A lull in the fighting certainly would give the citizens a little chance to catch their breaths for a while. They have been through so much.
Aleppo fighting ‘freeze’ needed to prevent catastrophe - UN Syria envoy
Exclusive: Staffan de Mistura tells the Guardian there is ‘no other game in town’
Aleppo: a freeze would ease delivery of humanitarian assistance to the shattered city. Photograph: Mahmoud Hebbo/Reuters
Ian Black, Middle East editor
Friday 12 December 2014 11.40 EST
Aleppo, Syria’s second city, could face a catastrophe, triggering massive fresh flows of refugees, unless President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels fighting him agree to freeze the fighting there, the UN special envoy to the war-torn country has warned.
Staffan de Mistura, who has held talks with Assad and the armed opposition, told the Guardian that after the collapse of the Geneva talks earlier this year there was now “no other game in town” for ending a conflict that has cost an estimated 200,000 lives, made millions homeless and destabilised the Middle East since Syria’s uprising at the height of the Arab spring in March 2011.
“At the moment the alternative is simply a continuous conflict in which there is no winner and the only losers are the people of Syria,” the veteran Swedish-Italian diplomat said in an exclusive interview.
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Syria’s fractured opposition is deeply uneasy about the idea of a freeze, fearing it will play into Assad’s hands and allow him to free up forces to deploy elsewhere. Monitoring a freeze in an atmosphere of profound mistrust is another issue, as critics of the envoy’s “bottom-up strategy” have cautioned. Sanctions for breaches would be hard to impose unless Russia and Iran, Assad’s allies, were on board.
De Mistura, however, was optimistic. “I have indications that the government of Syria is taking this Aleppo freeze proposal by the UN seriously and that the opposition is seeing that the alternative could be a devastating attack on the city by either the government or by Isis [Islamic State], which is only 22km away. This is based on the concept of giving a moment of hope to the Syrian people and therefore to the international community that there are places where this conflict can be stopped.”
A freeze would also ease delivery of humanitarian aid to the shattered city, whose medieval souk, citadel and great mosque have been destroyed or damaged.
De Mistura’s chances of success may be no greater than for his predecessors, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan. But advances by Isis jihadis in Iraq and Syria and the presence of the US-led international coalition fighting them are new factors. Assad is nervous about an extension of the air strikes that have stemmed Isis advances at Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border, while nationalist rebels with only limited western support fret about being eclipsed by Islamist extremists.
Continue reading at:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/12/aleppo-catastrophe-assad-rebels-fre
Aleppo fighting ‘freeze’ needed to prevent catastrophe - UN Syria envoy
Exclusive: Staffan de Mistura tells the Guardian there is ‘no other game in town’
Aleppo: a freeze would ease delivery of humanitarian assistance to the shattered city. Photograph: Mahmoud Hebbo/Reuters
Ian Black, Middle East editor
Friday 12 December 2014 11.40 EST
Aleppo, Syria’s second city, could face a catastrophe, triggering massive fresh flows of refugees, unless President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels fighting him agree to freeze the fighting there, the UN special envoy to the war-torn country has warned.
Staffan de Mistura, who has held talks with Assad and the armed opposition, told the Guardian that after the collapse of the Geneva talks earlier this year there was now “no other game in town” for ending a conflict that has cost an estimated 200,000 lives, made millions homeless and destabilised the Middle East since Syria’s uprising at the height of the Arab spring in March 2011.
“At the moment the alternative is simply a continuous conflict in which there is no winner and the only losers are the people of Syria,” the veteran Swedish-Italian diplomat said in an exclusive interview.
Advertisement
Syria’s fractured opposition is deeply uneasy about the idea of a freeze, fearing it will play into Assad’s hands and allow him to free up forces to deploy elsewhere. Monitoring a freeze in an atmosphere of profound mistrust is another issue, as critics of the envoy’s “bottom-up strategy” have cautioned. Sanctions for breaches would be hard to impose unless Russia and Iran, Assad’s allies, were on board.
De Mistura, however, was optimistic. “I have indications that the government of Syria is taking this Aleppo freeze proposal by the UN seriously and that the opposition is seeing that the alternative could be a devastating attack on the city by either the government or by Isis [Islamic State], which is only 22km away. This is based on the concept of giving a moment of hope to the Syrian people and therefore to the international community that there are places where this conflict can be stopped.”
A freeze would also ease delivery of humanitarian aid to the shattered city, whose medieval souk, citadel and great mosque have been destroyed or damaged.
De Mistura’s chances of success may be no greater than for his predecessors, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan. But advances by Isis jihadis in Iraq and Syria and the presence of the US-led international coalition fighting them are new factors. Assad is nervous about an extension of the air strikes that have stemmed Isis advances at Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border, while nationalist rebels with only limited western support fret about being eclipsed by Islamist extremists.
Continue reading at:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/12/aleppo-catastrophe-assad-rebels-fre
