to divide them despite its persistent attempts to do so, is a central factor in the ongoing evolution towards the solution, in particular the formation of the Constitutional Commission.

The current political moment with regard to the Syrian situation is the moment of culmination of all the previous accumulation which began yielding concrete results on the ground through the steady decline in the role of military action in general, which is a necessary yet insufficient condition... This entails completing the mission by resuming the political process through the resumption of the Geneva negotiations as the container in which will gather the entire mobilizations related to resolving the Syrian crisis.

The circumstances are more and more ripening for the implementation of UNSC resolution 2254 as an ultimate road map for the solution, although the process has been proceeding so slowly and gradually. The urgent task of forming the Constitutional Commission, as a current task, would break the obstruction attempts, which, as usual, did not withstand the insistence of the Russian ally, and would put all the issues on the table, including addressing the special situation in the northeast. This will be done through representing the movement of Self-Administration [in the north of Syria] in all negotiations related to the political process, providing the necessary guarantees, including extended administrative decentralization, and working to end the US occupation in its various forms.

The post-Idlib phase, and following the formation of the constitutional committee, is the stage of transforming the "potential of the solution" into concrete action and field actions on the ground, complementing the process of eradicating terrorism in parallel with diplomatic and political work that leads to the search the four [negotiative] baskets.

Kassioun Editorial, Issue No 877, September 03, 2018