Recent weeks have seen jolting reversals in the world’s attempt to bring an end to the war in Syria: the horrific attacks in Paris and Turkey’s shooting down of a Russian bomber that crossed into its airspace threatening joint action against the Islamic State (ISIS).
François Hollande’s shuttle diplomacy to Washington and Moscow underlined the fact the international community is more focused on Syria today than at any point since the U.N.-brokered deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons in 2012.
Yet a substantive diplomatic deal among the major players, the type of deal that would bring peace to Syria, looks far more difficult, as each has contradictory security and political priorities that complicate the fight against ISIS.
The war is driven by multiple, interlocking layers of conflict. There are disputes among different clusters of Syrian fighters as Sunni rebel groups in northwestern and southwestern Syria fight government forces and fend off attacks from ISIS. At the same time, there is a regional dimension, especially a region-wide conflict between Shiite Iran and Sunni powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkey, too, maintains it has critical security interests in Syria, above all in prioritizing that Syria’s Kurdish minority does not achieve an independent state, which would exacerbate the Turkish government’s dispute with its own Kurdish minority.
Finally, outside powers such as the United States, France, and Russia clash over the role that Bashar al-Assad’s government should play in Syria’s future and the fight against ISIS.
The terrorist attacks in Paris led many to expect that France would drop its longstanding demand that Assad must leave office and would devote all its attention to fighting ISIS, perhaps even with the support of Assad’s forces.
In such a scenario, many assumed, the West would have no choice but to come to terms with Russia. The Kremlin says it wants to fight terrorism, but has primarily focused its airstrikes, not on ISIS targets, but against the rebel groups around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo that are fighting Assad.
