Syria
(Syed Ali Mehdi, karachi)
The op-ed piece "Finally, the U.S. and Russia Team Up" (NYT,
May 8, 2013) is soberly optimistic and with many conditional "what if" caveats.
While we all vie for a negotiated settlement in Syria, the likelihood of this
outcome is dismally small. One wonders what will happen if the parties to this
conflict refuse to be dragged to the negotiations. Will the U.S. be prepared to
impose demands of the rebels and their patrons in Saudi Arabia and Qatar? Will
Qatar and Saudis listen and stop providing weapons to the rebels? So far there
have been few encouraging signs. The only one so far is that the U.S. shifted
its position from demanding the removal of Assad to insisting that the two sides
should negotiate. It remains to be seen how far the U.S. is prepared to go down
this path.