LOCAL PRESS

Nikolic: Vatican remains firm on non-recognition of Kosovo (Politika//Tanjug/RTS)

“The Roman Catholic Church remains firm on non-recognition of the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo and Metohija,” Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said following talks with Pope Francis. “The man who is reconciling many people and religions in the world is adamant in his position that the Roman Catholic Church remains absolutely firm regarding the principle of non-recognition of the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo and Metohija,” Nikolic told Tanjug. Nikolic said that Pope Francis is following all developments in Kosovo and Metohija closely and with concern and that he is aware of the scale of the persecution of Christians and Roman Catholics that has taken place in Kosovo and Metohija.
Albanians form their association (RTS/Tanjug)

Representatives of five Albanian political parties in Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja formed the association of these three southern Serbian municipalities on Saturday. The goal was to ensure that the Albanians in this part of Serbia are granted the same rights as are guaranteed to the Serbs in the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) in Kosovo and Metohija. The decision was made by a majority vote of the present 68 deputies. The session was not attended by deputies from Medvedja, but the President of the National Council of Albanians Jonuz Musliu is confident that they will also agree with this decision very soon. Musliu told reporters after the meeting that the aim of the association was to provide the Albanians with the same rights as were given to the Serbs in the ZSO, primarily in the areas such as police, judiciary and health-care.
The Albanians in Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja need jobs and a secure future, rather than a path of chauvinism and conflicts, which can only lead to more young Albanians moving out of that part of Serbia, says the Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric. “The Albanians in those three municipalities should be a bridge between the Serbs and the Albanians, rather than a bargaining chip and an instrument of manipulation by irresponsible politicians from our southern province,” Djuric told Tanjug. The Serbian authorities will not be responding to provocations, but will be concerned with the implementation of laws and the Constitution while protecting the human and ethnic rights of ethnic Albanians, Djuric noted.
Omerovic: Abuse of National Council of Albanians (Politika/Tanjug)

The Chairman of the Serbian parliamentary Committee for Human and Minority Rights and Gender Equality Meho Omerovic has stated that part of the Albanian political parties in southern Serbia wish a position for themselves that not a single national minority in the country has. “They are doing this through the National Council of Albanians and thus abusing this institution. Nowhere in the competencies of the Council does it state according to the law that they should deal with issues that concern territorial organization of the state and with linking on national basis,” Omerovic said. He pointed that it is not in good faith to link the Brussels agreement and copying of something that was agreed in Brussels with the attempt of drawing attention to oneself, as well as to internationalize a problem that doesn’t exist.

SNP: Government to convene in Presevo (Novosti)

The leader of the Serbian People’s Party (SNP) Nenad Popovic has requested the Serbian government to urgently hold a session in Presevo and send a message to both Serbs and Albanians that preservation of integrity is the priority of the state. Reacting to the formation of the Albanian municipalities in southern Serbia, Popovic pointed out that the Serbian government should nip in the bud every attempt of separatism with all political and legal means appropriate for democratic states. “We demand a quick and resolute reaction of the competent authorities and urgent criminal prosecution of persons who are destabilizing the state of Serbia with this act and who are harshly violating its Constitution,” said the SNP leader who thinks that the Albanians in southern Serbia have “thrown a gauntlet to the state”.

Djuric, Moro: Belgrade wants more dynamic normalization process with Pristina (Tanjug)

Belgrade wants a more dynamic process of normalizing relations with Pristina, Djuric has said during a meeting he had with French Ambassador to Serbia Christine Moro. Moro pointed out that the agreements reached in Brussels in August were also very important to Serbia’s EU integration process, the Office for Kosovo and Metohija said in a release following the meeting which took place on Friday. Djuric briefed the Ambassador about results of the Brussels dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina and stressed that Belgrade found setting up of the ZSO and preservation of stability in the province to be the most important issues. He said expert-level talks would continue later in September and that Belgrade was very interested in direct talks with Pristina on specific issues, which required an agreeable political climate in Pristina. “There is no reason why some sectorial issues, in the areas concerning economy and education, should not to be resolved in direct talks at the ministerial level,” said Djuric. He stressed that Belgrade wanted a more dynamic process of normalization, which would include full liberalization of the movement of people, goods and services between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, with the removal of all administrative, financial, physical and other obstacles. We expect that as soon as the deals already agreed in Brussels are implemented we will be able to start EU-facilitated talks on the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija, property, missing persons, sustainable return of displaced persons and normalization of air transportation, said Djuric.

