The forthcoming eighth Valdai Club Middle East conference is titled “Middle East: New Stage, Old Problems?” The question mark in this title is not accidental, because there are more questions about the fate of the region than answers. Moreover, these answers should be practical, rather than theoretical ones.
Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, emphasized this in his opening remarks at a 14 February press briefing. “The peculiarity of the conference is that it is practice-oriented,” he said. We see significant, very interesting processes – the world needs globalization, governance, some models of self-government, and at the same time there is no leadership in this process of globalization and everyone is globalizing in his own way. The so-called Greater Middle East is the centre of development of a new type of globalization, a new element in the global order”. According to Bystritskiy, the region became a “testing area”, so that the political elites could improve their interaction and find solutions that can be used to solve global problems.
The conference programme announced more than 50 experts from 16 countries, including Russia. However, as Bystritskiy said, “the main thing is the intellectual strength of the participants. Our task is to provide an intellectual matrix on topical issues and to conceptualize it. “Although high-profile guests will attend the event, including deputy cabinet ministers from at least three countries, the conference is an academic event rather than a diplomatic one, a platform for exchanging views”, the speaker said.
Sessions of the conference are devoted to key issues linking the regional agenda with the global one: Russia’s interests in the Middle East, the fight against terrorism, the post-war reconstruction of Syria, and the fate of OPEC. Vitaly Naumkin, President of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pointed to a common thread underlying all these topics – the correlation between war and diplomacy. Experts will determine whether military and security issues can be solved at the diplomatic level. According to the expert, at the moment there is a “sharp confrontation around the Middle East agenda”. “A Russia-Iran-Turkey summit is taking place, a meeting was held to restore Palestinian unity, and at the same time the United States organized in Warsaw an international conference on the Middle East, that showed the depth of this confrontation. I think that the conference will contribute to the solution of these issues,” the Middle East expert concluded.
At the Q&A session, the representatives of leading Russian media were able to get explanations about a number of specific urgent problems. For several months one of the most sensitive issues was the fate of Idlib province.
“The deadlines are tight,” Vitaly Naumkin said. “One cannot endlessly tolerate the violence of thousands of militants in Idlib who execute people, use them as human shields and create a micro-state, their own territory. Either the Turks will act more decisively and will make some promises, or an agreement can be reached about some joint operations. ” Another painful problem is the fate of the Kurds, who find themselves without support after the US troops withdrawal from the region, especially considering Turkey’s hostility towards them. Now they are negotiating with the Syrian government, but it is difficult to wait for concessions on the Kurdish autonomy issue from both sides. “Of course, the Syrian Kurds to a certain extent are moving closer to official Damascus,” Naumkin explained. “But only to a certain extent. The Syrian authorities are not ready to recognize the autonomy of the Kurds, although the Kurds claim that the autonomous entity is not intended as a mono-ethnic region for their people. The Syrian government is not ready to recognize some special autonomy in the north of the country.”
Each Valdai Discussion Club conference is not only a platform for dialogue, but also an event in the academic world. As Andrey Bystritskiy said, the activities of non-governmental organizations, such as the Valdai Discussion Club, are now generating more and more interest abroad, and the forthcoming meeting of distinguished international experts is a good confirmation of this.
