Politics and Governance

We in East Asia are indeed living in peaceful times. That is the inevitable conclusion one draws in reflecting on the archives of U.S. military intelligence files from the 1930s and 1940s. In one document, Japan’s ambition, declared in January 1941 by its foreign minister, was frightening.

Fresh from negotiations with the Dutch for an oil concession in the Netherlands East Indies, and mediation between Thailand and French Indochina, he told the Diet that the whole world should accept Japan’s racial idea of “hakko ichiu” (eight directions of the world under one roof), a nationalist slogan interpreted variously as a call to “universal brotherhood” (the soft version) or Japanese military domination of East Asia, and then the world, through a sacred or holy war (the main meaning as events came to show).

In 1945, American psychological observation teams — foreshadowing the collapse of Japan’s militarist regime — capitalized on this phrase by telling the Japanese people that they were being invaded from “eight directions,” a rather bitter irony for them.

At a more granular level, another lesson leaps off the pages of the U.S. archives, at least for me. This is a reminder of the role of Hainan in the geopolitics of the South China Sea compared with the much less significant, at least in military terms, Spratly Islands. The history of Hainan and its strategic significance both during the war between Japan and China that raged from 1931 to 1945, and after, is not often canvassed in current discussions of the shifting geopolitical realities.

A U.S. diplomatic cable from February 10, 1939, reports the Japanese invasion and capture of Hainan. It notes that control of the island “would have a great effect on the matter of control of the South China Sea between the mainland and the island of Luzon as well as limiting the sphere dominated by (British) Singapore.”

While represented at the time by Japan’s foreign minister as intended to help “suppress the Chiang Kai-shek regime,” some in China correctly interpreted it as part of Japan’s plan for territorial expansion toward the East Indies.

This action by Japan was met with far greater concern, as reflected in the archive documents, than its annexation seven weeks later of the Spratly Islands on March 30, 1939, followed by its occupation of the Paracel Islands. Japan claimed the Spratly Islands were terra nullius prior to their being occupied by Japanese nationals in 1921, but at least two of the islands had been annexed by Britain decades earlier.

These documents from 1939 cast some light on how the U.S. government viewed the sovereignty of the Spratly Islands at the time, since the Japanese annexation was protested by it. The scope of the protest however was not that Japan had no claim but that it could not annex the entire Spratly group, spread out over a vast territory and comprising quite distant groupings of reefs and islets, on the basis of prior administrative action in respect of a couple of small islands.

Of greater interest today in respect of the Spratly Islands, is a discussion of the French annexation of several of the islands in 1933. Reference is made in one U.S. intelligence report from 1933 to China’s sending a warship to the region as part of its protest against the French annexation. The report notes that these were tiny coral reefs or desert islands, “a few are frequented by Chinese fishermen,” but hitherto they “have been unclaimed by any nation and apparently mostly uncharted.”

The same report mistakenly says that China calls these islands the “Sisha,” almost certainly an erroneous rendering of the Xisha (or Paracel Islands), which the U.S. document reports were claimed by China at that time. In 1933, even with Japan in military occupation of China and the United States, Britain and France pursuing colonial control of diverse territories, the islands were judged to be insignificant.

Later U.S. official documents from 1943 concerning the postwar disposition of the Spratly Islands, once Japan was defeated, are a rich source of understanding how the islands were viewed strategically by the U.S. But the overriding U.S. concern in the postwar disposition was with strategically important territories.

According to the excellent analysis by Kimie Hara, a 2006 book, “The Cold War Frontiers in the Asia Pacific,” several U.S. official reports looking at the disposition of the Paracel and Spratly islands judged them not to be of vital concern to any country, though of interest to coastal countries such as China, the Philippines and Indo-China, and to the safety of commercial shipping.

The first years of communist rule after 1949 were marked by campaigns to defeat Republic of China forces on the many islands along the coast of China from south to north.