Scandal at Budva conference on regional stability (Novosti)

The regional conference in Budva that was supposed to be one more opportunity for normalization of relations in the Balkans nearly turned into a diplomatic scandal over the failure of the organizers who placed insignia of the false state of Kosovo in front of the Pristina representative. Serbian Minister without Portfolio in charge of EU integration Jadranka Jokismovic protested over the flag that was placed on the table in front of Edita Tahiri, the Minister for Dialogue in the Pristina government. According to Novosti, Tahiri’s presence at the panel of the conference on cooperation between the state and civil society in the EU integration process was a surprise for the Serbian delegation, because she had not been announced as the participant, nor has the Serbian side known that she was planned to sit right next to the Serbian Minister. Joksimovic said that she was not sure that Kosovo “had the right to a flag at regional conferences. “If we want to speak about regional cooperation, I am asking the organizer to respect all agreements made in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue,” said Joksimovic who, nevertheless, decided to speak at the panel. Tahiri said that according to the agreement on regional cooperation Kosovo has the right to be represented with other states of the region, with all symbols. “You do not have the right to have a flag next to you. Don’t misinterpret the agreement,” said Joksimovic. The cabinet of Minister Joksimovic announced that the European Movement of Montenegro, which organized the conference, admitted that the Pristina delegation was not adequately represented and apologized to the Serbian delegation.

Serbian police will cooperate with Kosovo (Danas)

The European Commission (EC) has given the final positive assessment of the Action Plan for Chapter 24 that deals with justice, freedom and security, pointing out that it is done in accordance with the requested criteria and standards of the EU, the Serbian Interior Ministry announced. “Serbia’s EU path has advanced with this positive assessment of Chapter 24. Serbia’s goal is harmonization with the EU norms and their successful implementation, all for the sake of a better life and greater security of our citizens,” said Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic. Bojan Elek from the Belgrade Center for Security Policy opines that the EC’s positive assessment is good news, but notes that now Serbia needs to implement the agreed. According to him, the Action Plan for Chapter 24 implies also making of a series of politically sensitive moves. “The Plan envisages the establishment of police cooperation with Kosovo, at the same level as with other states in the region. We need to sign a series of agreements with Kosovo in the following period that will regulate police and judicial cooperation and joint control of external borders. Perhaps the most complicated thing will be the signing of the re-admission agreement with Kosovo, because it indirectly opens the issue of citizenship, Elek claims, noting that all these issues are technically feasible, but at the same time politically delicate.

REGIONAL PRESS

Radoncic: We will help B&H, but first we have to know what HDZ and SDA want (klix.ba)

After Presidents of SDA and HDZ B&H, Bakir Izetbegovic and Dragan Covic said on Saturday that they want to stabilize the government and the parliamentary majority, and that SBB is a favorable partner in that new majority, president of SBB, Fahrudin Radoncic, gave his opinion.

“We want to be benevolent, constructive and we are aware that the ruling government is wandering around for a year and that it is not able to create a stable government. We are ready to help primarily B&H, but in order to make it happen, we have to know what they want, what they are doing and preparing, and to see our role in all that process, which of course, has to be fully specified.” Radoncic said that only when he get familiar with what SDA and HDZ B& agreed on Saturday, about their concept of overcoming the crisis, what are their strategic terms for the next three years of government, those parties will have an answer whether SBB will be part of that story or not.

Izetbegovic: Reconciliation between SDA and SBB necessary (Novo vrijeme)

The meeting between HDZ B&H and SDA, which started on Saturday morning in the headquarters of HDZ in Mostar, ended around noon. The leaders of the two parties Dragan Covic and Bakir Izetbegovic said to the press that they hope the FB&H will get a stable parliamentary majority in coming two months. The final agreement whether SBB will also enter into government at the level of FB&H was not reached, after first DF and then BPS left the federal coalition with SDA and HDZ B&H. Covic has been advocating for entering of SBB into government for several months already, while Izetbegovic also lately speaks more and more about the need for reconciliation between SDA and SBB. “I think that the political agenda of SBB and SDA is very close”, said Izetbegovic in Mostar. “We have a framework which, according to me, includes SBB as well. We want to stabilize the circumstances, stop the conflicts, and reach a consensus when it comes to the European path of B&H,” Izetbegovic added. The discussion about the forming of new parliamentary majority in FB&H will continue soon, announced the leaders of SDA and HDZ B&H. when it comes to the pre-composition of the authority on the level of B&H, actually the announcements that SNSD might replace DF and the Alliance for Changes, Covic said that is depends on the DF whether they will leave or stay in the government on the level of B&H as well. As concerns the coordination mechanism, the SDA President said it is not acceptable in this form. “Primarily it should be in accordance with the Stabilization and Association Agreement, and it cannot contain that there must be a consensus of all members, every level should decide by consensus. There could eventually be a consensus of all present, such as it was as proposed in 2013, the mechanism would very quickly stop negotiation processes with the EU. I don’t think that only the cantons should be brakes, because they can decide only what is in their jurisdiction, but decision by consensus at all levels would certainly lead to someone from the members being sick, present, or so on,” explained Izetbegovic.

