TFF Associates & Themes Blog

By Jan Oberg


Open Letter
Sent to the chairman of the Syria Supreme Commission for Negotiations

Dear Dr. Riad Hijab

I’m very sorry to see that that is your decision and conditions as stated in your e-mail to me and at Al-Jazera here.

Without your participation in Geneva, there will also not be a chance of a better situation for the Syrian people.

There are grave faults and violent actions and killing by all sides who conduct politics by arms and killing.

To request that one side out of some 30-40 shall stop doing something bad as a precondition for participation is, I am sure you recognise, a path to even more destruction and human suffering.

Good old Immanuel Kant would say with his moral imperative: Ask yourself what would happen if all other actors did what I do now? In other words, do our own actions have such a quality that it could be elevated to a general principle practised by all.

And you may see what I mean.

Respectfully yours

Jan Oberg, dr.hc. peace researcher and mediator
Director of TFF
www.transnational.org