In the first month after the declaration on Oct. 1, 1949, of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, it attempted to take Kinmen Island with a force of 30,000 soldiers but failed. In March 1950, People’s Liberation Army forces began a campaign to take Hainan Island and after victory there in May, began preparations in June for an invasion of Taiwan, involving 4,000 motorized junks and 200,000 troops.

The U.S. diplomatic position on the ending of the Chinese Civil War had been to remain neutral, a position which altered three days after the North Korean invasion of South Korea on June 24, 1950. The Korean War and the accompanying change of U.S. position on the defense of non-communist Republic of China forces on Taiwan brought U.S. naval forces to China’s borders in great numbers in 1950.

China cancelled its planned invasion of Taiwan. The decision has been described in a 1996 commentary as follows: “Taiwan was not attacked for the time being. The Navy command of New China had no choice but to swallow the first bitter pill of losing the opportunity for combat owing to lack of strength.”

The author observed that with the decision, the offensive phase of the war of liberation ended, and the navy’s primary tasks became defense “against possible imperialist aggression and guarding the safety of the republic’s coast.”

For China, and for all mainland Chinese with any knowledge of this history, the claim for the Spratly Islands, like the claim for Taiwan, is seen (regardless of how we see it) as a the final stages of the war of liberation and national unification. The “island campaign” launched by Mao in 1949 continues. China only regained its islands of Hong Kong in 1997 and those in Macau in 1999 from two former colonial powers. For China, that war with Japan that began in 1931, and its own civil war, which began in 1927, are not finished yet. China’s ocean frontier is yet to be stabilized after almost 500 years of foreign interference.

China will continue to pursue its claim to the Spratly Islands, but we must not lose sight of the fact that for China, the two great pearls of its maritime frontier in military strategic terms are still, as they were at the historic turning points in 1945 and 1949, the islands of Taiwan (36,000 sq. km) and Hainan (33,000 sq. km).

It was former leader Ye Jianying who was in political command from the Guangdong Military Region of Chinese forces that recaptured Hainan in 1950 and it was he who made the first peace opening to Taiwan in 1979.

As China navigates its understandable historical revanchism, declaring peaceful resolution of the outstanding territorial disputes to be its aim, it must be careful to avoid historical mistakes of others. Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington last month said that his dream for the rejuvenation of the great Chinese nation was all about the human potential of Chinese. This was a new twist. Most people in China see the China dream as more chauvinist, more nationalistic.

There are a number of Chinese commentators who link the rejuvenation ambition to the old Chinese doctrine of “tianxia” (“all under heaven”), characterized by “harmonious development” and unified under a Sino-centric view of world order. For me, “tianxia” sounds too much like “hakko ichiu.”

I think we can be comfortable with the idea Xi rejects it, but his “human development” twist to the Chinese dream idea seemed a little too artificial, and too simply concocted for an American audience for my liking.

To read the article at The Japan Times, click here.

The transcript of the interview, which aired during Channel NewsAsia’s First Look Asia program, is given below. 

Interviewer: Good morning to you with us on First Look Asia. This hour, there has been a major boost for the United Nations’ struggling peacekeeping missions. At the UN General Assembly, U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that more than 50 countries have offered 30,000 new troops—and amongst them, China. Its president, Xi Jinping, says that China wants to take the lead by contributing 8,000 troops; this would make Beijing one of the largest players. Mr. Xi also offered $100 million U.S. dollars of military aid to the African Union for crisis response. And amid concerns of China’s rising military might, President Xi said that China was committed to peaceful global development. Mr. Xi’s trip to the UN caps off his weeklong visit to the U.S., and at a summit with Mr. Obama, they also vowed to fight climate change that left largely unresolved the issues of cybersecurity and the South China Sea.

Let’s speak now with Ms. Kok Piin-Fen. She’s the director of the China, East Asia and United States Program at the EastWest Institute, and she joins us today from New York. Ms. Kok, President Xi says that China is committed to peaceful world development. How much of this do you think will assuage concerns about China’s military rise and the inroads into the peacekeeping missions?

