Plea for Syria

Following his Friday briefing to the UN Security Council, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura called on the US and Russian leaders to help salvage the “barely alive” ceasefire in Syria “from a total collapse”.

Since the cessation of hostilities is “hanging by a thread”, de Mistura appealed to Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin to urgently take an initiative “at the highest level”, because the legacies of both leaders are “linked to the success of what has been a unique initiative which started very well. It needs to end very well,” and for that, the envoy suggested to the two superpowers to convene a ministerial meeting of major regional powers that make up the Syria Support Group.

On Wednesday, air strikes on a hospital in a rebel-held area in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo left 27 people dead, including three children and a paediatrician, the city’s last.

The limited truce agreed upon by the Syrian parties backed by Moscow and Washington in February did not seem to go very far and it will not as long as the reasons for the violence in the country are not addressed.

Moscow and Washington are backing the two opposite sides in the Syrian war, but while Russia is doing so by a show of force and the deployment of its armed forces on the side of Damascus, the US’ support is timid and of a political, rather than military, nature.

As a result, Syria’s warfare continues and with it, there will be growing numbers of causalities and more refugees seeking safety in neighbouring countries and beyond.

It is wrong for Damascus, ostensibly suing for peace with the opposition, to continue to conduct air strikes against civilians.

Moscow holds the rein on Damascus, but is apparently unwilling to use its influence to stop the carnage in the country; moreover, it is conducting its own air strikes on Syrian targets allegedly holding terrorist groups.

With Russian assertiveness and the US’ unwillingness to get more involved in Syria, it seems that de Mistura is knocking at the wrong doors to salvage the ceasefire.

Yet, there is no other power he could turn to, to stem the horror in Syria. Hence his conviction that “there is no reason that both of them, which have been putting so much political capital in that success story and have a common interest in not seeing Syria ending up in another cycle of war should not be able to revitalise what they have created and which is still alive but barely”.

Washington and Moscow should honour the trust the envoy puts in them and help Syria put an end to five years of utter misery.