KAZAKHSTAN is an odd place to seek a fresh start for Syria. Its strongman, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been in charge since Soviet times. In 2015 he won 97.7% of the vote—an even better tally than Syria’s despot, Bashar al-Assad, can command. But as a Russian-speaking capital of a Turkic nation sharing the Caspian Sea with Iran, there was some symbolism in selecting its capital, Astana, as a place to unveil the new tripartite protectorate over Syria.
And as peace talks go, the ones in Astana, on January 23rd-24th, marked a new realism. The hosts were the three outside powers who are doing the bulk of the fighting in Syria. Along with Russia and Turkey, they included Iran, which was pointedly kept out of the last round of talks in Geneva. The Americans, Europeans and Arabs who steered those negotiations were this time either reduced to observer status, or absent altogether. Saudi Arabia, once the rebels’ prime backer, is too preoccupied with its war in Yemen these days to have time for the one in Syria. “The uprising began as an Arab awakening and ended in a carve-up among non-Arab powers,” says a Syrian analyst.
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Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2ko7JHH
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