Kok: I think that to the degree that the rest of the world can see that China is putting its growing military capabilities to global good, so to speak, in the area of peacekeeping, which, as you know, China has been very active in this area for years now. So I think to that degree, some of those concerns will be assuaged. But the problem is really more in China’s immediate neighborhood where other countries in Asia are still very suspicious of its strategic intentions and what it’s planning to do with its rising military, especially on the naval front with all of the territorial disputes happening in the South China Sea and East China Sea. So in that area, it is still going to be very tricky trying to persuade China’s neighbors that its intentions are really peaceful.

Interviewer: So Ms. Kok, just picking up from there, what could China do to comfort or reassure its neighbors in Asia and abroad?

Kok: I think it needs to explain itself a little better. For example, in the South China Sea, a lot of tensions recently have just revolved around China’s actions reclaiming islands and then, after the reclamation, building all sorts of infrastructure, including military infrastructure, and now we’re looking at reports saying that it has built a third airstrip in the South China Sea. I think China needs to explain more clearly and more transparently what its strategic thinking has been behind actions such as these. And it needs to use appropriate words because, to be very honest, in the area of public diplomacy I think it’s still a bit lacking, and some of the words that the Chinese government has used thus far may have come across as disingenuous and perhaps not really constructive. 

Interviewer: Ms. Kok, now Chinese state media have hailed Mr. Xi’s visit to the U.S. as a success. But in your opinion, what were the hits and what were the misses?

Kok: The fact that neither side shied away from addressing the difficult issues such as cyber or the South China Sea, I think that was a good sign because it shows a mature relationship. They’re willing to focus not (only) on the positive or feel-good aspects of the relationship but really get together at the presidential level and be able to talk about the tough issues. 

In 2004, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a case for Japan to restore its military capabilities, writing in his book, Determination to Protect This Country, that “if Japanese don’t shed blood, we cannot have an equal relationship with America.” Since then, Abe has sought to revive the country’s defensive capabilities, mostly toward fortifying its claim over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, an island chain in the East China Sea that Beijing says belongs to China. He has requested a record five trillion yen ($42 billion) defense budget for fiscal year 2016 (if approved, it will be Tokyo’s largest in 14 years) and reinterpreted the constitution to allow Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense. The efforts have provoked growing alarm.

A June 2015 survey found that 57 percent of South Koreans believe that Japan is in a “militaristic state,” and 58 percent said that Tokyo poses a military threat. In comparison, only 38 percent surveyed thought that China was the bigger threat. China, too, is worried. It has repeatedly warned that Abe is leading the country “down a more dangerous path toward militarization.”

Whatever Abe’s intentions, however, Japanese militarism was buried for good in August 1945 and will not likely rise again. The reason: the Japanese people.

Defeat Suits 

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Emperor Showa, popularly known as Hirohito, gave a radio address explaining to his people that continuing the fight against the Allies would “result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation.”

And so Japan surrendered. Unlike the Germans, though, the Japanese people had no Adolf Hitler or Nazi Party to blame for a war that had killed at least 2.7 million Japanese servicemen and civilians and destroyed 66 major cities. Although the Japanese emperor had been accused of overseeing war crimes—mass rapes and killings in China and Southeast Asia—U.S. General Douglas MacArthur thought it politically expedient to keep him in power and successfully ran a campaign to exonerate Hirohito. The Japanese people came to regard Hirohito as innocent and subsequently turned against the military, accusing the services of deceiving them and drawing the country into a perilous war. Japanese police reports immediately after the surrender note the people’s “grave distrust, frustration, and antipathy toward military and civilian leaders” and general “hatred of the military.”

Civilian contempt for the military quickly spread to the rank and file of the 3.5 million-strong Imperial Japanese Army. And so, after the war, Japanese soldiers were both defeated and despised. In a letter from an anonymous former soldier dated May 9, 1946, “Not a single person gave me a kind word. Rather, they cast hostile glances my way.” Military uniforms were nicknamed “defeat suits,” and military boots were called “defeat shoes.”

