Ahmad al-Sharaa was declared transitional president of Syria on Jan. 29, 2025, almost two months after he led a coalition of Syrian rebel armed factions into Damascus to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Over the course of Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, the United Nations exhausted efforts to try to solve the devastating conflict, but the collective effects are “difficult to discern,” the essayist writes. So, it’s time for the UN to make major changes on the Syria file.
After President Bashar al-Assad of Syria fled the country on Dec. 8, 2024, a surprisingly brisk military offensive was carried out by various Syrian opposition groups, aided by numerous outside patrons, marching from their bases in Idlib in northwest Syria to Aleppo and then southward to the capital of Damascus, all within 11 days. The devastating civil war that had started nearly 14 years earlier as an uprising against a brutal hereditary dictatorship had finally culminated in the latter’s sudden demise.
Change had come to Syria not because of the United Nations but despite of it.
With hundreds of UN Security Council meetings held on Syria over 13 years and four special envoys of the secretaries-general, the collective impact of which on settling the conflict in Syria is difficult to discern, change also needs to come to the UN regarding Syria. Will the recently transformed political dynamics between Russia and the United States in the Council be the engine for change?
It is also time to concede that the UN’s decade-long political mediation work and the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria leading this effort in settling the Syrian war has reached a point of irreversible irrelevance. It needs to be abolished. A different platform needs to be identified to lead this work, one that could be endorsed by the Security Council. This is not to say there is no role for the UN in Syria during this critical transitional period.
The UN’s failures were not for want of trying. From 2011 to 2022, two years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza that started in October 2023, the conflict in Syria was the most acrimonious and divisive issue on the agenda of the Security Council.
From 2011 to 2024, the Council held nearly 700 meetings behind closed doors and in the public. No other conflict in the 80-year history of the body has carried the distinction of having three dedicated Council meetings a month, as did the conflict in Syria: one on the country’s “chemical weapons file,” one on the “humanitarian file” and another on the political dimensions. These were in addition to the numerous “emergency meetings” convened on weekends and late evenings, especially at the height of the conflict from 2016 to 2018.
Between 2012 and 2022, Syria was the No. 1 topic of the Council’s closed consultations, where the most intense and frank discussions take place among members. In 2016, 30 percent, or a third of all Council closed consultations were focused on Syria.
Yet, despite the intensity and the singular focus of the Council on Syria, there were very few results and effects on the ground or progress toward a resolution.
Resolution bonanzas
Throughout the conflict, the Council failed to adopt more draft resolutions on Syria than those it adopted successfully. To be precise, 25 resolutions were adopted, while 29 draft resolutions were either vetoed by one or two permanent members or they failed to secure enough votes to pass. Most resolutions, whether they were adopted or not, had to do with either the renewal of cross-border humanitarian operations that the Council had originally authorized in 2014, or on Syria’s chemical weapons file. There was little related to the political file to settle the conflict.
In 2019, the Council failed to adopt a single resolution on Syria. Two draft resolutions were vetoed, and two others failed to garner enough votes. These were related to the cross-border humanitarian program and the 2019 ceasefire in Idlib.
The desperately needed humanitarian operation was obliterated in a final Council showdown in the summer of 2023, after the authorized cross-border entry points had been reduced from the initial four in 2014 to one in early 2023. There were also no Council decisions on Syria in 2024 before the demise of the Assad regime in December.
Early in the Syrian conflict, the five permanent members of the Council (P5) – Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — having drawn their respective hard lines in the sand, expected, cajoled, threatened or incentivized the 10 elected Council members to fall in line behind their respective “either with us or against us” political battle cry that morphed into more solidified blocks with Ukraine and Gaza crisis a decade later.
By 2017, the acutely divided P5 positions on Syria had plunged the Council’s public meetings into choreographed political point-scoring spectacles rather than a forum seeking solutions to the conflict. They did so on schedule, without missing a beat, every month, three times a month, at the minimum.
The year 2017 was also when the Council eliminated the short-lived Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM). Established by Resolution 2235 in 2015, JIM was a partnership between the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mandated to identify and hold accountable those responsible for the use of chemical weapons where such acts had been confirmed by OPCW fact-finding mission for Syria.
Mired in accusations of bias by JIM experts and conflicting interpretations of their reports, Russia and the US brought the renewal of the JIM mandate to a final blow in November 2017 with two competing draft resolutions. Both failed by veto or lack of sufficient number of yes votes. Ironically, the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal was one of the rare early achievements of the Council when it unanimously adopted Resolution 2118 in September 2013.
