The international tug of war over the Syrian crisis, which gradually escalated to reach its peak after the chemical attack on Ghouta near Damascus a month ago, has resulted in an agreement on dismantling Syria's chemical arsenal, concluding negotiations between the US Secretary of State and Russia's Foreign Minister. Both sides subsequently came out with direct statements or through leaks in their media outlets to contend for the "victory" that had been achieved, ascribing it either to Moscow or to Washington, with both asserting that there was no cold war between them, but rather cooperation and complementarity. Yet a simple analysis of what has been achieved, or should be achieved over the next few months, would clarify whether a battle had really taken place between the two sides, whether there had been a "victory" or "concessions", what the real results of the Geneva negotiations are, and who is lying. In order to answer such questions, let us turn back a little to what the situation was like prior to the chemical attack: Assad's army had for two and a half years been making use of air raids, ballistic missiles, and heavy field artillery to strike at opposition forces and bomb the areas they control, without making any distinction between combatants and civilians, and while inflicting tremendous destruction on cities, towns, villages, infrastructure, homes, hospitals and anything rising above the ground, achieving advances on the field in some areas with the support of its Iranian and Lebanese allies. Meanwhile, on the side of the opposition, fighters had been making use of what little weapons were available to them and a great deal of resolve, in attack and retreat operations meant to cause breaches, great or small, in the regime's security walls, in hopes that the West would someday be kind enough to grant them combat capabilities that would help them confront superior air and missile force, or at least be convinced to establish no-fly zones to protect civilians. In terms of the issue's international aspect, conflicting stances have been taken: the West and its allies accuse Assad's regime of war crimes and crimes against humanity, assert that he has lost his legitimacy and call on him to leave; while Russia and Damascus's other allies accuse the opposition of similar crimes and assert that its fundamentalists represent a greater threat to the West than the regime does. Yet neither side has done anything tangible to stop the war and put an end to this tragedy. On the contrary, they have both contributed to prolonging it. Then suddenly the chemical attack took place. The Western world rose up, moved by the images of its victims, and decided that a response was imperative. Diplomats gathered their instruments in international forums, and American warships began to flock to the Eastern Mediterranean. The Russians responded with similar naval mobilization. Thus began a series of media battles and mutually exchanged accusations and warnings, as the world nervously waited for them to begin punishing Assad. The momentum then gradually began to wane, with Britain withdrawing and Obama deciding that he needed internal American support before taking the step of engaging in military action. This is until John Kerry's "slip of the tongue" occurred and Sergey Lavrov rushed to put forward his "initiative" on its basis, as the American and Russian press likes to repeat, without shame before its readers. The result of this whole mess was thus the agreement to "neutralize" the Syrian chemical factor, which had suddenly disrupted the course of the civil infighting and muddled the clarity of the collective international monitoring of it. What matters now is for the Syrian showdown to resume its course, and to never again depart from the "familiar" or threaten to spread its flames beyond the "Syrian enclosure" to its neighborhood, especially on the Israeli side. There is no objection to the conflict continuing indefinitely, as long as its various sides remain able to feed its flame, because there is no objection in the first place to the wolf dying and the lamb perishing together. The Americans and the Russians have agreed in Geneva, either directly or in a roundabout way, to return to the phase prior to the use of chemical weapons, and they are today keeping the world distracted with this illusory battle at the Security Council over Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The Russians are lying to the Syrians, the Americans are lying to their allies, and the Russians and Americans are both lying to us all.
