Syrian Ceasefire Farce

The hopes of peace in Syria are in jeopardy due to events over the past few days. In the days leading up to the proposed ceasefire the government has stepped up their attacks on rebel held areas, the rebels claim that Assad’s troops have killed 1,000 people in bombardments over the past week. This has worried people over whether or not the UN-backed ceasefire would actually occur on Tuesday the 10^th of April. Today came more dismay arrived as the Syrian government released a statement saying that they would not pull out their troops unless they had written guarantees that rebels would stop the attacks, hand over their weapons and  pull out from the areas they hold. The statement also required that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey stop supporting the rebels. This ridiculous statement makes a ceasefire seem like months away, not two days.

I always believed that the ceasefire was a farce, 99% of ceasefires are like that, Assad has promised them before, Gadaffi promised numerous ceasefires before he was finally killed last October. The demands of the government are never going to be met as the rebels are not stupid. The rebels do not hold many areas so will want to remain where they are. They also have very little weapons, without them they would be overrun by the government. Regardless of the plausibility of those two events happing, the requirement of a written guarantee cannot actually happen. The rebels aren’t one group; it’s difficult to know who the rebels actually are. In Libya the rebels had the NTC, there is no similar grouping in Syria; here all the rebels have with each other is a loose affiliation.

With all this in mind I am very sceptical of a ceasefire actually occurring in Syria, one day peace will come to Syria. It will not be Tuesday.