The amazing thing about the Syrian truce is that it’s holding, particularly in the north and west. The truce’s first weekend saw unusual normality in Damascus, which was mostly insulated from the conflagration that killed 250,000 Syrians and left millions displaced, while many areas were destroyed or were “captured” by terrorists. The international community’s failure has rarely been so stark as in Syria, where a civil war raged for five years as the Islamic State took territory from where it now threatens the world, while Al Qaeda too operates at will. Neither the Bashar al-Assad nor its many opponents have signed the truce in which the US and Russia invested so much faith. Attempts for a UN-sponsored truce failed in 2012, since when Syria has been a hotbed of diverse military activities while the superpowers fought over Mr Assad. The realisation may have dawned that the first priority now is to rein in the Islamic State.
They might have had some success in damaging the IS severely in the concerted bombing by the allied powers and Russia in Syria and Iraq, though there are complaints that Russians are targeting groups opposed to Mr Assad rather than IS. While Nusra Front, insurgents allied to Al Qaeda, are entrenched in rebel areas, Hezbollah militants fight alongside Mr Assad’s troops while Kurdish fighters battle alone, all of which may show how complicated the Syrian situation is. The truce is perhaps only a signal that the world powers can sort things out if they really act in concert.