SNSD favors both structural dialogue and RS referendum (Oslobodjenje)

The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) believes it is good that the structural dialogue on reform of the judiciary in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) is continuing, but will not give up on a referendum in RS on the Court and Prosecutor, said Nebojsa Radmanovic, Vice President of the SNSD. At a press conference in Banja Luka he said that the continuation of the structural dialogue is good for all citizens and B&H as a whole, but regardless of the advancements achieved, the RS will not give up on the referendum on the Court and Prosecutor. He says that they have not “totally analyzed” all the details from the protocol signed at the recent meeting in the framework of the structural dialogue on the B&H judiciary, “but it is insufficient for us to give up on the referendum in RS, because the referendum is a much greater thing, a question of freedom, protection of international law and the Dayton Accord and the jurisdiction of RS and others”. He says that this stance is not confusing, but it means that the SNSD stands by the referendum, supports steps forward in the structural dialogue, and encourages that what was agreed at the meeting of justice ministers of RS on 10 September in Brussels be hastened. Radmanovic says that just when it looks like what still needs to be agreed, they will see how things stand. “We are satisfied with what was in Brussels, but all our demands could not be exposed at the meeting,” the SNSD vice president said, pointing out that he gave thanks because it was shown that in B&H they can agree around such an issue. Radmanovic says that “holding the referendum in RS protects the Dayton Accord” and that, as he said, the SNSD – and especially RS President Milorad Dodik – because of the referendum decision is suffering determined pressures from a part of the diplomats in the international community.

B&H prosecutor’s office discriminates against Serb victims (Srna)

The B&H Prosecutor’s Office has a discriminatory attitude against the Serb victims of war, which is why it should cease to exist or start prosecuting the ones responsible for crimes against Serbs, says Milutin Misic, a member of the Advisory Board of the B&H Missing Persons Institute. Misic believes that the Prosecutor’s Office is intentionally obstructed, and that it should stop. “The Prosecutor’s Office has a discriminatory attitude against the Serb victims of war. I can prove this, especially when it comes to prosecutors’ investigations into the circumstances of killings and perpetrators of war crimes against Serbs,” Misic told Srna on the occasion of September 15, the Day of the Persons Killed and Gone Missing in the Defence and Liberation War of Republika Srpska (RS). Misic mentioned the following example: it has been two years since all information was submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office stating that bones can be found around the Miljacka river in the area of Sarajevo stretching from Alipasino Polje to a television station building, which were brought there together with the dirt used to build an embankment at the site. “The bones have been found to be of Serbs, but the Prosecutor’s Office has never tried to establish where the dirt was taken from, who drove the trucks or who the contractor was,” Misic said. He pointed out there were many other examples of the Office’s obstruction regarding Serb-victim related cases. “Until the Prosecutor’s Office changes its policy and ensures equality in the prosecution of all crimes will we have the same situation we have today, because the Prosecutor’s Office, like the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor, has a discriminatory attitude against the Serb victims of the 1990s war,” concluded Misic. The Day of the Persons Killed and Gone Missing in the Defense and Liberation War will be marked on Tuesday. RS is still searching for the remains of 1,676 veterans and civilians, while three memorial ossuaries in the entity keep the remains of 657 exhumed yet unidentified persons.

