Matt Broomfield
Nearly a decade has passed since the United Nations Security Council passed Un Security Council Resolution 2254 (UNSCR2254), a statement on the “peace process in Syria” demanding a permanent end to violence; the protection of the country’s territorial integrity; the security of its citizens and minorities; and an “inclusive and Syrian-led political process that meets the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people,” including free and fair elections.
Since then, much has changed. Bashar al-Assad has reasserted long-term control over around two-thirds of Syria’s territory, guaranteed by his Russian backers and growing Western indifference to the conflict. ISIS have been driven back from their own territorial gains and defeated by the Kurdish-led, multi-ethnic Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose civilian wing now governs the largest Syrian territory still outside Assad’s control. Turkey has occupied swathes of northern Syria, while cannibalising much of what remains of the Syrian opposition and turning them into a proxy militia solely concerned with terrorising locals for financial gain. An al-Qaeda offshoot holds on in Idlib.
Which is to say, we are little closer to the optimistic future laid out in UNSCR2254 than we were in 2015. Instead, the resolution has become a convenient fig leaf, enabling all the foreign powers invested in the conflict – Russia and Iran on the one hand, the USA on the other, and also Turkey – to protest that they are doing just as the UN wishes, claiming that the circumstances are not yet in place to do anything other than perpetuate a status quo which serves their short-term interests while heaping misery on millions of Syrians.
The ‘Geneva’ process which was intended to carry out UNSCR2254’s mandate to instigate a political move toward a peace plan and a transnational governing body went nowhere. For its part, Russia interprets UNSCR2254 to mean that the only possible future for Syria is centralised governance under its client in Damascus, prohibiting any meaningful engagement with the Syrian opposition. For years, alternative negotiations like those in Astana, Ankara and Doha have proceeded under the close supervision of Turkey, Russia and Iran, all justified with lip-service to UNSCR2254, even as this process cuts the USA out of the equation. Notably, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) which governs a third of Syria’s population on the basis of a novel system of multi-ethnic, direct-democratic governance is not able to participate in either of these so-called diplomatic ‘tracks’.
The reasons for UNSCR2254’s failure to provide more than a fig-leaf for international inactivity are various, but ultimately linked to the impotence of a UN Security Council hampered by countermanding US and Russian vetoes which mean any directive it produces is necessarily vague, hampered and limited. Each uses the resolution to point the finger at the other. For better and for worse, the most effective new agreements and developments are those forced through as de facto realities on the ground, backed by military force, or reached by actors directly engaged in reshaping the frontlines in Syria.
That’s why it was so disappointing to hear US representatives cite UNSCR2254 to dismiss the AANES’ efforts to conduct municipal elections across a third of Syria’s territory as illegitimate. This position plays into the hands of state actors who have themselves used the resolution to deflect criticism and legitimise their actions, while defining the reality on the ground as they please. These elections, like many of the AANES’ other policies, are the only bona fide effort to make many of the resolution’s promised goals a reality. Instead, the USA once again joined Russia’s ignoble company, preferring to wield the ‘security resolution’ to keep itself safe and exculpate itself from criticism over its own role in perpetuating the Syrian conflict.
