Violence returned to Aleppo this week despite a cease-fire and new efforts by Russia and Turkey to ensure the remaining rebel fighters can leave the city in the hands of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, according to reports.
“So far nobody has been evacuated,” the New York Times reporter Anne Barnard told NPR. “The first convoy that attempted to leave was stopped by the Iranian-backed Shiite militias that have been helping the Syrian government on the ground. It seems that Iran and the Syrian government were not pleased that Turkey and Russia struck a deal without them.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran are Assad’s two most important allies, but Putin has been running a series of negotiations throughout the Syrian conflict — including with the United States, which supports moderate rebel groups fighting Assad. U.S. allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia deferred to the U.S., while State Department officials warned that if Russia continued to obstruct a cease-fire agreement, the countries might respond by arming the militants with heavier weaponry that could be used against Russia.
As Russia flouted Secretary of State John Kerry’s calls for a cease-fire, Turkey came to the fore as the secret broker of a deal between Syrian opposition groups and Putin. The State Department said last week they would “welcome” news of such talks between Russia and Turkey, but remained ignorant of them even as American negotiators tried to come to an agreement with Russia over the weekend.
“I’m not aware that we had any indications that there were bilateral discussions to reach this kind of an arrangement,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. “So I don’t know that there was any prior knowledge. But again, I mean, it matters a lot less to us who or how a cease-fire is arranged or reached and much more that one is arranged and reached.”
Because the U.S. was excluded from the talks, it’s unclear whether the civilians or militants were supposed to be covered by the latest cease-fire — which seems closer to a surrender of Aleppo rather than a temporary truce between warring sides.
“Now it’s going to be under the control of the Syrian government, so there is no need for the remaining civilians to leave and there are humanitarian arrangements in place,” Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said.
