By Genevieve Casagrande with Jennifer Cafarella
Key
Takeaway: The ongoing Vienna process will likely fail to end the Syrian Civil War
because it does not provide adequate incentives to Syria’s powerful armed
opposition factions to lay down arms. The Vienna process relies on agreements made
between international powerbrokers independent from the demands of both pro-
and anti-regime Syrian factions. No single Syrian opposition group is able to
speak for a majority of the Syrian armed opposition, and powerbrokers have the
potential to spoil the Vienna process. This chart highlights the political
demands made by the various elements of the Syrian opposition in order to show
the kinds of endstates they seek, the frictions that will emerge should they or
others negotiate within the Vienna framework, and the range of issues that
effective negotiations must ultimately address.
Read the full report here.
