When the United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, declared last week that president Bashar Al Assad was “part of the solution” in Syria, he knew he would raise a firestorm.
Opposition groups have accused the envoy of going back on the Geneva framework for Syria, which calls for the establishment of a transitional government to replace Mr Al Assad. In other words, they outline a solution without him.
It could be that Mr de Mistura was simply reflecting the changing mood internationally, as Mr Al Assad’s removal is no longer a priority while the fight against ISIL escalates.
Or he could have been using an anodyne phrase to push Mr Al Assad to approve the plan for a ceasefire in Aleppo, without any broader implications for the Syrian president’s destiny. Diplomacy often advances ambiguously and there is much to suggest that Mr de Mistura, an experienced international diplomat, was deploying calculated ambiguity here.
But an interesting development last week also put the efforts of the Swedish-Italian UN envoy into some sort of perspective. Representatives of Syria’s main Kurdish organisations, meeting on Friday in Qamishli, called for the “geographic and political unity” of Kurdish areas in northern and north-eastern Syria in the context of a “federal [Syrian] state”.
The representatives also sought to agree to a process of coordination between two Syrian Kurdish parties, the Democratic Union Party and the Kurdish National Council, the first seen as close to Abdullah Ocalan’s Kurdish Workers Party, the second to Massoud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
This movement towards a Kurdish consensus was made possible by the fact that Mr Barzani’s peshmerga came to the assistance of the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in Kobani last year, despite previous conflicts between Mr Ocalan and Mr Barzani. Ironically, this did not displease Turkey, which has good relations with Mr Barzani and saw the intervention as a way of controlling the YPG.
Yet as Mr Al Assad slowly but surely consolidates himself politically, the question remains over what kind of Syria he will rule if he does manage to remain in power.
Since the logic of the anti-ISIL campaign dictates that Mr Al Assad may ultimately remain in office, does it not also suggest that Kurdish autonomy in Syria will end up being accepted by many countries? In both cases the primary aim internationally is to allow governing structures to be put in place that can defeat ISIL and prevent the revival of similar groups.
The reason is that the success of ISIL has been made possible by dysfunctional, divided polities. Therefore, all measures that increase political cohesiveness in Arab states or entities will be embraced if they can ward off the revival of jihadists who benefit from the vacuums proliferating around the region.
As the map of the Middle East is being redrawn, particularly in Syria and Iraq, what happens to Mr Al Assad will no longer be that important. The territories he controls, stretching from Damascus to the Syrian coast, plus the areas in between, are more or less reconciled with his rule. Within these confines a weakened Mr Al Assad will be tolerated by the international community.
The Kurds in Syria and Iraq appear to have interpreted these dynamics rather well. While they have not called for an independent Kurdish state, which is unacceptable to both Iran and Turkey, one can expect their version of federalism to be much closer to some sort of loose confederal arrangement.
In other words, the Kurds, rather than fret over Mr de Mistura’s comments, may have properly read the endgame in Syria as one of effective separation. This has tempered their views of Mr Al Assad and the merits or demerits of his remaining in place.
As commentators such as Al Hayat’s Hazem Al Amin have astutely remarked, similar developments are at play in Iraq, where Kurds, Sunnis and Shia are creating the outlines of new sectarian or ethnic entities. Helping push this process is Iran, which realises it would have much more influence in a region that is fragmented than in one where strong Arab states prevail.
It was Iran that apparently first formulated Mr Al Assad’s strategy of holding on to what has been referred to as “useful Syria”, permitting the north and north-east of the country to fall outside the regime’s control. The recent regime offensive in the area of Qunaitra is primarily an effort by Iran to ensure that it retains an open confrontation boundary with Israel.
That is why one should perhaps not overinterpret Mr de Mistura’s phrase. The Geneva framework is all but dead, and the envoy knows this. That is why he has avoided a full discussion of Mr Al Assad’s future as the value of such a discussion at this stage has only propaganda value. One can sympathise with Mr Al Assad’s foes, but the situation is bigger than them, or him.
Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut
On Twitter: @BeirutCalling
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
THE APPRENTICE
Director: Ali Abbasi
Starring: Sebastian Stan, Maria Bakalova, Jeremy Strong
Rating: 3/5
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
THE LOWDOWN
Photograph
Rating: 4/5
Produced by: Poetic License Motion Pictures; RSVP Movies
Director: Ritesh Batra
Cast: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra, Farrukh Jaffar, Deepak Chauhan, Vijay Raaz
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The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Gully Boy
Director: Zoya Akhtar
Producer: Excel Entertainment & Tiger Baby
Cast: Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt, Kalki Koechlin, Siddhant Chaturvedi
Rating: 4/5 stars
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
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