Syrian government agrees to 'cessation of hostilities' plan

Syrian government agrees to 'cessation of hostilities' plan

A preliminary hurdle to the start of a US and Russian-brokered ceasefire in Syria has been cleared after the Assad

government said it would accept a "cessation of hostilities" on the condition that attacks on Islamic Statelll, al-Nusra

and Other UN -identified terrorist groups can continue.

The regime Of Bashar al Assad said it would work with Russia(21 to define which groups and areas would be included in

the cessation of hostilities plan, which is due to begin on Saturday.


The Syrian government said opposition groups could not be allowed to use the ceasefire to strengthen their military

positions and this would be regarded as a breach of the agreement.

Russia and America's joint statement on a ceasefire on Monday131 would not have been issued unless the two countries

had relatively clear indications that its terms would be accepted by the key players, including the Syrian government,

the opposition forces sponsored by Saudi Arabia, and Syrian Kurds.

Assad's recent military advances around Aleppo — Syria's second city - are largely due to the ferocity of Russian air

force strikes against opposition positions.

There is scepticism that the ceasefire will hold due to the difficulties in marking out what territory is covered, and the

way in which some opposition groups are interwoven with al Nusra.

The Syrian government stressed the importance Of sealing the borders, halting foreign support to armed groups, and preventing these organisations from strengthening their capabilities or changing their positions", in order to avoid wrecking the agreement.

Assad believes Turkey has acted as a supply line for foreign fighters supporting both the "moderate" opposition and Isis.

Turkey has welcomed the ceasefire plan, but is under pressure from the UN to allow in tens Of thousands more

refugees massed on the Syrian border. They are fleeing from the fighting in the Aleppo area.

The Syrian high negotiating committee - the main umbrella organisation for Syrian opposition groups backed by the

west and Saudi Arabia — said late on Monday that it accepted the terms of the ceasefire. However, it added that the

plan was dependent on ending all sieges, allowing in humanitarian aid, releasing all detainees and ending

bombardments by ground or air.

Response: The underlying question in this article is can Syria really uphold a ceasefire agreement. However, in the article it states: “Russia and America’s joint statement on a ceasefire on Monday would not have been issued unless the two countries had relatively clear indications that its terms would be accepted by the key players, including the Syrian government, the opposition forces sponsored by Saudi Arabia, and Syrian Kurds.” This is a hopeful statement; however, it is far from concrete. The author is not outrageously confident America and Russia are able to predict the actions of the key players in this conflict. This can be seen in his statement that America and Russia wouldn’t have released a statement unless they were “relatively” sure. So just in this statement alone we can see that the world is hopefully anticipation a possible ceasefire in Syria but we can see that it is hope we are riding on, not concrete facts or evidence showing that Syria can uphold a ceasefire agreement. Not only this but the author of this article also writes, “There is skepticism that the ceasefire will hold due to the difficulties in marking out what territory is covered, and the way in which some opposition groups are interwoven with al-Nusra.” This clearly shows the author’s own feelings towards Syria’s ability to maintain peace as well as voices the feelings of many other people around the world. I personally am very hesitant that Syria will be able to maintain a ceasefire, not only because the government itself is incredibly unstable, but because fighting against UN declared terrorist groups will continue. As stated in the quote above, there are “key players” that are affiliated with terrorist groups and large members of terrorist groups thus automatically linking themselves with those groups because of their well-known affiliation making it difficult to predict their actions when it comes to any violence towards these particular groups. While many share my view there are also many who disagree with me. There are some who do think that this ceasefire is a probable solution to end the violence in Syria, American and Russian government officials would be included that spectrum. In another article talking about the same situation the author, Luke Coffey, states that it is insanely improbable that the violence in Syria will end or even drastically diminish as expected. He also points out the fact that there are certain terrorist groups that are not yet recognized as terrorist groups by the UN, thus creating loopholes for both Russia and Turkey to continue fighting.

Within this article the author assume you know certain amounts of information about the conflict that he doesn’t expound on such as the previous relations between Turkey, Russian, Syria, and the US. Not only does the author assume certain things, he also writes with a particular context and bias. The author, Patrick Wintour, is the diplomatic editor for the guardian and all his recent works focus on the Syrian refugee crisis in some way. This author will write to please the general audience that the Guardian News receives and since he has a relatively respectable position in his work place he will most likely share the same positions as his audience.  The Guardian Newspaper is also reputed to be liberal and left-wing in its political stance, automatically affecting the authors writing on all political situations including this article.

Overall this article addressed the reality of Syria committing to and carrying out a ceasefire agreement. The author used sufficient evidence to prove his point; however; left out some information that was used to support evidence in other similar articles. This brings me to the conclusion that while the author made valid statements and used sufficient evidence to back up those statements, his information was clearly biased to put the US and Syria in a hopeful and positive light when in reality, the hopefulness of the situation is less than praise worthy. So the answer to the underlying question of whether or not Syria will uphold its ceasefire agreement is no, it is highly improbably that any significant amount of violence within Syria will end as a result of this ceasefire agreement.  

 
Citation to main article:

Wintour, Patrick. “Syrian government agrees to ‘cessation of hostilities’ plan.” 23 Feb. 2016. Guardian News and Media Limited. 23 Feb. 2016. <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/23/syrian-government-assad-agrees-to-cessation-of-hostilities>

Citation to supporting article: 

Coffey, Luke.  “A ceasefire in Syria is pure fantasy.” 23 Feb. 2016. Al Jazeera Media Network. 23 Feb. 2016. <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/02/ceasefire-syria-pure-fantasy-russia-isis-160223051548072.html>