The Syrian ceasefire went into effect at Midnight local time, and apart from a few isolated incidents appears to have gone pretty well, with the apparent include of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front making the ceasefire seem a lot broader than previous ones.
Not that everyone is welcome. ISIS, for instance, was excluded from the ceasefire, and in a surprise addition, the Kurdish YPG were also announced to have been excluded. Syrian rebels say that the YPG not only can’t be involved in the ceasefire, they won’t be welcome at the peace talks in Kazakhstan.
While exactly how this came about isn’t totally clear, the smart money is on Turkey, which has insisted the Kurds are “terrorists,” insisting they be excluded from the process. Turkey has repeatedly attacked YPG targets since invading Syria, and excluding both ISIS and the YPG means Turkey can basically continue their war without any limits.
This also amounts to a de facto exclusion of the US from the ceasefire as well, since US ground troops in Syria are exclusively embedded with the YPG, and previous precedent has been that embedding with a group not included in the ceasefire leaves one’s troops open to being targeted.
Turkey and the Islamic “Rebels” dont like Kurds because kurdish YPG is secular and dont fight for a caliphat. What the Russians do is a shame. Russia suddenly consider turkish Islamists like Ahrar al Sham as moderat, and gave Green Light to Turkey to kill all Kurds in Syria.
Yes, pretty awful from Russia to abandon the Kurds but hardly surprising. Russia has its own long term interests which involve prying Turkey away from NATO. I hope they do, personally.
That’s strategically smart of Russia and Turkey, being flexible and letting Nusra participate, but side-lining the allies of the real aggressors in the Syrian civil war: the US. It will still be ugly, but this may be the beginning of sorting this mess out. Not good for Kurdish aspirations, but those aspirations will also lead to more war it seems.