Swiss-ification: Syria’s Best Chance for Peace∗

The humanitarian situation in Syria is dire, and government forces have now violated global norms and conventions prohibiting the use of chemical weapons against civilian populations. There is a controversy about whether the responsibility to protect can be met in a context where there is not a well-articulated or plausible path from humanitarian intervention to resolution of the conflict or even improved conditions. Here we point out that the conflict in Syria is fundamentally between sectarian groups that are geographically separated, and that a potential harm-minimizing outcome could be Swiss-ification, i.e., separation of belligerent groups into semiautonomous political entities. A map of the ethnic composition of Syria shows that ethnic groups are largely separated by region (Fig. 1). The current conflict is often characterized in terms of ethnic conflict [2, 3, 4]. As with the former Yugoslavia and other nations with heterogeneous populations, an understanding of how to prevent ethnic conflict can greatly influence policies and interventions designed to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Syria. We have shown that conflict arises when groups are neither well integrated nor well separated [5, 6]. In highly mixed regions, groups either don’t develop strong ∗Prepared in discussion with the Chairman’s Action Group, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon.