Ceasefire deal: Will the guns fall silent in Syria at midnight?

A government soldier places a Syrian national flag during a battle with rebel fighters at the Ramouseh front line, east of Aleppo, on December 5, 2016. Hassan Ammar, File / AP Photo

BEIRUT // A nationwide ceasefire between Syrian rebel and government forces was expected to begin at midnight on Thursday in a deal backed by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

The deal, supported by the main foreign powers involved in Syria’s civil war and coming just over a week after a rebel withdrawal from Aleppo, will exclude Jabhat Fatah Al Sham and so-called “affiliates”, as well as ISIL, according to the Syrian government. Until July, Jabhat Fatah Al Sham was Al Qaeda’s Syria branch and remains a leading force among rebel ranks.

“The parties, with this understanding, committed to cease all armed, including aerial, attacks and refrain from expanding the territories under their control at the expense of one another,” said Turkey’s foreign ministry.

The agreement on the apparently open-ended ceasefire comes ahead of planned peace talks between the Syrian opposition and government in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

“The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, need a special attention and involvement ... But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Moscow, which just weeks ago was dismissing a nationwide ceasefire as beneficial only to the rebels, has attempted to portray the new truce as an opportunity to reduce Russian forces in Syria. On Thursday, Mr Putin said he agreed with a Russian defence ministry proposal to cut back the country’s military presence there.

While past ceasefires have been brokered by Russia and the United States, Washington was conspicuously absent from the latest negotiations. Instead, Turkey, which is backing rebel forces in northern Syria, was included. While the US remained the rebels’ chief negotiator on the international stage for a long time, its credibility with opposition forces has dwindled over the years and Washington has shown little ability to get the multitude of rebel factions on the same page.

A break in fighting will be welcomed by war-weary fighters on both sides of the conflict, but many obstacles remain in the way of its successful implementation – some of which have undermined past truce attempts.

Chief among these is the role of Jabhat Fatah Al Sham and its allies. The group’s forces are closely intertwined with other, less extremist rebel units, particularly in its stronghold in the north-western province of Idlib. Whether the group’s allies will be excluded from the truce, and whether these allies plan on abiding by the truce’s terms themselves, remains to be seen.

According to the Russia’s defence ministry, groups representing more than 60,000 rebel fighters have agreed to the truce, including members of the Jabhat Fatah Al Sham ally Ahrar Al Sham, another dominant group in Idlib. Jaish Al Islam, a powerful hardline rebel group that resisted ceasefires earlier this year, has also agreed to the terms of the deal, according to Moscow.

A number of rebel factions in Idlib have fallen under the influence of Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, largely because of its military prowess. Breaking ranks with the group at a time when rebels have been weakened by the defeat in Aleppo could be difficult for these factions to accept.

As in past ceasefires, Jabhat Fatah Al Sham could look to play a spoiler role. With the group unlikely to be included in any potential political settlement to the conflict, the militants have nothing to lose by continuing to fight and trying to get other rebel groups to do so. Open war remains the only situation in which the group can thrive and increase the dependency of other rebel factions on its fighters.

While many Syrian rebels have agreed to the ceasefire, they remain far from willing to trust the government and its allies. The rebels accused pro-government forces of using a ceasefire implemented in February, to prepare for an assault on Aleppo. Now fresh from their victory in Aleppo, there will be fears that the government and its allies will seek to move arms and troops to another front line, or perhaps buy time to repel an ISIL advance in Palmyra before resuming their fight against the rebels.

The government’s continued talk of achieving a complete victory in Syria – as well as its past refusal to seriously discuss a peace deal at negotiations – will also make rebels wary of the latest truce.

Involving Turkey in the ceasefire deal instead of the US gives opposition forces an international advocate they can trust more. But while rebels may listen to Ankara more than they would to Washington, that trust is also eroding. Turkey’s intervention in the war has been solely aimed at confronting ISIL and the Kurdish YPG militia. Even though its rebel proxies were close to Aleppo, Ankara did not allow them to join the battle for the city, something that the rebels besieged in the city may remember for a long time to come. In addition, although Turkey has more or less direct control over rebel militias along its border with Syria north of Aleppo, it has less of a hold on opposition factions elsewhere.

For Ankara, Moscow and Tehran, ensuring that forces they support in Syria adhere to the ceasefire could prove a major challenge. While leaders may agree to such truces, the conflict on the ground is hyper local, with a multitude of factions fighting for competing agendas even when supposedly on the same side. Convincing all the actors in the conflict to silence their weapons has been, and remains, a chief obstacle to peace.

* With additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse