The fate of the understating is…. a matter of days

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The meetings which are dedicated to the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York will last for another week, it seems that it is the interval week in the fate of reaching to a mechanism that restores the US Russian understanding as an inclusive framework of the international and the regional efforts, to combine between the titles of the war on terrorism and the progress toward a political solution that combines the Syrian government and the parties of the opposition in anticipated discussions in Geneva, according to the resolution 2254 which was issued by the International Security Council early this year. This opportunity seems to be an interval point, because either it will lead to save the understanding from the failure and going on in the cooperation which was stated by the understanding between the US air defense and the Russian one in the war on ISIS and Al Nusra front, along with a stable truce between the Syrian army and its allies on one hand, and the formations of the opposition affiliated within the political process, that are separated from the sites and the formations of Al Nusra and ISIS on the other hand. Meantime, opening the way for the arrival of the relief convoys to different areas, or the collapse of this understanding, at least for not a short time, where the escalation rises accompanied with confrontational positions between the two parties which are confronted internationally and regionally either in Syria or in other fronts of engagements especially Yemen and Ukraine, and the disruption of the process of liberating Al Mosul in Iraq which based on an implicit Iranian-American cooperation through supporting the Iraqi army.

It is difficult to consider it easy the overthrowing of the understanding by the Russian and the American, because this understanding has taken serious negotiating minute political and military efforts, originally it is an attempt to transfer the possibilities and the assumptions which can be expected to occur in case the understanding fails to form alternatives that reflect the degree of concern which each party has due to this result. This is the essence of any negotiating process, starting from that the balances of the powers are being prepared in the negotiations in this way, and the degree of the sticking of each party to present it to the extent that threatens of the failure of the negotiations. So the most worried party about the danger of the failure shows a flexibility that revives the negotiations in comparison that is undertaken by each party between what is proposed in front of him on the negotiating table and what the failure foreshadows of, as alternatives in the field. Thus the opportunities of the success of the negotiation converge and diverge on the basis of the convergence and the divergence of the common reading of the risks of the failure and their threats in each negotiating item. The interests of a team are bigger than the costs which are supposed that it has to pay through what is stated by the negotiation and making the understandings. This means that the reach to any understanding through the negotiations means a convergence in estimating the balances and what will be imposed by the failure, and whenever it seems that the understanding overbalances for a party, it means that the negotiating failure will mean more losses to the other party.

It can be said in case of the US Russian understanding that the US concern of the danger of the failure and the alternatives which it foreshadowed have led to the arrival of the understanding, which the Americans and their allies consider it a great concession, because it includes the

recognition of getting rid of the pivotal force for every bet on the war on Syria against the Syrian army and its allies that cannot be continued without Al Nusra front, where the understanding stated the partnership in the war against it, and thus the complexities which emerge from applying the understanding are not an expression of the presence of better alternatives according to who obstruct the application, like the American and his allies but an expression of the difficulties of the application, mobilizing the allies to accept the concessions, an attempt to make use of their objections to improve the conditions of the understanding in the context of application, and the seek to blackmail the Russian partner by the Americans by saying “help us in tempting the objectors through consolation prizes”. This is the essence of the speech of the US Secretary of State John Kerry who talked about ceasing the Syrian flight processes for one day in order to improve the image of the understanding and to make it include gains that are being used at the pressure time to get the last opportunity of improving what can be improved from the mechanisms of the application if it is not possible improve the conditions of the understanding itself.

In this game of attraction, the alliance which includes Syria, Russia, Iran, and the resistance evokes the dangers which were hidden as hypotheses, and shows them publicly, so the battles rise in the eastern of Aleppo and it is possible the occurrence of surprises which are difficult to be withdrawn as the assumption of the entry of the Syrian army to some eastern neighborhoods. Within this dangerous game nothing is unexpected that may lead to the change of the rules of the negotiation itself, as has happened in the Twentieth Summit in China, when the texts of the understanding were accomplished, but the Syrian army entered to Al Ramouseh and has controlled the crossing which was under the control of the formations of the opposition and Al Nusra front before the completion of the understanding, thus the negotiation returned once again from a new point and it will last for additional week before it emerges to light according to the new balances.

A crucial week will be witnessed by the fronts of New York and the front of eastern of Aleppo in a feverish race, where the progress in one of them will control the other, either a crucial progress in New York that preempts the danger of a progress that is not meant to be occurred in the eastern of Aleppo. One of the negotiators in New York knows the degree of the seriousness of its occurrence there, or a progress in the eastern of Aleppo that anticipates and rules a new negotiating track in New York to be ended before the end of the week which is left from the works of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York by ending the negotiation on an understanding or the end of the understanding itself even temporarily.

Everything proves that we will witness an understanding which the field will formulate it with fire in the eastern of Aleppo, and the negotiators will write it down in New York.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,