Propelled by Syria’s accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention the same month and a framework agreement between Russia and the US on the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons, Resolution 2118 set the ambitious task of destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles and program by mid-2014, in less than a year. It should be recalled that this chain of rapid developments was triggered by a confirmed use of chemical weapons in Ghouta, the suburbs of Damascus, on Aug. 21, 2013, which raised the prospect of US military airstrikes on Syria amid President Obama’s proclaimed “red line.”
The joint OPCW-UN operation to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles was roundly considered a success. Yet, the Council spent another decade in ever-crescendo-ing P5 acrimony on Syria’s chemical weapons file over accusations of either Syria’s alleged failure of full declaration of its program or reported obstacles to OPCW’s verification efforts by Damascus.
Were the concerns real or political theatrics? It is only fair to pose the question given that the monthly meetings on this file suddenly were suspended in January and February 2025, after the end of Assad’s rule in December 2024, but one did take place earlier in March. The Council had continued apace its monthly public meetings on Syria’s humanitarian and political files.
Fallout in the Security Council
The conflict in Syria nearly broke the back of the Council and further eroded its fragile credibility, the start of which was heralded by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The UN Secretariat’s involvement to resolve the Syria conflict began in 2012, when, with the League of Arab States, it appointed former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as Joint Special Envoy for Syria.
Annan quickly negotiated a ceasefire, sought to bolster it with the deployment of a monitoring mission, the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), and convened an “action group for Syria” in Geneva. It included the foreign ministers of the P5 and numerous regional states, as well as senior representatives of the European Union and Arab League.
It produced a six-point peace plan, known as the Geneva Communiqué. Amid a rapid collapse of the ceasefire and suspension of UNSMIS activities, the Security Council failed to endorse the communiqué due to a US-Russian dispute about the meaning of the plan’s “transitional governing body”; specifically, the role of President Al-Assad within it. Frustrated by the lack of international support for his efforts, Annan resigned in protest after less than six months on the job.
His successor, the senior UN official and veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, took a different approach. Empowered by a seeming consensus within the Council, which in September 2013 adopted Resolution 2118, endorsing the Geneva Communiqué and its call for a Syrian-led political process, he prioritized intra-Syrian negotiations.
In late 2013, he succeeded in convening the first UN-led negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition in Montreux and Geneva. This accomplishment, however, foundered due to the intransigence of the Syrian parties and their foreign allies. In May 2014, he called it a day. Brahimi’s efforts would also represent the last serious UN attempt to mediate a comprehensive resolution of the Syria crisis.
Brahimi’s successors, Staffan De Mistura and, since 2018, Geir Pedersen, have played “small ball” to excess. While Syria burned, De Mistura wasted more than four years, his entire tenure, promoting a series of failed gimmicks. These included a temporary “freeze” of hostilities in one neighborhood of one city that neither materialized nor had an effect on the conflict’s temperature; a “stress-test” in mid-2015 consisting of “216 consultations” that neither achieved its proclaimed objective of narrowing the gap between the Syrian parties nor produced new insights into how to resolve the conflict; and discussions on “four baskets” of issues that produced no meaningful negotiations on any aspect of the crisis.
Rather than lead international efforts, De Mistura was reduced to bartering the UN’s legitimacy in exchange for a seat at the table of initiatives, such as the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) formed by Washington and Moscow, and the Russian-sponsored Syrian National Dialogue conferences in Sochi and Astana.
The last UN envoy?
For his part, Pedersen devoted over six years to a futile effort to produce a new Syrian constitution, or more accurately, to persuade the Syrian parties to attend meetings to agree on an agenda for negotiations on constitutional matters. In fairness to Pedersen, Security Council Resolution 2254 (in 2015) tasked the UN to work with Syrians to establish, within six months, “a schedule and process for drafting a new constitution.” He can at least claim credit for launching within one year a process that De Mistura failed to get off the ground during his final three years in office.
On the Syria political file, the Council proved similarly ineffective. Divided and polarized, its members — the P5, in particular — failed to agree on a resolution to the Syria crisis that promoted international peace and security. Rather, the Council became a forum for self-righteous grandstanding and mutual recrimination about the destruction of Syria and the agony of its people.
Since Assad’s sudden flight from Syria to exile in Russia in early December 2024, for the first time since the start of Syria conflict in 2011, the Security Council seems to have forged a newfound consensus on Syria — including with US and Russia on board — despite its ongoing venomous dynamics around Ukraine and Gaza.