Even one of the most reverent expressions of gratitude during the war years—“thanks to our fighting men” (heitaisan no okage desu)—turned into an expression of contempt. Thanks to our fighting men, lives and property had been destroyed. Thanks to our fighting men, Japan’s overall economic and political situation was absymal. As the historian John W. Dower outlines in Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, no one listened to the returning soldiers who spoke out about the differences between the military leadership and common servicemen.

The Tokyo War Crimes Trials, which lasted from 1946 to 1948, revealed the extent of the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during World War II and also the extreme antipathy that the Japanese people felt for the military. For example, during the 1945 Battle of Manila, the Japanese military mutilated and massacred between 100,000 and 500,000 Filipino civilians. Shortly after the news reached Tokyo, a Japanese woman wrote a letter to the Japanese national paper Asahi Shimbunexpressing her revulsion. “Even if such an atrocious soldier were my son,” she wrote, “I could not accept him back home. Let him be shot to death there.” The poet Saeki Jinzaburo also penned a few lines expressing his disgust with the army after the war crimes revelations: “Seizing married women, raping mothers in front of their children—this is the Imperial Army.”

In 1947, a Japanese poetry magazine published the following verse after the end of the Tokyo tribunal: “The crimes of Japanese soldiers, who committed unspeakable atrocities in Nanking [China] and Manila, must be atoned for.” Former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, an army general, was openly ridiculed for a botched suicide attempt in September 1945. One Japanese novelist and poet, Takami Yoshio (who went by the pen name Jun Takami), wrote at the time, “Cowardly living on, and then using a pistol like a foreigner, failing to die. Japanese cannot help but smile bitterly. . . . Why did General Tojo not use a Japanese sword as Army Minister Anami did?” These postwar sentiments against the military were so strong that even textbooks during that period systematically skipped over any references to past Japanese victories and military heroes. And they remain absent from schoolbooks to this day.

Ashes of Hiroshima

Distrust and ridicule of all things military did not abate in the postwar years. After the war, the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), Japan’s de facto postwar army created at the behest of the United States, were generally accepted. In the 1960s, though, new recruits were occasionally pelted with stones while walking down the street, and when they appeared in public spaces, people would get up and leave. Throughout the Cold War, Japan’s military was seen as serving no real purpose and offering little protection. Then, as now, the public felt that the U.S.-Japanese security treaty offered a better guarantee of security than the SDF. After all, since its founding, the SDF had neither achieved a single military victory nor ever engaged in combat operations.

Although the end of the Cold War brought a new raison d’être to the SDF—UN Peacekeeping operations—the Japanese still regard the force as useful primarily for disaster relief rather than defense. According to a 2015 public opinion poll conducted by Japan’s Cabinet Office, 82 percent of Japanese think that the SDF’s primary role is disaster relief, and 72.3 percent believe that this should remain its main duty in the future. Perhaps that is why, to this day, the SDF refers to its weapons as “equipment” and artillery brigades as “technical brigades” in order to downplay the military aspects of Japan’s armed forces. Tanks even used to be called “special vehicles,” although they are now referred to as tanks again.

In the same poll, 92 percent of those surveyed had a “positive impression” of the SDF, but a positive impression does not mean support or approval. According to Thomas Berger, a professor of international relations at Boston University, “Japan’s best and brightest do not flock to join the armed forces, and the SDF is hardly celebrated in Japanese society.” Indeed, according to the same 2015 public opinion poll, less than half of people questioned thought that being a soldier was a respectable occupation, and only 25.4 percent perceived the job to be a challenging one.

As Berger explained to me, “Internal [SDF] surveys showed that the majority joined the forces because they hoped for material betterment. It is a safe, reliable job, and the legal status is the same as being a post office clerk.”

