The U.S. envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, said on Saturday that decentralization has not succeeded anywhere in the Middle East, adding: “This is a topic we should spend four years trying to discuss.”
Barrack added during his participation in the 23rd edition of the Doha Forum 2025, in an interview with the Kurdish network “Rudaw”: “Decentralization has not succeeded anywhere in the Middle East.”
He explained: “Decentralization has, in fact, never truly succeeded anywhere in this region. If you look at what happened in the Balkans, we divided it into seven separate countries and the situation is chaotic. And if you look at what happened in Iraq, we were frustrated after three trillion dollars and a few hundred thousand lives, and you have decentralization, which now constitutes a major dilemma,” as he put it.
He said: “I do not know the answer to the question of what the right form of governance in Syria is, but it must be determined by the regions, the people, the tribes, and the cultures.”
Earlier in the day, the 23rd edition of the Doha Forum kicked off in the Qatari capital, with the participation of heads of state, experts, diplomats, and high-level attendees from around the world.