On Dec. 17, following the Council’s closed consultations on Syria, it issued a press statement calling for “the implementation of an inclusive and Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process based on the key principles listed in resolution 2254 (2015) that is facilitated by the United Nations. In that regard, they supported the efforts of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, to help facilitate such a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned process.”
On Jan. 29, almost two months after a coalition of Syrian rebel armed factions entered Damascus, their de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was declared transitional president of Syria for an unspecified “transitional phase.” The 2012 Syrian Constitution was suspended. The Parliament, the Army and all armed groups were declared dissolved, as was Baath Party.
The next day, al-Sharaa, until recently known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and the leader of the Syrian armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), previously affiliated with Al Qaeda and listed as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council, the US, UK and the EU, delivered a three-minute pre-recorded televised statement pledging “to form a comprehensive transitional government, reflecting Syria’s diversity,”
There would also be a “national dialogue . . . as a direct platform for exchanges, discussions and hearing of different views on our upcoming political programme.” Once “these steps are completed, we will announce a constitutional declaration to serve as legal reference for the transitional period.” In a subsequent interview, he clarified that he expected the transition to last up to four years, until new elections, while the drafting of a new constitution could require two to three years. A one-day national dialogue conference took place in Damascus on Feb. 25, with a reported 900 Syrian participants.
Yet, all the while, like a morning prayer, the Security Council and the Geir Pedersen, the special envoy, have continued their decade-old chant for “an inclusive and Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process based on the key principles listed in resolution 2254 (2015) that is facilitated by the United Nations,” even after the proverbial train left the station at the speed of a TGV without their slightest perceptible involvement.
As far as al-Sharaa is concerned, the key aspects of Resolution 2254 have been implemented, including a peaceful transfer of power, the safe return of refugees and the release of prisoners.
Budding alliance of US and Russia
Al-Sharaa stated in an interview on Dec. 29, 2024: “There has been a lot of suffering and many attempts to fix things in Syria, but the UN and the international community have failed to bring about the release of a single prisoner in these 14 years. They have failed to bring back a single refugee, or to persuade the regime to accept even the minimal political solution, even though it served the interests of the regime.” His statement likely resonated among most Syrians.
Since December, there has been a stream of foreign officials traveling to Damascus from the region, US, Europe and beyond for meetings with Syrian caretaker authorities. Al-Sharaa has also paid official visits to several capitals in the region. He was reported to have had a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 12. A meeting also took place with Secretary-General António Guterres on March 4 in Cairo on the sidelines of an emergency meeting of the League of Arab States on Gaza, to which al-Sharaa was invited.
Pedersen has similarly visited Damascus and has met al-Sharra several times since mid-December. On Feb. 3, his office issued a press statement saying that “Pedersen has been in Syria for the last weeks engaging the caretaker authorities and a broad spectrum of Syrians and is following closely all developments on the ground.” In an ironically frank admission of his role in the developments in Syria, the statement concluded that “he will be closely following all political develoments and the situation on the ground and will continue to update the Secretary-General and the Security Council in accordance with his mandate.”
It appears that a key change in Pedersen’s role in Syria’s post-conflict political process is of a benign observer and stenographer of developments on the ground will no longer be done from Geneva but from Damascus.
On March 6, reports emerged of massacres of civilians during alleged clashes between armed “remnants” of the Assad regime and military groups of the Syrian caretaker authorities in the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartus. Reportedly over 1,000 civilians were killed in four days of fighting, including the summary execution of entire families. In the recently transformed political dynamics between the US and Russia, Security Council emergency closed consultations were held at their request on March 10, and a president statement, written by the US and Russia, was issued a few days later. It is still unclear whether these new dynamics between the two formerly rival permanent members on the Syria file will have a more constructive result than in the last 14 years.
The time is long past to concede that the UN’s decade-long political mediation work and the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria leading this role in settling the Syrian war needs to be abolished. A different platform must be identified to carry on mediation, which could be endorsed by the Security Council. A role for the UN in Syria during this critical transitional period is still necessary, and a significant part is to be played by the UN country team in Syria, with its humanitarian and development agencies. Syria’s reconstruction requirements are enormous and so is the UN’s ability and track record for success in this sphere.
This is an opinion essay.
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Hasmik Egian
Hasmik Egian was chief of staff in the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria from 2014-2016 and director of the UN’s Security Council Affairs Department from 2016-2022.