Syria is calmer but cautious as cease-fire begins in conflict
BEIRUT — A cease-fire in the Syrian civil war, negotiated by Russia and the United States, officially took effect at sundown Monday after a weekend of intensified fighting and a vow by Syria’s president to retake the entire country.
Despite pessimism over how long the cease-fire would last, calm was widely reported after it took effect at 7 p.m. local time, but there were a few notable exceptions.
Less than an hour into the truce, residents in the divided northern city of Aleppo said via text message that a government helicopter had dropped explosive cylinders on a rebel-held district. And in the southern province of Daraa, a rebel faction said in a statement that it had killed four government soldiers. By midnight, opposition factions had reported 10 violations by government forces.
There have been extensive doubts expressed among many entangled in the conflict that the cease-fire, timed to coincide with the start of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, will be respected.
Under the terms, if violence is significantly reduced for seven days, the United States and Russia will collaborate on new airstrikes against jihadi militants in Syria, and the Syrian air force will be barred from flying over insurgent-held areas.
The U.S. supports an alliance of rebel groups and Russia supports President Bashar Assad. But both countries share an antipathy for Islamic State and Nusra Front fighters who have seized parts of Syria and made it a magnet for jihadis.
Under the cease-fire deal, during an initial period, all attacks are to stop except Syrian government attacks on those two jihadi groups. But the public does not know what the United States and Russia have defined as those groups’ territories — the opposition has little trust in the Syrian government or Russia, which have often applied those labels to all of Assad’s opponents. And government supporters doubt that the opposition groups will distance themselves from the extremists, as the Americans have promised.
There was also new confusion in the early hours of the cease-fire: Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would be able to approve Syrian government strikes, but the State Department reversed those comments less than two hours later.
Assad used the hours before the ceasefire to promise victory in his country’s 5-year-old civil war, punctuating his pledge by visiting a Damascus suburb that rebels surrendered last month.
Assad’s visit to the suburb, Daraya, which had long been held by opposition fighters who want him deposed, was prominently reported by state television and other government news media.
The recapture of Daraya, which once symbolized rebel defiance in the face of encirclement and relentless bombing attacks, reflected Assad’s strengthened position in the conflict since Russia intervened to help him a year ago.
An agreement on the cease-fire was reached late Friday in Geneva by Russian and U.S. diplomats, who have been struggling to find a way to reduce violence in the increasingly complex conflict so that food and medicine can reach civilians.
The agreement contains many caveats and unenforceable provisions. Skepticism about its effectiveness runs deepest among the array of U.S.-backed Syrian opposition groups, which fear that Assad is now even more entrenched in power. Obama administration officials have also expressed doubts that it will work.
The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said Monday that the success of the agreement “places a lot of pressure on Russia to deliver.”
“Based on our collective experience here on observing the situation,” Earnest said, “I think we have some reasons to be skeptical that the Russians are able or are willing to implement the arrangement consistent with the way it’s been described.” “But,” he added, “we’ll see.” The cease-fire is the second negotiated this year by Russia and the United States. The first, reached in February, collapsed within weeks.
Kerry, who finished the cease-fire negotiation in Geneva with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said some breaches would not surprise him.
“For all the doubts that remain — and there will be challenges in the days to come — this plan has a chance to work,” Kerry said in Washington, describing it as possibly “the last chance that one has to save a united Syria.”
A group of 21 rebel groups issued a statement listing deep reservations about and criticisms of the cease-fire deal, but stopping short of rejecting it.
Even if the accord reduces the killing in Syria, where by some estimates a half-million people have died since the conflict began in 2011, the prognosis for peace and reconciliation is unclear, Western political analysts said.
“This accord may well save lives, and it’s a gain if for that reason only,” Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm in Washington, said in an email. “But in the end, it’s not likely to have meaningful impact for more than a limited period, or to jump-start a serious political track.”