Elusive peace

On the very day US Secretary of State John Kerry cautiously announced the possibility of the US and Russia agreeing to a ceasefire in Syria, over 120 people were killed in a series of car bombings in Damascus and Homs. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the bombings and demonstrated the futility of a ceasefire when there are so many actors in the country who have no reason to halt their campaigns of violence. Apart from the IS, which is not willing to negotiate or agree to a ceasefire, there are other anti-Assad groups like Al-Nusra that would use a ceasefire to stake out positions in Syrian cities for an offensive when the ceasefire inevitably breaks. Then there is Assad and his Russian allies who ignored a previous UN-brokered ceasefire just two weeks ago as the Syrian ruler ordered his army to encircle Homs under cover of Russian bombardment. The US and its Western allies are still bombing IS targets and are unlikely to stop even if a ceasefire is agreed to.

The morass doesn’t end there. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is already supporting rebel groups seeking to oust Assad, responded to a car bomb attack in his country which killed 28 people by saying that he reserves the right to attack ‘terrorist groups’ in Syria. By that he presumably means Kurdish groups, since Turkey has been battling separatist Kurds in their own country for decades. Since the Kurds in Iraq and Syria are among the most effective anti-IS fighters, this will only lead to a further quagmire. Then there are Saudi Arabia and Iran; these two countries are using Syria and other countries in the Middle East as battlegrounds in their quest for regional supremacy. Israel, meanwhile, is quietly supporting Assad as the ‘lesser evil’ in the region. None of these countries, so occupied by their power politics, give a thought to the nearly half a million people killed in the Syrian civil war. None have done more than the bare minimum to help the millions of refugees created by the war. And none will do anything to bring peace to the country when perpetual war better suits their needs. A ceasefire in Syria will thus remain as elusive as long-term peace.