Dodik: Meeting with Croatian delegation – good message for many (Srna)

The RS President Milorad Dodik has stated that the meeting with the Croatian delegation, headed by Croatian President Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic that was held at Saturday, was very good and that many elements were introduced to further understanding of all the issues of common interests. Dodik stressed that the visit of the Croatian President to Banja Luka is highly important, because it shows the respect of what Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) precisely is and it might be a good message for those coming to B&H so they can approach reality in the same manner. The RS President told Srna that during the meeting between the delegations of RS and Croatia, energy and infrastructure projects were also discussed, i.e. the projects that are of interests to both the RS and Croatia, as well as sustainable return and further development and strengthening of cooperation. “We discussed the projects that the RS is interested in, which are realized through the B&H institutions. These are primarily infrastructure projects, transport corridors,” Dodik told Srna after the meeting with the Croatian delegation in Banja Luka. The RS President has stressed that energy related issue is certainly very interesting for both RS and Croatia. This particularly refers to the projects with a common interest, which the talks have already held about. “An example is the cooperation between the hydro power plants on the Trebisnjica River and Croatian Power Utility /Elektroprivreda Hrvatske/, which should be extended and we should work on the development of new projects,” said Dodik. He stressed that they have discussed sustainable return and the status of people who fled Croatia and people from RS who left for Croatia, as well as manner and possibilities to help them. “Realistically, a refugee problem should be viewed from the standpoint of life. Nowadays, only the elderly people return, while the young ones integrate into the society in which they arrived, get employed and start schools, have friends and tend to remain in new places where they settled,” Dodik said, adding that the refugees and displaced persons related issue certainly should not be closed in either the RS or Croatia. This issue cannot be closed until the return problem is fully resolved. He said that people should be allowed to return and that the conditions for their sustainable return should be created. According to him, the meeting in Banja Luka was also an opportunity to talk about Serbo-Croatian relations, because, as he said, it is known that these two peoples are the most important in this area throughout history in political terms. “It is obvious that the creation of Croatia, the RS and the restoration of Serbia as a state in the territorial sense, solved the problem of relations between Serbs and Croats, and that certain problems related to the past, i.e. the interpretations of the facts from the past, remained, but nowadays it is necessary to work on the issues of the future. It is necessary to resolve solvable problems, such as, for example, the issue of demarcation, a problem that we face in Kostajnica, and the issue between B&H and Croatia concerning Neum,” said Dodik. He added that there is ongoing problem concerning the border between Serbia and Croatia, and that it should be actively worked on these matters in order to ensure ascending cooperation between the two countries in the economic and political levels. The RS President said that Croatia, as a member of the EU and a European country on the European forums, is able to present the situation in B&H in the best and most appropriate manner given that the interest of Brussels and the European public exists.

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Justice Reforms Fail to Halt Bosnian Serb Referendum (BIRN, by Denis Dzidic, 14 September 2015)

Bosnian Serb leaders say they’ll go ahead with a divisive referendum questioning the powers of the state judiciary despite an agreement between the country’s justice ministers on reforms.

The ruling party in Bosnia’s Serb-led entity Republika Srpska said on Sunday that it welcomed last week’s agreement on judicial reform but would not abandon its plan for a controversial referendum questioning the powers of the state court and prosecution over the entity.

