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INTERNATIONAL

Idlib ceasefire holds for now in a not so civil war

  • 11 March 2020
 

So, the guns are allegedly to fall silent in Syria’s Idlib Province as Russia and Turkey have agreed the terms of a ceasefire. As I noted in my previous Eureka Street article, there are some grounds for scepticism — the previous Russia-Turkey agreement at Sochi did not have a great shelf-life and the militants whom Turkey has sponsored, armed and apparently even clothed in Turkish uniforms, have already rejected the current iteration.

Regardless of whether or not they are observed, the terms of the ceasefire are in themselves interesting. This is because they provide a healthy estimate of how two of the major external powers involved see the Syrian conflict at the moment. The terms as they have been released are that the current lines of contact to be frozen in place; a demilitarised zone to be established along the major East-West highway in Syria (the M4); and this zone to be jointly patrolled by Russian and Turkish militaries.

While observers of the Syrian conflict can scarcely be surprised by these terms, they do provide a useful correction to some of the wilder estimates on social media. They also suggest some directions in the future for Syria and Turkey.

As I previously noted, President Erdogan’s Ottoman revanchism has not gone well in Libya. The latest agreement suggests that the true in Syria. In recent days, Turkey has inflicted considerable losses on the Syrian army, it would appear partly by breaching its undertaking to the Russians not to arm the drones it was given licence to fly in Syria.

Despite Syria’s losses, the ceasefire has awarded the Erdogan no new territory. The territories he took back from the Syrian government — which were recaptured again by Syrian forces after the short-lived gap in Syria’s air defences against Turkey — remain in Syrian hands. Russia has restocked the Syrian arsenals. The demilitarised zone agreed lies well inside territory currently held by the Turkish-backed militants.

The fact that Turkey, boasting NATO’s second-largest army, has effectively failed in its third overt invasion of Syria — which has seen it face to face with the regular Syrian army for the first time — has sent shockwaves through Turkish society. There have already been physical brawls in the Mejlis (Turkish Parliament) over the wisdom of the operation. This failure has now been cemented by the ceasefire lines which leave all of the recent Syrian gains intact.

 

'The Syrian ‘civil’ war has been
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