Washington distances itself from Damascus on the issue of minorities

Is Washington making a significant shift in its approach to the Syrian dossier? While the United States had until now insisted on the need to strengthen central authority and the country’s sovereignty, remarks made last month by U.S. envoy Tom Barrack to a group of journalists did not go unnoticed. In an apparent reversal, the diplomat stated that Syria might need to explore alternatives to an overly centralized state, echoing the decentralization demands put forward by the Kurdish autonomous administration. “Not a federation, but something short of that,” Barrack said, to allow the country’s different communities “to keep their integrity, their culture, their language and no threat of Islamism.” This was a markedly different tone from the one he had struck just a few days earlier in the Syrian capital, when he said regarding the...