What pushed Lakhdar Brahimi to take up the task of mediation in the Syrian crisis following the failure of Kofi Annan remains unknown. He is not new to the diplomatic arena and he has no interest in concluding his history with a failed experience, which is how his Syrian task is expected to end. Brahimi is quite aware of the difficulty of dealing with the Syrian regime and how hard it is to obtain compromises that could end this regime's control over the political and security keys in Syria. Brahimi's call for a truce during the Al-Adha holiday was his first drill in dealing with the crisis. Everyone knew that the truce wouldn't be implemented; but the international envoy relied on the “humanitarian" side and thought that this religious occasion might stir the conscience of both parties, thus pushing them to halt the killings. As a result, the truce was not implemented and the killing figures remained unchanged. Now, Brahimi is saying he regrets that the truce did not work out. However, this failure is an important indicator to how he has been dealing with the Syrian crisis without a clear plan allowing for progress. He is touring the world's capitals and meeting with officials and listening to their already-known opinions including the supporters of the regime or the pro-opposition sides. He however has nothing to suggest to them in order to try and break the dead end that this crisis has reached. The reason is that the United Nations organization itself – where Brahimi works and under whose name he is touring the world capitals – has no vision of a solution because of the division within the Security Council, which is preventing any agreement on a satisfactory solution for all the concerned parties. In Moscow yesterday, Brahimi reiterated what he had already said during his visit to Beirut when he spoke about the danger of the conflict in Syria and when he warned that it could burn everything. Yesterday, he admitted that the situation in Syria is heading “from bad to worse" and he further spoke about the need for real rather than esthetic changes; and for serious rather than fake reforms. He however abstained from pointing out the party responsible for these changes and reforms, although he knows who that party is more than anyone else. The Syrian crisis does not need anyone to describe it and to warn against its threat. We all know this thanks to the news about the killings and the destruction that we are seeing every day. What this crisis needs is a clear, international stand to force both conflicting parties to halt this terrifying ease in destroying their country and killing their people. Brahimi is now alluding to “new ideas" that he has to solve the crisis. However, one would not expect that these ideas will have a better luck than the Al-Adha truce in the absence of an international stand to stop this open massacre and to impose the necessary settlement, which calls for compromises on the part of all the concerned parties. Brahimi must play a part in this, especially during his two visits this week to Moscow and Beijing, the two capitals that rescued the Syrian regime from being convicted at the Security Council. He must clearly convince them that the Syrian president's clinging to power was the reason for aborting Kofi Annan's mission that called for a process of political transfer “that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people" and for a ceasefire initiated by the regime's forces by halting their actions against residential areas and ending their use of heavy weapons. He must convince the two capitals that solving this issue will allow the other pro-opposition parties to pressure the opposition in order to move towards a settlement that might comprise the remnants of the regime.
