Could Lebanon’s 15-year conflict prove to be a lesson for Syria? Lebanon’s civil war, which cost some 150,000 lives, was brought to a much needed if unsatisfactory end by the Taif Agreement, or National Reconciliation Accord. It had become clear to the warring Shi’a, Sunni and Christian factions, that there was no military solution to their […]

Circumstances for reaching peace are significantly more complicated than ever. In fact, the environment today may be the worst in the entire history of the 65-year conflict, and certainly more so than the high-water mark of the 1993 Oslo Accords or even the ill-fated 2007-2008 negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority […]

“We haven’t achieved anything. In Homs, we haven’t been able to do anything. About prisoners, disappeared people, kidnapped people…we haven’t achieved anything.” Thus spoke U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi over the weekend to the Munich Security Conference on the Geneva II Conference on Syria. After nearly ten days of deliberations peppered by sweeping pronouncements and heated […]

In contemplating the horrifying reporting coming out of the Syrian conflict today and the equally tragic toll of the eight-plus year Iraq war, the world is likely witnessing the latest chapter in the long-running history of sectarian conflict in the region. The current battleground in this chapter is Syria and Iraq, and it sheds light […]

Commentary: The US should back Assad now, end the fighting, and set conditions for his departure and a democratic transition. There is a well-known maxim in American politics: a bad plan beats no plan. That surely has been proven the case in Syria. As The New York Times reported Nov. 8 in a sobering piece […]