A Step toward Ending the Madness in Syria

February 17th, 2016

Awake Goy

America's Special Envoy on Syria, John Kerry (above), announces agreement.

Secretary of State John Kerry announces an agreement.

Warring factions in the Syrian conflict have waged battle for some 5 years. This civil war has been fueled by military weaponry pouring into Syria from Russia and the United States, and their allies. The U.S.-led coalition has sided with the groups opposing the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the Russian-led coalition with the Assad regime.

Recently, Russia has added to the dismal plight of the Syrian people by conducting deadly airstrikes on what they term “terrorist groups”, but most western observers believe the groups targeted were regime opposition groups. Commenting on the airstrikes in The Washington Post, Karen DeYoung wrote: “What was already a desperate situation in Syria has greatly worsened over the past few weeks, as massive Russian bombardment in and around the city of Aleppo has scattered opposition fighters and driven tens of thousands of civilians toward the barricaded Turkish border.”

Along with seeking safe-haven in Turkey, Syrian refugees have flooded into Lebanon, Jordan and other surrounding Arabic countries. Germany has also been a destination for a large number of these displaced people, some 482,000 in 2015 alone.

As a result of the mayhem, much of Syria is in ruins and human suffering has reached an alarming level: Reliable sources report that there were 22 million persons residing in Syria at the beginning of the Syrian Civil War, and now there are only 16.6 million. Over 4 million have fled the chaos and hundreds of thousands have been killed. Syria has thus lost about one-fourth of its population.

On Friday, February 12, a tenuous first step was taken toward bringing sanity into the Syrian madness: a “cessation of hostilities” agreement was reached between the United States, Russia and others parties with prevailing interest in the region. CNN reported that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made the announcement in Munich, Germany, where the diplomatic meeting convened to hammer out the agreement: “I’m pleased to say that as a result [of negotiations] today…we believe we have made progress on both the humanitarian front and the cessation of hostilities front,” Kerry declared. If the agreement is properly implemented it will “change the daily lives of the Syrian people,” he stated.

The accord is a hopeful beginning to the end of the civil war that has seen the Syrian people’s struggle for liberation turn into a quagmire of misery. It provides for the immediate acceleration and expansion of the delivery of humanitarian aid. It also calls for a nationwide cessation of hostilities to begin within a week. Secretary Kerry cautiously noted that these objectives were “ambitious, but everybody is determined to move as rapidly as possible” toward their achievement.

Turkey Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted Friday that the agreement is “an important step on the way to finding a solution to the Syrian crisis.” Compassionate people around the globe pray that he is right.