The SDF also has the reputation of being a holding center for high school and college dropouts. It recruits heavily from Japan’s backwaters, such as southern Kyushu and northern Honshu—and especially from Akita prefecture and Hokaido, where young people face limited job prospects. Most of those enlisted belong to the lower and lower middle classes, although the officer corps is staffed primarily by those from the middle class. Once these young men and women have joined, they tend to serve until quiet retirement in their early 50s. “Japan doesn’t have the sort of ‘hero worship’ of military things that can boost the career of a retired officer,” according to Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University in Japan.

That is why the Japanese have resisted Abe’s attempts to revive the military. In August 2015, in one of the largest demonstrations in Tokyo against Abe, tens of thousands hit the street. One protester told the Financial Times, “This is the last chance we have to preserve Japan’s worldwide reputation as a country of peace.” In reality, however, Japanese military radicalization could be triggered only by a fundamental change in the security architecture of East Asia, such as a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from Japan or a North Korean nuclear missile attack. Both are far-fetched scenarios. 

But given the current political climate, it was not surprising that an August 2015 public poll found only 11 percent of the Japanese were supportive of Abe’s policy to reinterpret the power that the constitution gives its military. His personal ratings have also slipped, with some analysts predicting his resignation.

The moral and military defeat of the Japanese army in World War II was so total that it echoes to this day. Despite Abe’s historical revisionism and fearmongering, the Japanese public appears unwilling to trust another military clique. That’s why, for all the talk of Japanese militarism, a relatively pacifist country is here to stay.

Firestein gave his comments in Mandarin.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Amidst much concern and gloom around the situation in and around Afghanistan, it is important to take into view following six factors which may contribute towards increased regional efforts for stabilizing in the coming months. 

Firstly, at a time when the withdrawal of NATO and allied forces from Afghanistan has created a vacuum of power, China has taken cautious steps to take a leading role in that country. Beijing has also realized that time is not at the side of Russia (which could have filled in the gap created after the pullout of the American troops from Afghanistan). Becoming entangled in the aftermath of Ukrainian crisis having annexed Crimea, it will become difficult for Russia to regain its leading status in the region Afghanistan- Central Asia region which is now being assumed by China. In contrast to Russia, the Chinese have approached Afghanistan with utmost flexibility and caution with calculated measures to carve out a space for themselves.   

Secondly, China’s offer to facilitate a dialogue seeking peace and political reconciliation between the Afghan and Pakistan government was among other factors also expedited by Ashraf Ghani who in his maiden foreign visit as Afghanistan’s president requested China in October 2014 to facilitate reconciliation with Pakistan. Having approached with close allies of Pakistan as intermediaries has resulted in senior Pakistani military officials establishing closer contact with their Afghan counterparts. These initiatives will help Pakistan and Afghanistan address each other’s security concerns and also to contribute the two neighbours reshape their respective strategic paradigms as partners in of pursuit of joint solutions to common challenges. It is said that if Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government provides assurances and guarantees regarding Pakistan’s security, then upon acquiring a reliable partner, Islamabad will not have the need to seek any alternate or additional guarantees from non-state actors in Afghanistan. These have been followed by the initiatives encouraging Pakistan to facilitate negotiations to find ways and means to bring peace and reconciliation between the warring Afghan factions.

A third important development is the talks between different Afghan factions involving the Taliban and the government for bringing peace in Afghanistan with some rounds being facilitated by and held in China. In November of 2014 and on 7th July 2015, China facilitated peace talks between Afghanistan’s warring factions, a third round scheduled for 30th July was postponed as some circles broke the news that the Taliban leader Mullah Omar had died two year ago. Making public of this fact at this stage was aimed to reflect that (a) the Taliban are without any real leadership and (b) they may not have unanimity of ranks and hence (c) in the absence of any genuine unified leadership the Taliban do not enjoy much authority to enter into and conclude any negotiations about the future of Afghanistan. However, the new Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansur is said to be inclined towards a negotiated settlement with the Afghan authorities but he will need to demonstrate how he will rally support for a majority of Taliban followers to back a peace agreement.  
    
