Kofi Annan Syria Transition Plan A Failure So Far

Impact
BySaleem Kassim

Since March 2011, the ongoing uprisings in the Middle East, specifically in Syria, have spurred a wide debate and controversy all over the region. The estimate of unarmed civilians including women and children being killed since March is over 15,800. Just over the past couple of days, about 200 civilians have been killed. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, this weekend's violence killed more than 140 across Syria.

World powers had a meeting on Saturday to discuss the continuous clash between the regime and revolutionaries. The meeting was held in Geneva, Switzerland under the auspices of peace envoy Kofi Annan. Members of the meeting agreed on forming a unity government. The unity government can include members of the previous regime; yet, President Bashar Al Assad is not included simply because he have no role in the new government. They argued that his existence in forming the new government will only provoke the public.

If there is something that both the government and protesters agreed on, it will be the failure of the Geneva meeting. On one hand, Burhan Ghalioun, the senior member and former head of the opposition Syrian National Council, stated that the members of the Geneva meeting should not expect the Syrian people to negotiate with a government that has been killing and torturing them for 16 months.

Correspondingly, officials of the government and Iran declared the meeting as unsuccessful because Damascus and Tehran were not invited. “This meeting was unsuccessful.... because Syria was not present and some influential nations were not present,” Hossein Amir, an Iranian foreign assistance minister, articulated on state television.

Meanwhile, Egyptian media and the Arab League, decided to hold a two day meeting in Cairo for the goal of setting a transitional government to end the bloodshed.

Will there be an end to the Syrian conflict? No one knows, but something that is clear, is that there is no future for Assad.