Time for the UN to Check Out of the Four Seasons

As Geir Pedersen, the UN envoy to Syria, left the abandoned Sednaya prison near Damascus, a woman spat in his direction and threw her shoes at his car — a gesture of deep disrespect and disdain in the Middle East. Prior to the collapse of the Assad regime on December 8, Pedersen had not been known for openly defending human rights or engaging in any serious dialogue about transition in Syria.
Footage aired on local TV captured the woman shouting: “Where have you been for 13 years? You come now after everyone has been killed? Get out of here right now!”
Pedersen and his UN team may not have been able to accomplish much during their six years in office, but this is precisely why the UN Secretary General should appoint a new team for Syria. Pedersen’s diplomatic UN-speak on the need for political transition, reconciliation, and reconstruction fell flat with Syrians who did not find him, or his words, credible. His call for free and fair elections in a country that has not seen any such process for several decades rang hollow, and showed just how much he lacked political understanding of the new reality in a country that has just overthrown a 50-year regime rooted in severe repression, cronyism, sectarianism and corruption.
It is time for Pedersen to go. Perhaps this Norwegian diplomat was the right choice for Syria’s political stagnation from 2018 onwards, treading water while Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers pacified large swathes of Syria through their war crimes, including indiscriminate barrel bombing. But that era is over. The current political transition requires fresh ideas – and different expertise – from UN teams, if they are to play any meaningful role in balancing the competing domestic, regional and global interests in Syria.
Changing the UN leadership in Damascus and appointing someone more suitable could be a late Christmas gift from UN secretary General António Guterres to the Syrian people – including the angry woman who spat and threw shoes, who reportedly was at Sednaya to search for her missing brother and cousins. This notorious prison has dominated our screens for the past couple of weeks as thousands have been freed from its gruesome dungeons and from similar incarceration centres in Syria after the fall of Assad. However, over 100,000 Syrians are still believed to be missing, possibly killed or forcibly disappeared by the regime and armed groups.
While top UN officials in Syria might claim that they did all they could under the murderous Assad regime, in reality they more often than not enabled it under the pretext that, as intergovernmental organizations, they had to work with the “legitimate” sovereign government.For many years, the UN international aid workers have stayed at the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus, drawing widespread criticism and alienating themselves from a country where the vast majority of people were suffering from dire poverty and hunger. Their choice of accommodation also facilitated surveillance by the country’s various intelligence services. But Syria has entered a new season, and with it must end the era of the UN’s Four Seasons.
The UN needs to return to its approach during similar seismic changes, such as occurred in Afghanistan in 2001 or in Iraq in 2003, when it deployed far more seasoned, politically savvy and suitably experienced teams to lead on political, development and aid matters.
Most aid agencies in Syria have either been infiltrated by former regime agents or led by UN senior staff who, at best, avoided confrontation with the government, and at worst were complicit with the failing dictatorship. Many UN officials do not have the trust of, nor credibility with, Syrians and experts who have spent years monitoring their programmes and policies. Some of these agencies have reportedly been involved in corruption through deals which benefited the regime and its cronies.
The UN World Food Programme, for example, especially in the early years of the civil uprising in Syria, acquiesced with the Syrian regime in effectively cutting off aid shipments to opposition-controlled areas which were besieged by government forces. Starvation, denial of medical and other basic humanitarian supplies, destruction of schools and hospitals, and the killing of medical staff had all become regular weapons of the war in Syria, used largely by the regime, but also by the opposing militias.
According to an OCHA evaluation report, “UN agencies were simply not willing to jeopardize their operations in Syria by taking a tougher stance with the Government… [a position that] will surely be scrutinized unfavourably at a later point.” We are now at that later point.
Future UN positions and actions must be informed by a full evaluation of the role of aid agencies in Syria since 2011. This process is essential for any principled organization to learn and improve. Until such a detailed review is undertaken, the entire UN leadership in Damascus should be replaced with a fresh team that will not be associated with years of regime complicity. The UN faces Herculean tasks in Syria: supporting a Syrian-led political transition, managing reconstruction, and facilitating the safe return of millions of displaced people and refugees. Accordingly, all UN staff must leave the Four Seasons as soon as possible, in order to engage directly with the people they are supposed to serve, now that the season in Syria has changed.
This article has been previously published in Aljumhuriya.net, an independent media and knowledge production platform from Syria, founded in 2012 by journalists, writers, and academics.
About the author: Khaled Mansour worked as a journalist, a UN spokesman and a communications director for 25 years in many countries including Egypt, South Africa, Afghanistan, Sudan, and the USA. He is now a full-time writer.
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of United Against Inhumanity (UAI).