reuters – Houghton STAR

As international delegates arrived in Geneva, Switzerland on Tuesday, January 21, doubts persisted concerning whether they would be able to bring an end to Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

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Sponsored by the United States, Russia, and the United Nations, the peace accords, known as “Geneva 2,” will bring together officials from Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s government along with the Syrian National Council (SNC) an opposition bloc consisting of various groups seeking to overthrow the Assad regime. However, numerous groups engaged in the conflict have refused to attend, including many Islamist fighters who seek to turn Syria into an Islamic emirate. Complications further expanded as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, under the lobbying influence of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, withdrew an invitation to Iran, one of Assad’s main financial and materials supporters.

According to Reuters, Ban faced immense pressure from both Washington and the SNC, the latter threatening to boycott the talks and further obstruct any chances of conflict resolution. Moreover, Iran rejected the caveat that it had to accept the guidelines of a previous peace conference held in Geneva in 2012 that called for President Assad to step down and allow a transitional administration to take over. These peace talks failed after the U.S. and Russia could not agree on Assad’s post-conflict, political role. Washington Post reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said excluding Iran is not a “catastrophe,” and said Russia and the other countries at the conference will still push for a productive dialogue between the warring factions.

Further complications arising as peace talks begin include the revelation of widespread torture and systematic killing committed by the Assad régime against 11,000 detainees in Syrian government custody. Al-Jazeera reports that thousands of photographs smuggled out of Syria and examined by a team of war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts show emaciated bodies marked with signs of brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture. The photographs were taken by a photographer for the military police who had secretly defected to the opposition. While both sides of Syria’s civil war have been accused of war crimes, this evidence is the most definitive proof of large-scale killing on the part of the régime to date. According to U.S State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, one reason “Geneva 2” needs to be fruitful is because “the situation on the ground is so horrific that we need to get a political transition in place and…we need to get the Assad régime out of power.” Reuters reports that the former chief prosecutor of a war crimes tribunal for Sierra Leone, Desmond de Silva, commented that “some of the images we saw were absolutely reminiscent of people who came out of Belsen and Auschwitz.” It is not yet known how the revelations of these photographs will influence the demands of other negotiators, such as Russia, or the SNC.

Meanwhile, as “Geneva 2” begins, warfare continues in Syria. It is estimated that 130,000 people have died along with 22 million being displaced. Spillover from the conflict has also affected neighboring countries. In Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, a suicide bombing occurred in front of the headquarters of Hezbollah, a Shi’a group that actively assists Assad and militarily adheres to the Alawite offshoot of Shi’a Islam. Meanwhile, Iraq faces political strife as al-Qaeda-linked groups seek greater influence amongst the country’s Sunni population. Currently, Iraqi government forces and tribal fighters are trying to expel al-Qaeda fighters, staunchly opposed to Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated government, from the Sunni enclave in the country’s west. Consequently, as the conflict between Sunni-backed rebels in Syria and the Alawite-majority government continues, sectarian divides deepen further throughout the Middle East.

Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro received special powers from the country’s National Assembly on Tuesday in a bid to tackle corruption and a spiraling economy.

Maduro’s powers, authorized under the Enabling Act, allow him to rule by decree without consulting Venezuela’s Congress for twelve months. According to Reuters, Maduro is already planning on implementing two laws very soon. One will limit businesses’ profit margins from fifteen to thirty percent as part of an “economic offensive” against price-gouging. The other would create a new state body to oversee dollar sales by Venezuela’s currency control board. The laws are a response to a growing demand for hard currency in Venezuela’s black market after the Bolivar fuente, the national currency, hit an inflation rate of 54 percent.

Although a member of the oil cartel OPEC, analysts believe that not even the country’s oil revenues can cushion the blow of years of economic mismanagement. Maduro’s predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, used the Enabling Act to nationalize large portions of Venezuela’s oil industry all in the name of socialism. Under his command, Chávez used the oil revenues to buy votes among the poor with handouts such as refrigerators and reward those who supported his policies. Maduro, as Chávez’s hand-picked successor, has vowed to continue the socialist revolution in Venezuela and punish those he has coined “barbaric… capitalist parasites.” According to the Washington Post, dozens of business owners were arrested after being accused of speculating and hoarding supplies as the country faces severe shortages of basic goods, including bananas and toilet paper. Soon after, Venezuela’s government slashed prices at appliance dealers, auto-mechanic stores and toy shops, prompting a rush on businesses across the country as shoppers hunted for bargains.

Along with fears of further damage to Venezuela’s economy, critics claim that Maduro will also use his special powers to silence critics of his rule in the name of anti-corruption. According to the BBC, Maduro’s powers come just before local elections in the country on December 8 and members of the opposition parties in the National Assembly fear Maduro will target them in order to consolidate his regime’s hold on power. Reuters reports that Maduro’s “war on corruption” has already led to the downfalls of an opposition advisor accused of running a transvestite prostitution ring and an opposition legislator stripped of parliamentary immunity for allegedly mismanaging a state-owned stadium. Maduro’s opponents say that he should be chasing military generals and other senior officials they blame for turning Venezuela into a major supply route for Colombian drugs. But the government denies this is the case, saying that narcotic seizures are on the rise.

Political analyst Luis Vicente León believes that Maduro is trying to follow in Chávez’s footsteps and “demolish the idea that he is weak…. He does this with populist actions that can connect him to the people.” Whether or not Maduro’s special powers will be a benefit to his rule and help him to connect with many poor Venezuelans who supported Chávez. Unlike Chávez, whose fiery, charismatic temper helped him to sustain vast support among Venezuelans despite a bad economy, the less bombastic Maduro has struggled to maintain a fraction of this support.