New Syria envoy says all conflicts can be solved
Friday - 8/17/2012, 7:17pm ET
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - After two decades as a diplomatic troubleshooter in hotspots from Afghanistan to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi firmly believes that every conflict can be solved.
That conviction will be put to the test in his new job as the joint United Nations-Arab League special envoy charged with trying to succeed where his former boss Kofi Annan failed _ bringing an end to the 18-month conflict in Syria.
"I think his biggest challenge is convincing the international community to intervene and end this _ whatever it takes, because non-intervention has a much higher cost than intervention," Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East expert at London's Chatham House think tank, said in a telephone interview Friday. "Leaving this to go on is going to create more sectarianism, more extremism and more spillover to the region, and the Assad regime is capable of anything to stay in power."
Brahimi brings a unique background and a wealth of experience to a task that many leaders and pundits have written off as impossible.
He was a freedom fighter in his native Algeria, drifted into diplomacy after his country's independence from France in 1962, became undersecretary-general of the Arab League from 1984-1991, and returned to Algeria as foreign minister from 1991-1993.
In 1994, Brahimi took his diplomatic skills to the United Nations, taking on key assignments in South Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan during and after the Taliban rule, and Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster. He chaired a panel that examined U.N. failures in Rwanda's genocide and the massacre at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war, and recommended a major overhaul of U.N. peacemaking efforts and peacekeeping operations.
Reflecting on his 20 years spent trying to make peace, Brahimi acknowledged in a speech in 2010 that conflicts are terrible and difficult and the cause or the result of problems that need to be solved.
Nonetheless, he added, "I still believe very, very strongly that there is no conflict that cannot be solved."
"We, people, make these problems," Brahimi told the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, England. "And we should be able to solve them. We can solve them."
Brahimi said he also learned that in dealing with conflicts "obviously you see a lot of wickedness, a lot of cruelty, a lot of injustice, but you also come across a lot of kindness, a lot of courage, and a lot of forgiveness, and that makes up for it."
He recalled that when former U.S. Senator George Mitchell accepted the job as President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Middle East in 2009, Mitchell said, "you live 800 days of frustration for one day of satisfaction."
During his years at the Arab League, Brahimi served as the organization's special envoy trying to mediate an end to Lebanon's civil war. There were several failed attempts to end the fighting, he said, but finally on Sept. 24, 1989, "we clinched a cease-fire" that looked like it would hold _ and it did, leading to the Taif agreement that ended the 15-year conflict.
"These kinds of satisfactions are the things that one works for," Brahimi said.
Brahimi officially retired in 2005, though he remains active as a lecturer and participant in several non-profit organizations focusing on global affairs. He has taken on special assignments including heading a U.N. panel that investigated the December 2007 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Algiers. He is also a member of The Elders, the international group of prominent statesmen founded by Nelson Mandela that has been speaking out on major issues.
Now 78, the tall, grey-haired diplomat will be stepping into the job held by Annan, a close friend who as U.N. secretary-general sent him to Afghanistan twice, then to Iraq, and then brought him to New York as a special adviser and undersecretary-general in 2004-2005.
Brahimi knows the Mideast and its key players well and speaks Arabic, French and English fluently.
His years spent trying to end Lebanon's civil war put him in close contact with Syria, which for years maintained a strong military presence in Lebanon even though the Taif agreement called for an eventual withdrawal of Syrian forces. Brahimi was also in a key Arab League position when Syria made its dramatic decision in 1990 to participate in the U.S.-led coalition that routed Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait in the first Gulf War.
Shehadi, of the Chatham House think tank, said Brahimi's past dealings with the ruling Assad family in Syria in the 1980s means "they won't be able to fool him" as they did others with "games" to try to gain time and make the regime look good.
