There were skeptics aplenty when it was announced, but U.S. and U.N. officials are saying the fragile cease-fire between the forces of Russian-backed Syrian President Bashar Assad and opposition groups that went into effect late last week is reducing the carnage — for now.
While Moscow and Damascus claim terrorists have continued shelling in some areas and a dark uncertainty still looms over swaths of territory held by the Islamic State and other jihadi groups that are not covered by the truce, there were glimpses of normalcy Thursday in some corners that have been hit hardest by the war.
Signs of life in the devastated northern city of Aleppo, particularly, underscored assertions by U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura, who told a meeting in Geneva that violence as a whole has been greatly reduced since the U.S.-Russian-brokered truce went into effect Saturday.
“In general, the cessation has been holding,” Mr. de Mistura told the International Syria Support Group, the collection of U.S., Russian and other diplomats monitoring the cease-fire. Fighting has continued in a number of places, he said, but generally has been contained.
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said Thursday that he will join the leaders of Germany and France on a conference call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to discuss ways to shore up the cease-fire.
Cameron spokeswoman Helen Bower said Western leaders would stress to Mr. Putin the importance of maintaining the truce so peace talks can make progress in Geneva next week and to refrain from bombing opposition positions in the interim.
Obama administration officials also expressed cautious optimism that the fragile agreement in Syria could pave the way for regular humanitarian aid to flow into remote and besieged areas that have been cut off by fighting for years.
“It generally does appear to be holding, and that’s an encouraging sign,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “But we’re not taking anything for granted here. We’re only into, you know, less than a week of this. So we’re going to keep watching it very, very closely.”
He suggested that U.S. officials remain wary of ongoing cease-fire violations and said “the right number of violations needs to be zero, and we’re not at zero now.”
The cease-fire is seen to represent the most promising initiative to help end a 5-year-old war that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven millions of Syrians out of the country. But skeptics say the agreement does nothing to seriously confront the reality that large chunks of Syria remain in the hands of jihadi terrorist groups.
Neither the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, nor its rival, the al Qaeda branch in Syria known as the Nusra Front, participated in the flurry of diplomacy that led to the declaration last month of a cease-fire. Skeptics say both groups in all likelihood will seize upon the moment of reprieve to regroup and tighten their hold on territory.
But if the cease-fire holds, private analysts said, one fallout will be that the Assad regime and its Iranian and Russian backers will consolidate their gains around Aleppo — Syria’s largest city and a onetime stronghold of moderate U.S.-backed opposition rebels in the civil war.
New life in Aleppo
It was unclear Thursday whether that prediction would hold true.
Aleppo, roughly 30 miles from Syria’s northern border with Turkey, had a population of nearly 5 million and was home to one of the first and most fervent anti-Assad, pro-democracy uprisings that preceded the outbreak of war in 2011.
The Syrian military’s response has turned much of the city’s center to rubble. Most estimates say more than half of its inhabitants have fled, joining millions of other Syrians on the trail to refugee camps in neighboring nations or pursuing asylum in Europe.
But for the first time in months, children were playing outdoors Thursday and many people were traveling to shops safely in Aleppo, thanks to the partial halt in the war.
“Look at the markets. Where were all these people hiding?” said a bewildered Mahmoud Ashrafi, who spoke with Reuters by telephone Thursday after picking through opposition-held areas of the city wrecked by barrel bombs and airstrikes.
Just a few weeks ago, Syrians in opposition-held parts of Aleppo were trying to leave, fearful that advancing forces loyal to the Assad regime were about to impose a siege after cutting rebel supply lines north of the city.
But some of those who fled have returned this week. Aleppo resident Jamila al-Shabani told Reuters that she had been out seeing parts of the city she had not visited in a long time because of what she described as her “self-imposed confinement” at home. “People were afraid to go out,” she said.
“The park yesterday was a beehive where children and families flocked,” said Abdullah Aslan, another Aleppo resident contacted by the news agency. “It was lovely and sunny. The park was full. People now, when they go out with their families, feel safer,” he said.
A more lasting cease-fire would leave Syria and the region facing a vast rebuilding job. Officials say Syria has roughly 850,000 fewer military-age men today than it had in 2011 because of people fleeing the conflict.
Despite reports of a nationwide electricity blackout Thursday, U.N. officials sought to strike an optimistic chord about increased humanitarian aid in the weeks ahead.
Jan Egeland, a special U.N. aid adviser working with Mr. de Mistura in Geneva, said aid shipments are reaching besieged cities in various areas of Syria. “In the last two weeks, 236 trucks have served 115,000 people,” he said.
But Mr. Egeland also warned of snags in getting enough trucks organized for an expanded aid mission, and he pointed to the difficulty of winning approval from Syrian government officials, who at times have stripped out badly needed medical supplies from convoys.
The Assad’s regime role in the aid delivery process has been a source of discomfort this week for the Obama administration, whose pursuit of the cease-fire is seen to have come at a price of backing down from what were once adamant calls for the Syrian president’s ouster.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Monday that he was “concerned about reports that the Assad regime — probably no surprise — continues to drag its feet in providing the permits” for trucks to deliver aid.
“We call on the Assad regime to, at least in a moment of cessation of hostilities, try to show some measure of decency, if that is even possible,” Mr. Kerry said. “Our hope is that they will also stop their people, their troops and their officials who get in the way or manage these shipments, from actually putting their hands into the shipments and taking out medicine, or taking out other preferred items simply to keep for themselves.”
In Damascus, Ahmad Mounir, Syria’s deputy minister of national reconciliation, said the cease-fire could succeed if Turkey and Saudi Arabia halted their support for militants in the nation.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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