The Cease-Fire That Wasn't
1 | SYRIA
The failure of a recent four-day cease-fire in Syria couldn't have surprised U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Having mediated in Lebanon and Afghanistan, the veteran Algerian diplomat knows that a civil war ends only when the parties want a solution as much as the mediator does. And as proved by the fierce fighting that has raged across the country, neither the regime of President Bashar Assad nor Syria's rebels is ready to end the conflict.
"Brahimi knew that Syria would get a lot worse before it gets better," says Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist...