On Saturday, February 24, the United Nations Security Council produced a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in war-torn Syria. The resolution comes after rescue workers in the country’s eastern Ghouta region reported that bombing raids became so persistent that personnel did not have enough windows of safety to even count bodies. The recent period has truly become one of the bloodiest in the seven-year civil war.
According to the international humanitarian medical group Doctors Without Borders, at least 520 people have died and 2,500 have been wounded in the shelling of eastern Ghouta over the past week. At least thirteen hospitals and clinics in the area affiliated with the group have also been compromised or destroyed by the bombing.
The unanimous vote by the 15-member Security Council did not bring an end to the bombings. Shortly after the Council’s demand for a ceasefire was finalized, warplanes struck a town in eastern Ghouta, the last rebel enclave near Damascus. Residents in the area have reportedly been holed-up in basements for the past several days.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary General António Guterres has made a public appeal to the belligerents in the country to put a temporary halt to the fighting on humanitarian grounds. In a statement from UN headquarters, Guterres urged an immediate suspension of “all war activities” in eastern Ghouta, where he said “400,000 people” have been under non-stop siege since 2013, with only sparse access to food and medicine.
Sitting back and waiting for the participants to duke it out hasn’t exactly worked out. The humanitarian factor has made inaction a difficult option. All the while, the Syrian people have remained caught in the middle of this multi-directional shooting spree
With a truce now in effect, rescue and aid organizations hope to deliver emergency aid to eastern Ghouta and other hard-hit areas. Wounded will finally be evacuated to hospitals and other medical facilities in safer areas of the country.
Despite the desperate situation the resolution sought to address, it took quite a bit of time for the Security Council to come up with a text all members were willing to endorse. The council deliberated for three days, arguing over relatively minor details before reaching a consensus. America’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley lambasted her colleagues after the 72-hour deliberations, saying, “In the three days it took us to adopt this resolution, how many mothers lost their kids to the bombing? Here we are voting for a ceasefire that could have saved lives days ago, and after all of this time, hardly anything has changed in the resolution except a few words and some commas.”
What was holding up the drafting of this critical UN resolution?
The short answer is Russia.
While the Russian Federation, Syria’s ally in the war, supported the adoption of the resolution, Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia was quick to cast doubt on its feasibility. Nebenzia began by pointing out that previous ceasefire deals have had a poor record of actually ending fighting in Syria.
“What is necessary is for the demands of the Security Council to be underpinned by concrete on the ground agreements,” Nebenzia told the council after the vote was finally completed. The point Nebenzia laid out is fair enough. The lack of success derived from previous ceasefires the Russian ambassador referred to is a fact. In light of this, it would be counterproductive for the council to put forth a resolution that is not realistically implementable.
Russia’s objection did not stop there, however.
During the course of deliberations on the resolution, it was Russia who demanded changes to the wording. When it was originally proposed to demand the ceasefire begin 72 hours after the resolution was adopted, Russia was uncomfortable with codifying a set timeframe. The text was watered down to the non-committal “without delay.”
There is a fuller understanding of what stands behind the recent Security Council resolution. Understanding this backdrop can give some insight into the current shaky ceasefire and the objections to it.
The Syrian Civil War has been a uniquely complex situation from the beginning. While the conflict may have been triggered as a revolt against the highly authoritarian police state of Bashar Assad, the conflict almost immediately deteriorated into a brawl among a cacophony of very nasty groups of people.
Organizations spanning from Al Qaeda to Hezbollah are locked in the seemingly never-ending fighting. This of course has been the reason behind America’s ambivalence toward the war. Backing any side meant lending support to some sworn enemy of the free world. Standing behind rebel factions meant aiding Al Nusra, the Islamic State, and other Sunni militant groups. On the other hand, any help to Assad meant advancing the “Shiite Axis” of Iran and Hezbollah, not to mention propping up a repressive regime.
Sitting back and waiting for the participants to duke it out hasn’t exactly worked either though. The humanitarian factor has made inaction a difficult option. All the while, the Syrian people have remained caught in the middle of this multi-directional shooting spree. In some instances, the US has felt compelled to intervene, such as it did in the cruise missile strike ordered by President Trump back in April after Assad allegedly used chemical weapons against civilian targets.
For the most part, however, America and its allies have had to stay pretty reserved when it comes to policy in Syria. The decision to support the ceasefire was not clear-cut. A calming of the storm will open a window for tending to wounded and starving civilians, but will also give an opportunity for the Syrian regime to regroup and prepare for the next round.
Syria has blatantly declared its intent to continue military operations during the truce. “We’re combating terrorism on our territories,” Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari told the Security Council. Ja’afari added that the Syrian government “will reserve the right to respond as it deems appropriate” to target “terrorist armed groups.” According to reports, Iranian forces assisting Assad also plan to participate in “clean-up” operations in Damascus and other areas during the 30-day ceasefire.
As of now, there are no clear indications of how much the truce will affect the long-term situation in Syria, if at all. As the situation stands, there are too many actors in the country with disparate interests to guarantee any lasting peace. At most, the ceasefire may offer the battleworn citizens of Syria a smidgen of reprieve.
