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The 47th Otago Foreign Policy School took place over the uni holidays, with the ongoing conflict in Syria at the forefront of the conference’s discussions. The three-day conference at St Margaret’s is an opportunity for New Zealand and international experts to meet with government officials and analysts to discuss the pressing international issues of the day. This year the theme was “The Middle East Unfolding: Dreams and Drama in the Early Twenty-First Century?”

The Director of the School and HOD of Politics at Otago, Professor Bill Harris, is an expert on Middle Eastern affairs. He said that the prospects for peace in Syria were bleak: “It is a fight to the finish. Forget about Western notions of ‘conflict resolution’. The regime is doomed but retains great capability, and there is a way to go – something like Nazi Germany in late 1943.”

Syria has been gripped by protests and conflict that is now universally acknowledged as a civil war. It is estimated that at least 10,000 civilians have died in the conflict, and the peacekeeping efforts of the UN, led by ex-Secretary General Kofi Annan, have met with less success than an Aquinas kid trying to pull at a UniCol mixer.

Students are welcome to attend the school, and often assist as volunteers. Leander Schulz, an Otago Politics student who volunteered during the event, said that the discussion was complex and delved deeply into the individual aspects of the different conflicts in the Arab world. “What struck me was how non-PC a lot of the talks were. You got a real sense of what was going on. I think this would have been really useful for diplomats. There were a lot of people from MFAT [Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade] in the audience,” said Schulz.

Schulz was a committed Bill Harris fangirl by the end of the weekend, saying, “Bill Harris was my hero in the way he pushed and tried to drive the point home to the people from MFAT how awful the atrocities are in Syria and how you need to actually take action. How one hit on the power of the president is all the situation needs.”

Critic, being a glass-half-full kind of publication, speculates that President Assad will have taken note of the conclusions of the weekend’s discussions and will shortly be packing his bags for a retirement spent in exile in Saudi Arabia.