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Syria’s Cessation of Hostilities: How Does It Work and How are Factions Reacting?
http://carnegieendowment.org/
At midnight on February 27, the guns fell
silent in Syria—at least temporarily. With numerous allegations of
breaches beginning to surface, Syria’s ceasefire is already on shaky ground.
This cessation of hostilities, as it is formally called, followed two
weeks of intensive negotiations between the United States and Russia.
Just before the clock struck twelve, their efforts reached fruition when
the UN Security Council unanimously approved resolution 2268, endorsing a Russian-American agreement from February 22 and demanding that Syrian and international actors comply.
But will they? And with what exactly do they need to comply? In
addition to the disparate motivations of outside actors, the complex
calculations and relations among Syrian jihadi and non-jihadi rebel
factions make this a perilous process.
When the Geneva III talks were suspended in early February, as a result of a Russian- and Iranian-backed breakthrough for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Aleppo, international diplomacy went into overdrive to avoid a complete collapse of the peace process. The United States had invested heavily in the Geneva process and the Russian government presumably also had its reasons to get the talks back on track.
This produced a new agreement underwritten by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), a recently-created gathering of states involved in the Syrian peace process. In this agreement, Moscow and Washington named themselves the joint heads of an ISSG Ceasefire Task Force, momentarily brushing their unruly allies aside in order to sit down, mano a mano, and talk like adults. The result was the February 22 agreement, which mandated a cessation of hostilities on February 27. A technical annex to the deal explains that Moscow and Washington will be responsible for managing the process by dealing with their ISSG allies, sharing information, mapping out protected areas, and adjudicating disputes. They will do so through two monitoring centers: a Russian one set up at the Hmeymim Airbase near Latakia in Syria, and an American one in Amman, Jordan.
The warring parties were then told to sign on to the terms of the deal, take it or leave it. If they failed to do so, they would be considered fair game for all sides once the agreement entered into force.
How Did This Happen?
The most important thing to understand is that this cessation is not an indigenously-led process. If left to their own devices, the warring parties in Syria would still be killing each other—and many civilians too—while scoffing contemptuously at any talk of peace. Neither is it truly a regional deal. It is essentially a bilateral understanding between Washington and Moscow that has either been supported by or rammed down the throats of their regional allies, which are in turn expected to bring their Syrian clients into the deal.When the Geneva III talks were suspended in early February, as a result of a Russian- and Iranian-backed breakthrough for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Aleppo, international diplomacy went into overdrive to avoid a complete collapse of the peace process. The United States had invested heavily in the Geneva process and the Russian government presumably also had its reasons to get the talks back on track.
This produced a new agreement underwritten by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), a recently-created gathering of states involved in the Syrian peace process. In this agreement, Moscow and Washington named themselves the joint heads of an ISSG Ceasefire Task Force, momentarily brushing their unruly allies aside in order to sit down, mano a mano, and talk like adults. The result was the February 22 agreement, which mandated a cessation of hostilities on February 27. A technical annex to the deal explains that Moscow and Washington will be responsible for managing the process by dealing with their ISSG allies, sharing information, mapping out protected areas, and adjudicating disputes. They will do so through two monitoring centers: a Russian one set up at the Hmeymim Airbase near Latakia in Syria, and an American one in Amman, Jordan.
The warring parties were then told to sign on to the terms of the deal, take it or leave it. If they failed to do so, they would be considered fair game for all sides once the agreement entered into force.
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