9-2012 to 5-2014

Lakhdar Brahimi is an Algerian politician and diplomat, holding degrees in law and political science from Algeria and France. He served as Algeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 1990s and was a United Nations envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Brahimi took on the role of UN envoy to Syria on August 17, 2012, describing his mission as nearly impossible. Just hours after announcing a ceasefire in Syria in October 2012, the ceasefire failed within hours. Following this, Brahimi revealed new ideas to present to the Security Council, and many analysts considered his proposed solution to be based on the “Somalization” of the situation in Syria, while awaiting the Russian-American agreement, which eventually came after the Security Council’s decision to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.

On January 22, 2014, the “Geneva 2” conference convened, attended by both the regime and the opposition represented by the Syrian Coalition. The negotiations were open-ended, without a timeline or conditions, which ultimately led to the failure of the conference and Brahimi’s resignation on May 14, 2014.