Lakhdar Brahimi, UN envoy to Syria, steps down from "mission impossible"
New York City
(AsiaNews) - The Algerian Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN and the Arab League envoy to
seek a peaceful solution to the civil war in Syria, is stepping down from the
mission many termed as " impossible".
The
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, made the announcement yesterday "with
great regret", stating that the resignation will be effective from May 31
and that so far a successor has not been designated.
In August 2012,
Brahimi had taken over from former UN chief Kofi Annan, who had failed to even obtain
a cease-fire from the warring parties, the regime of Bashar el Assad and the
fractured opposition -the components of which are often at war with each other.
The
Algerian diplomat succeeded in bringing about talks in January last in Geneva,
where the two parties sat down face to face for the first time, but the
dialogue collapsed after a few weeks without any solution to the civil war which
since March 2011 has left over 150 thousand people dead and almost 10 million
internally displaced persons and refugees.
Brahimi said he
was " sorry to leave Syria ... in such a bad state"; Ban
Ki-moon has praised his "great patience" highlighting "the
almost impossible obstacles" that he has faced.
Ban
also criticized the Assad regime and the opposition for the failure of the
dialogues. And
he admitted that the UN "has been unable to deliver any progress" and
that the international community is "hopelessly divided".
The
Geneva talks took place at the behest of the United States , the main opposition
sponsor, and Russia, the main supporter of Assad. But
the trend of recent months makes it increasingly difficult to agree on an
international or local level.
On
the ground, the Syrian army is achieving several victories against the rebels
and Damascus is pushing ahead with the campaign for the presidential elections,
boycotted as a "bluff" by the opposition. Brahimi
had expressed his doubts about the elections several times, which could become
a stumbling block to any attempt at dialogue .
At
the same time , the opposition is increasingly divided between the
"secular" and "Islamic" fringes; the
latter - especially the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the Al Nousra front
- continue to kill each other and to oppress the people with gruesome
executions and fundamentalist Islamic rules.
At
the international level, relations between the U.S. and Russia have drastically
chilled, following the Ukrainian crisis, and it is almost impossible to
envisage their collaboration on the Middle East.
However,
the real victims of this situation remain the Syrian people, subjected to continuous
bombardments and sieges by the Damascus army, or forced into starvation, thirst
and murder by the rebels. Not
even the people of the world are being listened to: September last, when a
military attack against Syria was imminent, the peoples of many nations spoke
out against the military action desired by their political leaders,
participating in the vigil of fasting prayer
and launched by Pope Francis on the evening of September 7.
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