Rewriting Syria’s War

An influential, unpublished report looks to radically revise notions of how to achieve peace in this war-torn country.

• By David KennerDavid Kenner is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy.
• December 18, 2014 | http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/18/syria-assad-ceasefires-surrender-nir-rosen-hd-centre-report/

As Syria’s moderate armed opposition loses ground and the United Nations embarks on a new peace strategy, a noted Syria researcher has written the most radical reassessment of the war’s dynamics in the history of the conflict.
The author, former journalist Nir Rosen, is a researcher with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), a Geneva-based conflict mediation organization. Rosen’s report is 55 pages long, single-spaced, including both his own analysis and extensive quotes from Syrian officials about their views of the conflict. In it, he argues that the armed opposition has become hopelessly radicalized, while the Assad regime is nonsectarian in nature. The only way out of the conflict, he says, is through U.N.-brokered “local cease-fires” between the armed opposition and the regime, which would pave the way for an end to the bloodshed and the emergence of local institutions, though at the cost of abandoning efforts to force President Bashar al-Assad from power in the near future.
The report came out of meetings Rosen held with U.S. officials and analysts in Washington, and was an attempt to answer questions posed to him during those discussions. When finished, he sent it to officials at the State Department and the National Security Council, including senior director Robert Malley, where it was distributed among Syria policy groups. The HD Centre, meanwhile, produced an 11-page version of Rosen’s report that contained the same policy proposals, but omitted the quotations from regime officials and many of the sweeping statements about the nature of the armed opposition and the Assad regime. http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/18/syria-assad-ceasefires-surrender-nir-rosen-hd-centre-report/