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Cease-fire in Syria shaky on 1st day
Fighting continues around Damascus; UN vote Saturday
BEIRUT — A RussianTurkish plan to end the war in Syria got off to a shaky start Friday with the partial implementation of a new cease-fire agreement that excludes for now any involvement of the United States.
There are hopes that this peace attempt will work where countless U.S.backed efforts have failed, in part because the United States is not involved.
Russia, which is the single most influential power in Syria, is taking the lead in the initiative, and President Vladimir Putin has staked his prestige on a successful outcome. The U.N. Security Council has scheduled a vote Saturday morning on a Russian resolution that would endorse the ceasefire agreement and reiterate support for a roadmap to peace that starts with a transitional government.
Turkey, the other main partner in the process, has far more leverage over the rebels than the United States ever did, above all because it controls the border they depend on for supplies of weaponry.
But continued fighting in the Damascus area marred the first day of the truce, serving as a reminder that the government of President Bashar Assad has always been a reluctant party to cease-fire efforts that threaten to interfere with government advances.
Loyalist forces intensified an assault launched last week against Wadi Barada, a rebel-held pocket of territory in the countryside west of Damascus, dropping barrel bombs and firing artillery into the remote, mountainous area, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
There was also continued fighting around the besieged neighborhoods of eastern Damascus, where government forces have been making progress in recent weeks.
“It’s not in Assad’s interests for there to be a ceasefire because Assad is moving steadily to secure control over the Damascus countryside,” said Nicholas Heras of the Center for a New American Security.
The truce is more likely to work, Heras said, in the northern areas of Syria, where the recent victory by loyalist forces over the rebels in Aleppo has tilted the balance of power in favor of the Russian-backed government and given Turkey an incentive to sign onto a deal that preserves its influence along its border. There, and in other parts of the country where the fighting ebbed, Syrians took advantage of the lull to stage anti-government demonstrations.
The cease-fire is just one step in a wider initiative sponsored by Russia and Turkey that aims to bring the factions together for peace talks next month in Astana, capital of the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.
The outlines of the proposal differ little from efforts last year by the U.S., which envisaged a ceasefire would be followed by peace talks in Geneva.
As was the case with the U.S.-backed efforts, details of the Russian plan remain vague. It is still unclear what kind of settlement Moscow is hoping will emerge, who will attend the talks and, most significantly, whether rebels who wield power on the ground will be invited.
Rebel groups are assuming they will be included, and most have decided for now to throw their support behind the process, said Yasser al-Youssef of the rebel group Noureddine alZinki, one of the groups that did not sign the cease-fire agreement but has nonetheless decided to support it.
“Nobody trusts the Russians at all. But no one has explicitly said they will not comply with the cease-fire,” al-Youssef said. “There is a lot of upset regarding the failure of the West in brokering a cease-fire, so the entire Arab world is looking to this process and hoping for the best.”
Altogether, 13 rebel groups signed the cease-fire agreement, but many more are lending their support, he said.
The truce excludes the extremist Islamic State, which controls territory in the east of the country, and the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, present in almost all of the rebel-held areas that are covered by the cease-fire.
Iran’s role will also be crucial in determining the success of the cease-fire. Russia has included Iran as one of the three main sponsors of the peace process, and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif posted a tweet Friday expressing his support for the cease-fire, calling it “a major achievement.”
But Iran, which wields influence through the many Iranian-backed militias fighting on the ground on Assad’s behalf, especially around Damascus, has not featured as prominently in the negotiations as Russia and Turkey.