On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council adopted a “30-day ceasefire” for Syria to be implemented “without delay.” As we might have expected, that’s when the shelling started.
The ceasefire didn’t apply to warfare conducted against rebel forces, including ISIS, and al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (previously, Jabhat al-Nusra). An earlier draft of the resolution didn’t allow for that exception, but Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov—who has veto power through his proxy ambassador at the Security Council—stalled the resolution and lobbied for the exception.
And so, just hours after a ceasefire, Syrian government forces led an air campaign and ground incursion into eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held province East of Damascus. Government forces have for some weeks been targeting civilian areas, including medical clinics and neighborhoods. More than 500 are dead, possibly many more. In the hours after the ceasefire, nine have been killed and more than 30 injured.
That Syrian government forces should lay siege, only hours after the passage of the ceasefire, to rebel-held civilian neighborhoods tells us something we already know: U.N. ceasefires are worthless.
Actually, worse than worthless. The Assad regime, with the assistance of Russia and Iran, are using the ceasefire as cover to destroy potential opposition. ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates may pose a threat to law and order in Syria, to the extent law and order still exist, but it’s hard to see how an aerial and ground campaign against civilians is a counterterrorism operation. Indeed this bogus ceasefire, whatever else it is, neatly illustrates the Assad way of war: Russia shields and supports the Syrian government on the ground and in Turtle Bay, while the Assad regime cleaves away at his citizens.
On Thursday of last week, meanwhile, Syria was given chairmanship of the U.N. council on the “subjugation, domination, and exploitation” of people. The council is supposed to deal with “decolonizing” Gibraltar and the Falkland Island, but the idea of Assad’s emissaries having any moral authority whatever over issues of human exploitation is, of course, outrageous. Or perhaps it isn’t so strange: The Syrians at the U.N. know plenty about the “subjugation, domination, and exploitation” of innocent people.
