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THE EUROPEAN UNION’S RESPONSE TO JIHADIST TERRORISM AND THE SYRIAN CONFLICT
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which acted without the participation of its
principal organisation, the Syrian National
Council, as the Council refused to take part in
that or any other negotiation that included As-
sad. This conference, which was attended by
representatives of the UN, the EU, the Arab
League and the Organisation of Islamic Coop-
eration and 40 countries (amongst them 11 EU
Member States) but excluded Iran, did not pro-
duce any substantial positive results due to the
impossibility of resolving the issue as to whether
or not Bachar al-Assad would remain in power.
The war of everyone against each other con-
tinued in Syria, and with it an ever-mounting
death toll than included victims of starvation in
places like Madaya and massive displacements
of refugees. At a meeting of the International
Syria Support Group (ISSG) held in Vienna on
November 14, 2015 that was co-chaired by the
U.S. and Russia and in which 17 countries in-
cluding Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, the
United Nations, the Arab League and the EU
participated, an agreement was struck to work
towards a political transition in Syria on the ba-
sis of the Geneva Communiqué, implement a
ceasefire between government and opposition
troops and initiate negotiations between the
two sides in January. All parties present also
agreed that IS and the Al-Nusra Front (ANF)
must be defeated. The United States and Russia,
however, expressed divided views regarding the
role to be played by Bashar al-Assad going for-
ward. US Secretary of State John Kerry stated
that peace would not be possible while Assad
remained in power, whereas Russian Foreign Af-
fairs Minister Sergey Lavrov held that IS, not As-
sad, was the enemy.
European countries and the U.S. began to
tone down their insistence that Assad must step
down in the light of evidence that without a
clear, consensual alternative waiting in the
wings, his brusque removal could plunge Syria
into a state of chaos similar to that in Libya. An
even stronger motive for their change of heart
on this point was the priority they placed on
defeating IS. The challenge now was to con-
vince the governments of Sunni countries such
as Turkey to accept the provisional maintenance
of the present Syrian government for the sole
purpose of eliminating the threat of IS with as-
surances that once that goal was accomplished
a democratic transition would take place in
stages to be agreed upon in fulfilment of the
Geneva communiqué of 2012.
On November 18, the UN Security Council
(UNSC) unanimously adopted resolution 2254,
endorsed the Vienna Communiqué and re-
quested that the Secretary-General convene ne-
gotiations to be followed by the drafting of a
new Syrian constitution and the organisation of
free elections in that country by July 2017. The
sticking point was determining which opposi-
tion groups should be involved in this process.
Whilst Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura worked
hard to convince the 34 groups that constituted
a newly created High Negotiations Committee
(HNC) to meet together in Geneva, the Kurds
were eliminated from the process by means of a
veto on the part of Turkey. The Geneva III talks
finally got underway (by an indirect procedure)
on March 1, but cancelled two days later due to
a major offensive launched by Syrian govern-
ment troops supported by Russian airstrikes
against rebel strongholds north of Aleppo along
the Turkish border.
When it met again on February 11 and 12,
the International Syria Support Group agreed to
the implementation of a nationwide ceasefire
within seven days to facilitate the provision of
humanitarian aid to besieged areas and further
negotiations on political transition to be held in
Geneva. However, due to heavy fighting in the