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Syria conflict

Syrian war cease-fire is shaky from the start

Oren Dorell
USA TODAY
A Syrian rebel fighter from the Islamist Failaq al-Rahman brigade mans a position on the front line against regime forces in the town of Arbin in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on Feb. 26, 2016.

A cease-fire in Syria's civil war that began at midnight Saturday local time was shaky from the start. Some combatants have not signed on while others have vowed to continue fighting.

The agreement for a "cessation of hostilities" in the 5-year-old war was brokered by the United States and Russia and approved by Western-backed rebels and the Syrian government to allow humanitarian aid to reach besieged communities and pave the way for elections.

With combatants from more than a dozen countries involved, the outlook for a halt to fighting was unpredictable, as heavy bombing continued in the hours leading up to the case-fire deadline.

Initial reports indicated that at the cease-fire deadline, both the capital of Damascus and the nearby rebel-held town of Daraya suddenly became calm. Opposition activists on the ground reported early adherence to the truce, according to the Associated Press.

Mazen al-Shami, an activist near Damascus, told AP that an opposition-held eastern suburb of the capital known as Eastern Ghouta was "quiet for the first time in years." The Ghouta region, which includes the sprawling suburb of Douma, has been the scene of intense fighting during Syria's conflict.

An Associated Press crew in Damascus said the sounds of explosions stopped three minutes before midnight. An Aleppo-based opposition media collective, Aleppo24, said Russian warplanes left Aleppo skies at 12:19 a.m.

The Russian military said airstrikes had stopped in areas where armed groups had requested a ceasefire, AP reported.

There were also some reports of violations, which could not be independently confirmed, but they appeared to be relatively limited.

Hours after the cease-fire, a car bomb exploded on the edge of a government-held town, AP reported. The blast killed two and wounded others. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion.

The agreement excludes two terrorist groups, the  Islamic State and the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, Nusra Front, which has supported many of the Western-backed Syrian rebels. The U.S. and Russia said they would continue air attacks and support ground forces fighting those two groups. The Nusra Front on Friday called on rebels to "intensify your strikes" against the Syrian government and its supporters, according to the Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman.

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Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbor, said Thursday that it will not be bound by the cease-fire agreement if Kurdish forces fighting in Syria threaten its security. The Turkish government considers the Kurdish fighters to be terrorists seeking a separate state made up of Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, who are ethnic minorities in their home countries.

Recent gains by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, with Iranian and Russian support, make it unlikely that they will stop fighting for long, if at all, said several analysts.

“The Russians and Iranians have not completed what they need to do” to defeat Assad's enemies, said J. Matthew McInnis of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. "It will inevitably be Russia, Syria and Iran that will resume their campaign and they will find any excuse to do so.”

A Syrian rebel fighter from the Islamist Failaq al-Rahman brigade mans a position on the front line against regime forces in the town of Arbin in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on Feb. 26, 2016.

A look at proposed cease-fire set to begin in Syria

The cease-fire was supposed to begin at the end of January, along with direct negotiations between representatives of the Syrian opposition and the Assad government. Opposition leaders refused to talk, however, while Syrian and Russian aircraft continued to bombard rebel-held cities and Syrian forces sought to encircle rebel holdouts in the northern city of Aleppo.

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Now Aleppo, the last major Syrian city in partial rebel control, is virtually surrounded by a combination of Syrian government forces and Syrian Kurdish militias.

The Kurds are supported by the U.S. in their fight against the Islamic State. In recent weeks, however, they pushed forward under Russian air cover to seize territory from opposition forces supported by Turkey. As a result, the opposition forces are weaker than they were three weeks ago, and have lost control of major roads that provide access to Turkey for supplies and refugees.

Syrian shopkeepers wait for customers at the popular Souk Tawil old market in Damascus, Syria, on Feb. 24, 2016. A uniquely Syrian version of normalcy prevails in the heart of Damascus, where a mix of rural refugees and sophisticated urbanites conduct their daily business to the muffled sounds of gunfire and explosions in the distance.

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the Kurdish gains add instability to the situation because Turkey fears its ability to provide assistance to the opposition forces in Aleppo "would be lost.”

And if Aleppo falls to the Syrian government, it would be a huge victory for Assad and create massive new outflows of refugees into Turkey, exacerbating Europe’s refugee problem, Cagaptay said.

“I think the cease-fire won’t hold and it will break down when (Kurds) or Nusra front or Turkey will say they are not bound by the cease-fire because they have some other concerns,” he said.

Michael O’Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution said the cease-fire is unstable because Assad and his Russian backers define all insurgents as terrorists, including U.S. backed rebels, and the insurgents are unwilling to accept a future that includes Assad.

“It’s dubious that Russian forces and the Syrians army will show any restraint,” O’Hanlon said. And the opposition in and around Aleppo, "will look for a chance to counterattack soon," he said. “The fundamental point is that this is still, in the eyes of most, a battle to the death.”

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