“We support [the fact that] ministers of justice from Bosnia and Herzegovina have reached a certain compromise, but that cannot lead to the postponement of the referendum,” said MP Nebojsa Radmanovic, vice-president of the ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD. The protocol which ministers from both state and entity levels signed last Thursday at a meeting in Brussels was a part of the so-called ‘structured dialogue’ aimed at overhauling Bosnia’s judiciary. The agreement – details of which have not yet been made public – reportedly opens the door for a series of reforms which will cover the Bosnian state court, prosecutor’s office and the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, which oversees parts of the country’s justice system. It came after weeks of pressure from Republika Srpska, which has vowed to stage a referendum questioning the authority of Bosnia’s international supervisor, the Office of the High Representative as well as the state-level judiciary because of its alleged bias against Serbs, especially in war crimes cases. But the Brussels protocol came under fire from state judges and experts who warned that the proposed changes might undermine the judiciary. The president of the Bosnian state court, Meddzida Kreso, told media that the agreement was “a concession by Europe to Bosnian Serb pressures”. “According to the information I have, the agreement foresees that the Bosnian court’s jurisdiction contained in section 7 of the law on the state level court is abolished. This cannot be allowed,” Kreso said. The Bosnian state court has jurisdiction over all criminal acts covered in the state-level criminal code, adopted in 2003. According to section 7 of the legislation, the institution can also demand that cases relating to criminal acts covered by the laws of entities be sent to state level if they undermine the sovereignty, territorial integrity or national security of the country. This ability to take over cases from the entity-level judiciaries has been strongly criticised by the Bosnian Serb leadership. According to government officials, the justice-reform package would limit the jurisdiction of the Bosnian court and prosecution to cases covered by the state-level criminal code. The reforms also foresee that the Bosnian court, which currently has both a first instance and appeals section, would be broken up into two separate institutions, thus creating a higher court instead of the current appeals chamber. The new, higher court would be built on Republika Srpska’s territory while the Bosnian state court would remain in Sarajevo. The Republika Srpska leadership had initially stated that the referendum – scheduled to take place in mid-November – could be cancelled if all the country’s levels of government agree to reform Bosnia’s judiciary. After last week’s agreement in Brussels, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik and its Justice Minister Anton Kasipovic expressed satisfaction, which raised hopes the deadlock could be broken. But Radmanovic insisted on Sunday said that the referendum was still on. International officials have warned the Republika Srpska government not to hold the referendum, which would be defined as illegal because entities have no right to challenge the authority of international or state institutions. Local and international experts are also concerned that if held, the referendum could seriously destabilise the country because it would be perceived by Bosniaks as a challenge to the constitutional and territorial integrity of Bosnia. The Bosnian Serb opposition meanwhile has criticised the Brussels agreement. Dragan Cavic, from the opposition People’s Democratic Movement, said that it only strengthens the state-level judiciary. “The proposed higher court is in essence a supreme court on a state level,” Cavic told journalists in Banja Luka. Aleksandra Pandurovic from the opposition Serb Democratic Party said that the agreement was an obvious attempt by the Republika Srpska government and the ruling SNSD party to save face while avoiding the international sanctions they would face if they hold the referendum. “When there as a threat, because they were playing around with with the referendum, that their apartments and villas in Portoroz, Vienna and Monte Carlo will be confiscated, they ran to Brussels and signed whatever the foreigners offered, handing over Republika Srpska’s judiciary on a platter,” Pandurovic told a press conference on Sunday.

To Imagine Syria at Peace, Think of Bosnia (Bloomberg, by Marc Champion, 14 September 2015)

It took a temporary partition to end the war that tore apart Bosnia in the 1990s. Why not do the same for Syria?

In one sense, a partitioned Syria is already visible, its contours drawn by the front lines of the civil war. President Bashar al-Assad has retreated from territory that was too difficult for his overextended forces to hold, giving up the attempt to reimpose nationwide control. (That doesn’t mean he’s on the run. Iran and Russia have made it clear they won’t let that happen.)

Kurds hold the area near the Turkish border, having driven out Islamic State.

Sunni-Shiite Divide

The competing factions in areas held by Sunni Arab rebels make for a more complicated picture, but a map of how the front lines looked this summer shows the outlines of a potential partition of Syria into three parts. The red designates regime control. The yellow is Kurdish. The green and black are Sunni Arab, including the area now controlled by Islamic State. (The white is sparsely populated desert.) Fabrice Balanche, a researcher at the Group for Research and Studies on the Mediterranean and Middle East in Lyons, France, has been mapping Syria’s ethnic and religious communities since long before the war. He was pilloried in 2011 for saying that Western confidence in the inevitability of Assad’s demise was misplaced, and that civil war and Syria’s disintegration would result. He is, if anything, less sanguine today: We have a de facto partition, but nobody wants to recognize this partition. In Damascus, there are posters everywhere about a unified Syria. The opposition say no we don’t need a partition. But we will have one.

