Russia and the United States will attempt to negotiate terms for the withdrawal of rebel groups from the key Syrian city of Aleppo, following weeks of bombardment by Russia and incumbent dictator Bashar Assad.
“Those armed groups who refuse to leave eastern Aleppo will be considered to be terrorists,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday, according to Reuters. “We will treat them as such, as terrorists, as extremists and will support a Syrian army operation against those criminal squads.”
The humanitarian crisis in Aleppo has bedeviled Secretary of State John Kerry, who tried to negotiate a cease-fire deal that would have provided aid to Aleppo in exchange for military cooperation with Russia against the Islamic State. That deal would have the strategic significance of destroying the jihadists who oppose Assad and the United States, but it would have also resupplied U.S.-backed rebel groups.
The deal broke down when pro-Assad forces bombed a United Nations aid convoy in September. “Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals, medical facilities, children and women,” Kerry said in September. “These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes and those that commit these would and should be held accountable for these actions.”
Kerry broke off direct bilateral talks with Russia, but the U.S. has engaged with Putin’s team in a group setting with other countries in Geneva. “We’ve had some meeting of the minds about how to try to deal with that, but we haven’t been able to yet finalize an agreement which would save Aleppo and provide a cease-fire,” Kerry said Sunday. “We’re still talking about it. We’re still in conversations. It is still possible that we could achieve an understanding.”
A deal that permitted the withdrawal of U.S.-backed groups from Aleppo would salvage at least some of the benefits Kerry sought with the initial cease-fire pact, but the likely result would leave Russia and Assad in a stronger position than they would otherwise have been.
“If Assad secures Aleppo, his Russia-Iran axis will corral the opposition into western Syria’s Idlib Province,” Steamboat Institute senior fellow Tom Rogan explained. “The rebels will be surrounded on three sides. Syria’s northwest border with Turkey will be their only external supply lifeline. But even that can’t be taken for granted. While he was once a fervent supporter of the rebels, Turkey’s president is now supplicant to Russia.”
Kerry’s negotiating position with respect to Russia has long been weakened by the fact that Putin intervened militarily in Syria after President Obama declined to, as Kerry acknowledged Sunday at the Saban Forum.
“Suffice it to say that we did not go in in 2013 or 2014, and Russia chose to go in to support Assad mainly because Assad was very weak at the time, but mostly also because the appearance then was that Daesh might have been the entity that might overthrow him and that wouldn’t have served anybody’s interests,” he said. “So in effect, what has happened is that the opposition obviously has been damaged by virtue of the intensive — I think savage — bombing that’s been taking place out of all standards of warfare, in my judgment. And the result is that, yes, a heavy price has been paid by the people of Syria and – but mostly also by the opposition and by Nusrah.”
