Last Saturday, a ceasefire took effect in Syria and has remained in place thus far.
The aim of the ceasefire is twofold: to get peace talks restarted and to get aid to the population, writes NPR. Dalia Al-Awqati, Mercy Corps’ program director for northern Syria, tells NPR in an interview that while Mercy Corps has been able to get aid to the public over the last few years, over the last six months and especially in the month of February supplying aid has become particularly difficult.
Another article by NPR explains the extent of devastation in Syria just prior to the ceasefire being enacted. Turkey had begun tightening its borders, closing an escape route for fleeing Syrians.
“In the Syrian border town of Azaz… there are almost 50,000 families not even receiving bread, let alone other humanitarian aid,” writes NPR, “Hundreds of thousands of people in northern Syria rely on aid to keep going, but recent fighting and movements of large numbers of people has left humanitarians overwhelmed.”
However, getting aid to those towns deprived of it is contingent on whether the ceasefire holds.
Therefore, there is a question that remains: is the ceasefire expected to hold? And, thinking ahead, will it lead to a lasting political solution for Syria? Peace talks with Syrian factions are meant to resume next week. That could be the first step to ending this war.
However, Bassam Haji Moustafa, a representative of a rebel brigade, expresses doubts over the outcome of the peace talks.
Because extremist groups (including ISIS, and Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate) are more organized than moderates, moderate groups are exhausted and sidelined in the conflict and will be negotiating from a position of weakness.
“We feel our situation as rebels is really bad,” Moustafa says. “The global community is actually portraying us as terrorists, extremist Islamists.”
For her part, Al-Awqati is hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. She believes it’s too early to tell whether the ceasefire will hold, let alone whether it will bring a resolution to the civil war.
The ceasefire presents an opportunity to get aid to civilians and for that, it is a welcome development, but, says Al-Awqati, “…this could still be an opportunity to scale up military action against other – in other locations.”
Al Jazeera highlights what it believes are problematic terms of the ceasefire. Russia has insisted on the right to attack ISIS, al Nusra, and other groups deemed as terrorists by the UN. This means that there are no geographic demarcations indicating where an absolute ceasefire is in effect. Al Jazeera writes that this loophole has allowed Russia to attack rebel groups and civilian areas under the pretext that it is fighting terrorists. The US has been working with Russia to designate geographical boundaries of the ceasefire.
Al Jazeera believes that the ceasefire is likely to fail. It cites several reasons.
First is Russia’s exemption from completely ceasing hostilities. Second, there are thousands of small, organized groups participating in the civil war, and not all of them are motivated by political or ideological concerns. Other issues, such as security and smuggling, also motivate groups and the present ceasefire does not appease the concerns/interests of these other groups.
Third, most of the rebel groups cooperate with other rebel groups and these ties can be motivated by practical concerns (such as accommodating for one group’s weaknesses with another group’s strengths and the need to build alliances to make military gains), instead of solely political and ideological ones. Therefore excluding some groups (those deemed terrorist actors) from the framework of the ceasefire impacts more than just those specific groups.
Although Al Jazeera doubts that the ceasefire will hold or lead to a political solution, the news source acknowledges that the ceasefire will allow increased humanitarian access to those communities who need it.
The Economist highlights another issue with the terms of the ceasefire: there is no clear definition in place as to what counts as a serious enough breach to violate the ceasefire. By Sunday afternoon, Russia said the opposition had made nine breaches of the ceasefire, and the opposition claimed the regime had made 15.
To make matters worse, ISIS has taken advantage of the ceasefire and expanded its military campaign.
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