Syrian War Could Have Ended in 2012 if West Had Listened to Russia

The former UN and Arab League envoy to Syria says the country's military conflict could have been resolved as early as 2012 if all the participants had talked to Russia back then, as Moscow had a more realistic analysis of the situation on the ground.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the former United Nations and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria (2012-2014) is convinced that the war in Syria could have been resolved back in 2012 if all the parties to the conflict had listened to Russia.

“One has to say that the Russians had a much more realistic analysis of the situation there than practically everyone else,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

“And perhaps everybody should have talked and listened to them a little bit more than they did. They knew what the situation was. There was a possibility to end the conflict back in 2012 if everybody really had a more sophisticated analysis and better understanding of what was happening in Syria.”

The former diplomat explained that all the parties involved fell victim to a very superficial analysis of the situation.

“Remember the Arab Spring: the President of Tunisia, where it all started, fell in about three weeks, the president of Egypt fell in even less than that. It was taken for granted that the government in Damascus would collapse in no time,” he explained.

Lakhdar Brahimi said more than once that the Muslim world had betrayed Syria. And not only the Muslim world – the entire world, he added.

“What did the Americans do, what did the French do? What did the British do? Nobody helped the Syrians. They kept repeating the same slogans: one was that Assad should go, the other one – everybody is a terrorist.”

The former politician, however, explained that Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) “has not come from the planet Mars.” It is an Iraqi organization. It has very few Syrians, even in Syria, in its ranks. It is an Iraqi organization “that has flourished on the back of the marginalization of the Sunnis in Iraq.”

“The government of Iraq and the people who support the government of Iraq – Iran and the US – have got to understand that al-Qaeda was brought to Iraq by the invasion of Iraq by the US,” he further explained.

“There were no good guys in the Syrian tragedy and I would also put a lot of blame on the outside forces: the forces, governments and others, who were supporting one side or the other,” he added.

“None of these countries had [the] interests of the Syrian people as [their] first priority. The interests of the Syrian people were, at best, in second place,” he regretted.

Similar claims appeared in autumn of 2015 when many western media sources claimed that former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said that more than three years ago. Russia proposed that Syria’s President Assad could step down as part of a peace deal.

Martti Ahtisaari then stated that “Western powers failed to seize on the proposal.”