Despite recent progress toward Syria's regional normalization, President Bashar Assad's own intransigence, along with internal splits in the Arab world and U.S. opposition, will prevent a full-scale economic and diplomatic rehabilitation of Damascus in the short-to-medium term. On April 18, the Kurdish-dominated Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES) made a nine-point declaration for its terms to restore Damascus' authority over Kurdish-held territory, which included demands for political and democratic reforms through negotiations and an offer to host some of the millions of Syrian refugees now living in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. The plan proposed by the Kurdish-led authority, which has ruled over northeast Syria since 2012, marks the latest attempt to resolve the political conflict at the heart of the country's 12-year civil war. It also comes amid a growing acknowledgment among Syria's internal and external stakeholders that the Assad regime appears poised to win that war, and...