A fourth notable matter is that China and India have worked together to bring gradual improvement in their bilateral relations moving from past a relationship of rivalry and mutual misgivings to cautious cooperation. The joint statement issued during Indian Premier Narendra Modi’s May 2015 visit to Peking declared: “We have a historic responsibility to turn this relationship into a source of strength for each other and a force of good for the world.” In his keynote address at the India-China Business Forum, Modi said: ‘Indo-Chinese partnership should and will flourish. As two major economies in Asia, the harmonious partnership between India and China is essential for the economic development and political stability of the continent’.  

Fifthly, the granting of full membership to India and Pakistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization makes SCO the organization which now has three countries Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan sharing borders with Afghanistan (also an observer state in SCO). According to Outlook magazine’s commentator Sibal Dasgupta under the SCO auspices China, India and Pakistan will regularly share the same table to consider solutions to common challenges. This is a major development which will help them to look at the issues from a wider perspective and interact with each other in an improved context. Given that India and Pakistan both are being conferred full membership of the SCO, it will be an excellent forum for the two countries to deliberate at the highest level on critical issues like countering terrorism, and break ice on bilateral issues on the sidelines, notes Professor Swaran Singh from Delhi.

Sixthly, with economic sanctions expected to be gradually lifted from Iran, efforts will increase for connecting Western Afghanistan closer with the Iranian port of Chahbahar, a step which will also facilitate increased trade between India and Central Asia and contribute to regional prosperity.

This article was originally published on BBC Uzbek. Click here to read (in Uzbek).

Creighton's presentation focused on political and economic issues in Afghanistan and the region, building upon EWI's work through the Afghanistan Reconnected Process, as well as on his experience as an ISAF commander in Afghanistan. In addition, he addressed the need for governments, international organizations, and donors in the region to focus on "bankable" projects to reap the fruits of cooperation and support Afghanistan’s path towards a more stable and prosperous future.

EWI's Afghanistan Reconnected Process will continue in 2015 with Advocacy and Outreach Missions to Dushanbe (Tajikistan) in October and to Kabul (Afghanistan) in November.

For more information on EWI's Afghanistan Reconnected Process, please contact Ettore Marchesoni at emarchesoni@eastwest.ngo.

For EWI's contribution to the RECCA-VI Academic Forum, please see, Afghanistan Reconnected: Businesses Take Action to Unlock Trade in the Region.

For more information on the RECCA Forum, please visit: recca.af

For EWI intern Henry Villacorta's response to Jim Creighton's speech at the International Symposium on Cultural Diplomacy in the UN, click here.

Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world’s gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.

Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition. 

But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal.

“It was an opportunity lost in 2012,” Ahtisaari said in an interview. 

Officially, Russia has staunchly backed Assad through the four-and-half-year Syrian war, insisting that his removal cannot be part of any peace settlement. Assad has said that Russia will never abandon him. Moscow has recently begun sending troops, tanks and aircraft in an effort to stabilise the Assad regime and fight Islamic State extremists.

Ahtisaari won the Nobel prize in 2008 “for his efforts on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”, including in Namibia, Aceh in Indonesia, Kosovo and Iraq. 

On 22 February 2012 he was sent to meet the missions of the permanent five nations (the US, Russia, UK, France and China) at UN headquarters in New York by The Elders, a group of former world leaders advocating peace and human rights that has included Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

“The most intriguing was the meeting I had with Vitaly Churkin because I know this guy,” Ahtisaari recalled. “We don’t necessarily agree on many issues but we can talk candidly. I explained what I was doing there and he said: ‘Martti, sit down and I’ll tell you what we should do.’

“He said three things: One – we should not give arms to the opposition. Two – we should get a dialogue going between the opposition and Assad straight away. Three – we should find an elegant way for Assad to step aside.”

Churkin declined to comment on what he said had been a “private conversation” with Ahtisaari. The Finnish former president, however, was adamant about the nature of the discussion.

