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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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in the Syrian theatre of operations officially con-
sidered to be propagating jihadist terrorism.
Nevertheless, in the context of the mosaic that
is Syria today, determining which of the many
factions fighting in the field can be qualified as
“opposition groups” and should therefore be
included in peace talks has been an extremely
tricky issue. Groups that are a part of the Is-
lamic Front such as Jaysh al-Islam or of the Army
of Conquest such as Ahrar ash-Sham, have col-
laborated closely with and even fought shoul-
der-to-shoulder with the ANF, which has been a
leading force within the Army of Conquest.
There is division over how these groups, which
embrace Salafist or Wahhabist ideology, should
be regarded; Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey
support them but Russia considers them terror-
ists, as, of course, does Assad, who views any
faction fighting against his regime, regardless of
its ideology, a terrorist organisation.
Another point of contention is the Kurds
who control Rojava, a de facto autonomous re-
gion that stretches across much of northern
Syria and includes three-quarters of Syria’s bor-
der with Turkey and is represented by the Dem-
ocratic Union Party (PYD). Its defence force con-
sists of People’s Protection Units (YPG), which
have fought successfully against IS but have also
skirmished with other Islamic opposition groups
and never militarily confronted the Assad re-
gime. Due to their collaboration with the PKK
(the Kurdish political party in Turkey), Ankara
considers the YPG (and by extension the PYD)
terrorist groups. Whereas Turkish artillery have
repeatedly shelled YPG positions, Washington
has given the Kurds extensive logistical support
that has included the construction of an air base
airfield built on Kurdish territory. Here we have
nothing less than a situation in which two NATO
allies, the United States and Turkey, are respec-
tively acting in favour and against the same
group. Another contradiction is the current US
policy of simultaneously providing support to
the Kurds and Islamic opposition groups such as
the Islamic Front –enemies that routinely attack
each other. These examples provide a basic idea
of the muddled way in which foreign interven-
tion in Syria is being carried out.
Despite the fact that IS cannot be dealt with
effectively until the Syrian war has been brought
to an end, the EU has not assumed a leading
role in political initiatives undertaken to resolve
the conflict between the Syrian government
and the opposition. In June 2012, UN Joint Spe-
cial Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan convoked a
meeting of an especially invited “action group”
in Geneva since referred to as “Geneva I”,
which was attended by the Secretaries-General
of the United Nations and the League of Arab
States, the Foreign Ministers of China, France,
Russia, United Kingdom, United States, Turkey,
Iraq (Chair of the Summit of the League of Arab
States), Kuwait (Chair of the Council of Foreign
Ministers of the League of Arab States) and Qa-
tar (Chair of the Arab Follow-up Committee on
Syria of the League of Arab States), and the Eu-
ropean Union High Representative for Foreign
and Security Policy. After this meeting, Annan
released a communiqué that laid out a road
map for a peace process in Syria in which one of
key steps was to be “the establishment of a
transitional governing body that could include
members of the present government and the
opposition and should be formed on the basis
of mutual consent”, a message that unfortu-
nately fell on deaf ears. Syrian government and
representatives of some of the opposition
groups (none of them jihadist) participated in
the Geneva II conference organised a year and
a half later (January and February 2014). On this
occasion, opposition groups negotiated under
the leadership of the Syrian National Coalition,