TheEconomistFebruary 15th 2020 411E
ven afternearly a decade of carnage,
Syria’s civil war still manages to shock.
More than 700,000 people have fled a re-
gime offensive in Idlib, the country’s last
rebel-held pocket. Shelter is scarce; with
temperatures near zero, families sleep
rough on the roadside. Desperate to keep
millions of refugees from crossing its
southern border, Turkey has deployed
thousands of troops to slow the Syrian ad-
vance, risking conflict with Russia, which
backs Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator,
with jets in the sky and mercenaries on the
ground. At least a dozen Turkish soldiers
have been killed.
Against this backdrop Geir Pedersen,
the United Nations special envoy, is press-
ing ahead with a committee meant to re-
draw Syria’s constitution—a body Mr Assad
has already said he will ignore. As the re-
gime draws closer to Idlib, as another 1m ci-
vilians prepare to flee, the unhas staked
time and prestige on an effort that was
doomed from the start.
Since 2011, 13 unenvoys have tried toplay healer in the Middle East’s civil wars:
four in Syria, six in Libya and three in Ye-
men. None has succeeded. The war in Syria
is winding down only because the regime
has slaughtered its enemies. Libya and Ye-
men are failed states. At best the un’s ef-
forts have been ineffective. At worst, in Syr-
ia, they helped tip momentum towards one
of the warring parties.
There is a large body of academic re-
search on how wars end. One study finds
that including women in negotiations
makes them more likely to succeed. Anoth-
er posits a link between failed ceasefires
and subsequent success, which seems a
verbose way of saying that if at first youdon’t succeed, try again.
Mostly, though, wars end when at least
one party decides that the cost of continu-
ing outweighs the possible benefits. That is
a hard choice for the losing side to make in
a civil war. Combatants cannot simply lay
down their arms and go home. Defeat can
mean annihilation. In 1997 Barbara Walter
of the University of California analysed
half a century of resolved conflicts. She
found that just 20% of civil wars ended in a
peace deal, compared with 55% of inter-
state conflicts. “Groups fighting civil wars
almost always chose to fight to the finish,”
she wrote.
If outsiders want to broker a deal, they
must change this calculation. The Dayton
accords, which America negotiated in 1995
to end the war in Bosnia, are often cited.
But America and its natoallies were not
mere negotiators. They were also dropping
bombs on one of the belligerents. In Syria,
by contrast, “I’m conscious that I have al-
most no leverage,” says Mr Pedersen. Even
when backed with weapons, diplomatic ef-
forts often fail. America could not bring
durable peace to Afghanistan or Iraq, de-
spite its might.
In peacekeeping, unlike peacemaking,
the unhas often succeeded. The territorial
dispute in Cyprus, though still unresolved,
has not caused any deaths since the 1990s.
But there must be a peace to keep. The un
has only rarely authorised outside coun-
tries to shoot their way in to impose one.DiplomacyFrustrated are the peacemakers
BEIRUT
Why the United Nations is unable to stanch the bleeding in the Arab worldMiddle East & Africa
42 IntolerantQatar
42 ReligiouspoliticsinIsrael
43 ImpunityinKenya
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