“There was no question because I went back and asked him a second time,” he said, noting that Churkin had just returned from a trip to Moscow and there seemed little doubt he was raising the proposal on behalf of the Kremlin.

Ahtisaari said he passed on the message to the American, British and French missions at the UN, but he said: “Nothing happened because I think all these, and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything.”

While Ahtisaari was still in New York, Kofi Annan was made joint special envoy on Syria for the UN and the Arab League. Ahtisaari said: “Kofi was forced to take up the assignment as special representative. I say forced because I don’t think he was terribly keen. He saw very quickly that no one was supporting anything.”

In June 2012, Annan chaired international talks in Geneva, which agreed a peace plan by which a transitional government would be formed by “mutual consent” of the regime and opposition. However, it soon fell apart over differences on whether Assad should step down. Annan resigned as envoy a little more than a month later, and Assad’s personal fate has been the principal stumbling block to all peace initiatives since then. 

Last week, Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, suggested that as part of a peace deal, Assad could remain in office during a six-month “transitional period” but the suggestion was quickly rejected by Damascus.

Western diplomats at the UN refused to speak on the record about Ahtisaari’s claim, but pointed out that after a year of the Syrian conflict, Assad’s forces had already carried out multiple massacres, and the main opposition groups refused to accept any proposal that left him in power. A few days after Ahtisaari’s visit to New York, Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, branded the Syrian leader a war criminal.

Sir John Jenkins – a former director of the Middle East department of the UK’s Foreign Office who was preparing to take up the post of ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2012 – said that in his experience, Russia resisted any attempt to put Assad’s fate on the negotiating table “and I never saw a reference to any possible flexing of this position”.

Jenkins, now executive director of the Middle East branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email: “I think it is true that the general feeling was Assad wouldn’t be able to hold out. But I don’t see why that should have led to a decision to ignore an offer by the Russians to get him to go quickly, as long as that was a genuine offer.

“The weakest point is Ahtisaari’s claim that Churkin was speaking with Moscow’s authority. I think if he had told me what Churkin had said, I would have replied I wanted to hear it from [President Vladimir] Putin too before I could take it seriously. And even then I’d have wanted to be sure it wasn’t a Putin trick to draw us in to a process that ultimately preserved Assad’s state under a different leader but with the same outcome.”

A European diplomat based in the region in 2012 recalled: “At the time, the west was fixated on Assad leaving. As if that was the beginning and the end of the strategy and then all else would fall into place … Russia continuously maintained it wasn’t about Assad. But if our heart hung on it, they were willing to talk about Assad; mind: usually as part of an overall plan, process, at some point etc. Not here and now.”

However, the diplomat added: “I very much doubt the P3 [the US, UK and France] refused or dismissed any such strategy offer at the time. The questions were more to do with sequencing – the beginning or end of process – and with Russia’s ability to deliver – to get Assad to step down.”

At the time of Ahtisaari’s visit to New York, the death toll from the Syrian conflict was estimated to be about 7,500. The UN believes that toll passed 220,000 at the beginning of this year, and continues to climb. The chaos has led to the rise of Islamic State. Over 11 million Syrians have been forced out of their homes.

“We should have prevented this from happening because this is a self-made disaster, this flow of refugees to our countries in Europe,” Ahtisaari said. “I don’t see any other option but to take good care of these poor people … We are paying the bills we have caused ourselves.”

To read the article at The Guardian, click here

President Cameron Munter spoke at "Passion for Pakistan," the inaugural business breakfast meeting held in Karachi, Pakistan, on August 30. Munter discussed "One Belt, One Road" project and said that the honest implementation of the project is as much a challenge as it is an opportunity for Pakistan to revamp its damaged image. While acknowledging the absence of linkages between the government and civil society, Munter said that there is an enormous untapped potential in Pakistan. Munter also expressed optimism about normalizing relations between Pakistan and India. He added that lots of opportunities have been created in trade relations for both countries. 

To read full story in the Business Recorder, click here.