WASHINGTON —
The United States and Russia announced an
agreement on Monday for a partial truce in #Syria,
though the caveats and cautious words on all sides underscored the obstacles in
the way of the latest diplomatic effort to end the five-year-old civil war.
Under the terms of the agreement,
the Syrian government and Syria’s
armed opposition are being asked to agree to a “cessation of hostilities,”
effective this Saturday. But the truce does not apply to two of the most lethal
extremist groups, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, raising questions
about whether it will be any more lasting than previous cease-fires.
The agreement calls for the Syrian
government and the opposition to indicate by noon on Friday whether they will
comply with the cessation of hostilities, a term carefully chosen because it
does not require the kind of agreement in a formal cease-fire. The United
States is responsible for bringing the various opposition groups in line while
the Russians are supposed to pressure the government. Washington and Moscow
also agreed to set up a hotline to monitor compliance by both sides.
President Obama sealed the final terms
of the arrangement in a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has
become perhaps the most influential player in the Syrian war since Russia
thrust itself into the conflict in September on behalf of its client, Syria’s
president, Bashar al-Assad.
“I am sure that the common
actions, agreed with the American side, are capable of radically changing the
crisis situation in Syria,” Mr. Putin declared. “Finally, a real chance emerged
to stop the longstanding bloodshed and violence.”
The White House was more
muted, issuing a two-paragraph summary of the president’s conversation, in
which he welcomed the agreement but did not celebrate it. The priorities, Mr.
Obama told Mr. Putin, were to “alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people,”
accelerate a political settlement and keep the focus on the coalition’s battle
against the Islamic State.
“This is going to be difficult
to implement,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said. “The fact
is that the situation in Syria has been very difficult from the get-go.”
On the ground in Syria, the
prospects for an end to the bloodshed seemed even more elusive. In the last
week alone, more than 100 people in Homs and Damascus were killed by suicide
bombings by the Islamic State. Airstrikes by the Syrian government and its
Russian allies in Aleppo and elsewhere have killed scores of people, including
in at least five hospitals, one aided by the international charity Doctors
Without Borders. Farther east, scores of civilians were said by locals to have
been killed in airstrikes by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, also known
as ISIS or ISIL.
The diplomatic efforts did
yield a small victory: Aid was delivered for the first time in months to
several towns after the combatants gave permission under intense pressure. But
hundreds of thousands of Syrians remain trapped in areas that are classified as
besieged or hard to reach, without regular access to food and medicine.
Humanitarian groups caution that the more access to aid is used as part of
political deals, the less the combatants will provide it unconditionally, as
required under international law.
The agreement came after one
false start: Secretary of State John Kerry announced in Munich on Feb. 12
that the truce would take effect in a week, but the target date passed as the
two sides wrestled over how to carry it out. On Sunday, in Amman, Jordan, Mr.
Kerry spoke three times by phone with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V.
Lavrov, to iron out the details.
On Monday, while flying back
to Washington, Mr. Kerry briefed ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Saudi
Arabia, Qatar and Turkey about the agreement, according to a senior State
Department official. He is expected to discuss the truce when he testifies at a
budget hearing Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Mr. Kerry has tended to be
more optimistic than the White House about the prospects for a diplomatic
solution in Syria. But his statement on Monday was also notably reserved. He
did not mention the Feb. 27 date and said that while the agreement represented
a “moment of promise,” the “fulfillment of that promise depends on actions.”
“He is, of course, glad that
we got the modalities agreed upon and a start date,” said the State Department
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Mr. Kerry’s thinking,
“but he isn’t prepared to take anything for granted. In his mind, this is not a
time to celebrate.”
Analysts expressed skepticism
about the deal, noting that in the five days before the truce takes effect, the
Syrian forces and their Russian allies could inflict a lot more damage to
Aleppo through bombing raids. Some speculated that Russia might expand its
military campaign to Idlib, southwest of Aleppo, where Nusra fighters are also
operating.
“This depends entirely on the
good faith of Russia, Iran and the Assad regime, none of whom have shown much
good faith in the last five years,” said Frederic C. Hof, a senior fellow at
the Atlantic Council who worked on Syria policy during the first term of the
Obama administration.
“The Russians have it in their
power to stop this in five days,” Mr. Hof said. “The fact that they’re taking
five more days suggests that they will use Nusra as a pretext to go beyond
where they are now.”
In Riyadh on Monday, a
Saudi-backed consortium of Syrian opposition groups and political dissidents
said they would agree to the terms of the truce. But Riad Hijab, who
coordinates the group’s efforts, did not expect the Syrian government, Iran or
Russia to abide by it since, he said, Mr. Assad’s survival depended on “the
continuation of its campaign of oppression, killing and forced displacement.”
For the Obama administration,
a partial truce in Syria may simply be a way to keep a lid on the violence
there while it turns its attention to planning and carrying out military
operations against Islamic State fighters in Libya. Some analysts said the
agreement was less an effort to end the fighting in Syria than to ease the
bloodshed enough to allow more humanitarian aid to reach stricken cities like
Aleppo.
“Washington’s stated policy is
not to end the Syrian war,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They just want to settle it down so
it boils a little more slowly. It’s yet another attempt to contain a conflict
that has been uncontainable.”
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