A successful SCNE-based conflict management strategy requires broad social buy-in, the agreement of key local conflict actors, and the assent of external stakeholders. Early SCNE projects must therefore be carefully calibrated to serve both a mix of local popular and elite interests as well as a mix of local elite and international interests. Material incentives alone, such as prospects for economic relief or refugee returns, will not be sufficient to legitimise and mainstream SCNE policies across all the different areas of control in Syria. A public narrative that moves away from polarisation and ‘othering‘ is also required to the extent that the traumatic experience of the past decade will allow. An SCNE agenda merely seeks to identify and increase coordination between conflict actors that are both hostile and interdependent in order to improve everyday life conditions.

Syrian civil society, both inside the country and in the diaspora, is well placed to initiate a discourse that makes sense of a divided state and society, and that finds a way to deconstruct friend-foe patterns as much as possible. To help mainstream the SCNE narrative inside Syria, civil society organisations should be enabled to gather influential societal actors and organisations[34] to establish informal SCNE dialogue forums that explain the rationale behind crossline engagement, discuss local needs, and set up initiatives to feed ideas into formal negotiations.

Challenges aside, the de facto division of Syria must be recognised and accepted for the time being as prerequisite for designing, negotiating and implementing SCNE policies that can prevent the different areas of control drifting apart for good. Based on the reality on the ground and the urgency of the humanitarian situation across all of Syria, a SCNE-driven agenda can become a diplomatic multitool for more effective conflict management that brings Syrian civilians back from the precipice of poverty, violence and hopelessness, and enables them to start rebuilding some sort of normal life. The formal and informal linkages between the country’s war-torn parts that emerge in this process can, in time, develop into pathways for conflict resolution. The Syrian conflict has changed and so too should the paradigm that shapes diplomacy. A little less theory in Geneva and a bit more practical SCNE work in Syria would be a step in the right direction.