It is an intimidating task to write about the road to peace in Syria when the horrors of that war have been on our TV screens not for months, but years; when those fleeing the war are not greeted as refugees but when governments such as our own do everything they can to exclude them.
The Syrian war, now in its sixth year, has to be seen against the background of the tragic failure of the Arab Spring, that false dawn of hope in the region. Leaving aside the guarded and fragile achievements in Tunisia, a country of the Maghreb and not the Levant, hopes of reform elsewhere have given way to draconian regimes in many ways worse than their predecessors, Marshal Sisi’s regime in Egypt being the obvious example.
