The skies over Syria are crowded with foreign warplanes. Tens of thousands of civilians are on the run. The Islamic State has executed terrorist attacks on three continents in three weeks.
And yet world powers with deep stakes in the bloody 4-year-old conflict in Syria have, for the first time, agreed to an ambitious timeline that requires getting their allies on the battlefield to put down their weapons and start talking — by the start of the new year.
So how do they get from here to there, and what would it take to reach even a limited cessation of hostilities? The path to any ceasefire and political talks is long, diplomats say. And it is lined with uncertainty and danger, not least for the United Nations, which must do much of the manoeuvring.
According to the ambitious pledges made by world leaders last weekend in Vienna, the UN is supposed to convene talks among Syrian government and rebel representatives by January 1. And it is supposed to give its blessings to a new mission to monitor a ceasefire.
Who would sign up for such a mission in Syria remains a mystery. And the Security Council is in no rush to authorise a mission until there is a cease-fire to monitor.
Those same leaders, including bitter rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, are due to meet next in mid-December. The United Nations mediator, Staffan de Mistura, says he hopes they will choose to meet in Paris. On Thursday, he described the prospects of a cease-fire as “more likely — I’m not saying guaranteed — but more likely than before.”
Inside Syria, hopes for even a limited local truce were dashed just hours before. There had been reports during the week that several major rebel factions, including Jaish al-Islam, backed by Saudi Arabia, were trying to reach a 15-day ceasefire deal with the government in the besieged and bombarded area known as East Ghouta, an expanse of suburbs that adjoins the capital, Damascus, but has long been cut off by the conflict.
The proposed truce would have allowed humanitarian aid to get in and civilians to get out, according to several anti-government activists in the area. By Thursday, no agreement had been reached, and each side accused the other of refusing to accept the deal.
There have been small, short-lived local truces before. One example that de Mistura cited as a model was a local agreement struck in September between Ahrar al-Sham, backed by Qatar, and Iranian officials, who support the government. It involved an exchange of territory and an exchange of populations, depending on whether they were Sunni or Shiite, and in so doing raised the spectre of forcibly moving Syrians based on their sect.
Any nationwide ceasefire, de Mistura was quick to note, would have to be brokered by those countries that made the pledge in Vienna — “the very countries supporting, sponsoring various sides of the conflict,” he said. “They were all in that room.”
The one concrete achievement that diplomats repeatedly cite is that all the countries involved were in the room at all, chiefly Saudi Arabia and Iran, both patrons of the war. They have agreed to meet again, in mid-December.
Moreover, the Paris attacks have led to a reluctant convergence of interests: Russia and France, which agree on very little as far as the future of Syria is concerned, have both carried out airstrikes on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa this week.
There was a glimmer of diplomatic consensus as well. France on Thursday proposed a Security Council draft resolution that calls on countries around the world to “take all necessary measures” to destroy the Islamic State’s “safe haven” in Syria and neighbouring Iraq. Russia signaled that it could support the idea.
Still, no one sounds bullish on the prospects of a ceasefire or genuine political talks anytime soon. As one UN diplomat put it, “There are many things that can go wrong.”
First, who would be covered by a ceasefire? So far they have agreed only that neither the Islamic State nor its outlawed cousin, the Nusra Front, can join the truce because they are on the United Nations’ list of banned terrorist organisations. That list could grow. Indeed, Russia has targeted several other rebel groups, and this week, its foreign minister, Sergey V Lavrov, flatly said that his country was going after “all who one way or another practice and preach terrorist ideology.”
Jordan is expected to host a meeting of military and intelligence experts to thrash out a complete list. Whether it will include hardline Islamist groups supported by powerful Persian Gulf countries is certain to be a point of great contention. Saudi Arabia plans to host a separate meeting of Syrian opposition groups in mid-December, diplomats said.
Second, how would a ceasefire monitoring mission work? There is little appetite for a traditional observer mission of blue berets under UN command, diplomats here said. One possibility is that regional countries with a stake in Syria’s future will monitor a ceasefire. Another possibility is that the parties on the ground will monitor a truce themselves, reporting violations to a UN-endorsed body.
Assad’s future
And what about the question that everyone has agreed to kick down the road: the future of the Syrian president, Bashar Assad?
Iran, his principal backer on the battlefield, insists that he must be allowed to run in future elections, which are envisioned, optimistically, for 2017. Western powers insist that Assad has no place in his country’s long-term future, though they no longer insist that he must exit at the beginning of a political transition.
“There cannot be long-term peace with Assad, but on the other hand there cannot be a peace process that stipulates that Assad must go,” Jean-Marie Guehenno, the president of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said. “How you square that circle has been the issue from the beginning and still is.”
For now, both the US and Russia have agreed to set the question aside, but they can only set it aside for so long. The airstrikes directed at the IS could strengthen Assad’s position militarily and, in turn, harden his stance at the negotiating table — and that, diplomats and analysts warn, would result in the worst sort of blowback.
As world leaders bicker, the misery of the Syrians becomes more acute. The head of the UN relief efforts, Stephen O’Brien, offered one measure of the suffering, telling the Security Council that barely two-thirds of Syrian children have been immunised against preventable childhood diseases in 2015; five years ago, nearly all children in Syria had been immunised.
All told, 13.5 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian aid, and there is not nearly enough funding to pay for it. Their suffering is bound to get worse.
The fighting is likely to intensify, diplomats said, as the parties to any potential cease-fire try to strengthen their bargaining position. “It’s part of the metabolism of a potential ceasefire,” de Mistura said.