With so much at stake for Syria’s very future as a state, and given the great difficulty in getting both sides in its civil war to the conference chamber, the initial news from international peace talks now under way in Geneva is encouraging.
The chairman Lakhdar Brahimi secured agreement that the two sides would meet in the same room, initially to discuss a ceasefire and aid convoy in the city of Homs, under siege by government forces. If he can get agreement on this symbolic local issue it should become easier to broach the larger ones on an overall ceasefire and then negotiation of a transitional government to draft a constitution leading to elections.
Questions of representation, definition and protocol have dogged these talks, along side the desire of both sides, with their international sponsors, to obtain a decisive military advantage before they began. They are taking place according to a formula agreed in June 2012 setting this agenda. The Syrian regime is adamant that President Bashir Assad will continue in power during any transition while others, like US Secretary of State John Kerry, are adamant he must go. Iran was excluded from the talks by the United Nations because it would not accept the formula, despite its close alliance with Assad. The opposition is divided between expatriate groups sponsored mainly by Saudi Arabia, internal ones not yet attending these talks, and a Kurdish group.
Some 130,000 people have died in the conflict, which has brutally displaced up to one third of Syria's 22 million people. Confronted with such dreadful suffering political choices revolve around defining which are the lesser evils and which the greater ones. Nearly three years on from the outbreak of the uprising against Assad in March 2011 his supporters say he is preferable to a Syria run by Islamic jihadists. That is a highly disputable interpretation, but by now all can agree it is a lesser evil to talk than continue such ruinous fighting.