Balanche thinks the war will continue, grinding out the shape of a divided Syria, because the determination of Iran, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the U.S. to secure their interests remains stronger than any desire to end the fighting. But what if, as with the Dayton accords in 1995, it was possible to get the outside powers together with their clients within Syria, and complete that process by negotiation, instead? Dayton split Bosnia into entities in which Muslims, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats would more or less govern and police themselves, while creating a federal shell around them to be filled as trust was restored. It was an imperfect solution, yet it ended the bloodshed. In a similarly cantonized Syria, Balanche reasons, the regime would want to control the whole Israeli and Lebanese border, as well as Damascus, Homs and the coastal Alawite heartland. Assad would have to give up Hama, a predominantly Sunni city with a deep distrust of the regime, as well as the surrounding Sunni villages. There would then be some tougher issues to deal with. For example, the rebels are entrenched in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, yet the regime would insist on holding the city. Similarly, Assad would want to hold onto Aleppo, Syria’s largest and (before the war) wealthiest city; it’s now mostly under rebel control and cut off from the regime’s heartland. Either there would have to be a trade, or neutral zones established and secured by a heavily armed international peacekeeping force of the kind successfully deployed in eastern Croatia at the end of the Yugoslav war. Similarly, rebels hold some pockets surrounded by regime-controlled territory along Syria’s border with Lebanon. The regime holds the seacoast north of Lebanon, part of which is mainly Sunni, a fact that would be unacceptable to rebels who would want their entity to have access to the sea. The war is slowly resolving these issues as each side focuses its military resources on what it wants most, but it could take years, Balanche says. A one-stop peace deal like Dayton is unlikely in Syria, for two reasons. First, there was no combatant in Bosnia like Islamic State, a group so radical that it simply cannot be at the negotiating table or be left to survive under a settlement. Second, the world was different in 1995. Although Russia supported Serbia, the U.S. was so dominant that it could corral the international community behind the solution it wanted. That’s no longer the case. Still, a Dayton-style agreement among the outside powers could simplify the Syrian conflict even without purporting to end the war right away. That could provide the basis for addressing two obstacles to any settlement: Islamic State and the conflicting interests of the war’s international sponsors.

Once no longer under attack by Assad, Sunni rebels working with the U.S. and others would be able to focus on seizing their assigned territory from Islamic State, which they already fight on a second front. Given determined air support, weapons and intelligence, they could probably prevail. The endurance of coalitions of fighters working with the U.S. and Jordan is one of the few positive recent developments in Syria, at a time when quixotic U.S. attempts to train and equip an all-new force has faltered. “A lot of people say the Kurds are the only ones who have taken territory from IS,” says Christopher McNaboe, who manages the Syria Mapping Project at the Carter Center in Washington. “That isn’t true. The opposition took a lot, and has been fighting IS a lot.” An excellent report published Sept. 2 describes how some of the rebel forces have begun to exceed low international expectations in southern Syria. An agreement that assures each of the outside powers that their clients would retain control in their designated territories could also go a long way to allowing Iran, Saudi Arabia and others to compromise, because the war would no longer be zero-sum. It’s impossible to say exactly what each country would demand, but here are some probable minimums. Iran would want a friendly regime dominated by Alawites (a Muslim religious minority with connections to Shiite Islam) to control Damascus and a secure corridor from the capital’s airport to Lebanon. Russia would want to know that its naval base at Tartus was secure, and that Syria as a whole would become neither a Sunni Islamist state nor a U.S. protectorate. Saudi Arabia would have to see Hezbollah leave Syria and Iran’s influence squeezed. Israel would need to be sure the Syrian side of the Golan Heights wouldn’t become a new playground for Hezbollah. Turkey would want a Sunni entity to control Aleppo and the north, and Kurdish autonomy limited. Meeting all those requirements through partition would be tortuous. Without partition, though, an international consensus would be impossible. That, says Balanche, is why the rash of diplomatic initiatives on Syria that have emerged since the Iran nuclear deal “are rubbish.” Even with the international players on board, it would be a challenge to persuade Syria’s combatants to limit their territorial ambitions. In the Yugoslav wars, everyone involved wanted at some level to carve territory up. In Syria, there is no such desire. Other difficulties, however, are less insurmountable than they once seemed. For a long time, for example, a compelling reason to avoid talking about partition was that it would trigger ethnic cleansing, as each side tried to establish facts on the ground before negotiations began. By now, large scale expulsions are unlikely because “ethnic cleansing has already happened,” Balanche says. In rebel-held areas, Alawites and minority populations such as Druze and Christians have mostly fled, leaving an almost entirely Sunni population. Kurdish areas have also been largely emptied of Sunni Arabs. Regime areas, by contrast, remain diverse; Alawites and Shiites make up just 13 percent of Syria’s population and Assad’s support relies on other minorities who fear Islamic State more than him. In addition, most internal displacement has been into regime-held territory. The government controls about 30 percent of Syria’s territory but more than half the population, up to 12 million of the 18 million still in the country. Islamic State controls about 45 percent of territory, but only 2 million to 2.5 million people, according to Balanche’s calculations. As usual, only one country, the U.S., has the influence to persuade outside powers to accept partition, and to broker a cease-fire between Assad and the less radical rebels. At a time when Russia is building an air base at Tartus, and Turkey is escalating a war against Kurdish militants allied to those in Syria, it is surely the moment to try something that has at least a chance to reduce the bloodshed, no matter how hard it will be to succeed.

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