The Friends of Syria meeting in Doha on Saturday has helped bridge some of the cracks in the international coalition supporting the rebels. It was announced that the meeting had taken ‘a secret decision about practical measures to change the situation on the ground in Syria’. That would obviously involve a few decisions, all of which couldn’t be revealed, but also includes a plan to supply more arms to the rebels. One of the reasons for a string of setbacks which the Syrian opposition has suffered at the hands of Bashar Al Assad’s forces was the lack of weapons to fight the heavily-armed army. The US Secretary of State John Kerry who attended the meeting agreed that the rebels needed more support. 

The meeting also demanded that Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah stop their support for Assad and withdraw their people from Syria. The foreign ministers were blunt in their demand and warned Tehran and its backers against vitiating the atmosphere. These warnings have been given before, at an individual level by the participating countries, and for the same reason are unlikely to fall on deaf ears.

The Doha meeting is correct in its assessment that only a change on the ground in Syria can lead to a peaceful and acceptable solution to the crisis. In the current situation, Assad has the upper hand and will not listen to any proposal that involves his abdication of power. 

Washington has said it still remains committed to a peace plan that includes a conference in Geneva and a transitional government picked both by Assad and the opposition. The plan for this conference was announced before Assad and his Hezbollah recaptured some territory from the rebels. The change in situation since then has emboldened Assad, and will make a solution more complicated. This means the time is limited; the opposition will have to regain their lost ground, and that is easier said than done. It’s true more weapons will flow to Syria, but there are doubts about how advanced they will be and when they will start reaching them.

The West is now paying the price for prevarication and indecisiveness on Syria. It required the entry of Hezbollah fighters into Syria to change their mind and even now, the West is not fully certain about the way forward. Part of the indecision could be blamed on the fluid situation in Syria and the lack of unity of rebels and the presence of terrorist elements. But a more active engagement and greater cooperation with Arab nations would have helped address these issues. In times of conflict, indecision is always costly and can even reverse positive fallout of the conflict•