BEIRUT: A deal Moscow and Ankara reached last year on Syria’s Idlib region was meant to prevent a bloodbath, but bombardment since late April has claimed a mounting death toll. Most of the main objectives of the deal have not been reached.
But as the Russian, Turkish and Iranian presidents meet in Ankara, is the agreement for northwestern Syria completely dead?
Announced on September 17, 2018 in the Russian resort of Sochi, the agreement was ostensibly presented as a way of averting an all-out government onslaught against the last major opposition bastion in Syria.
Months earlier, Russian-backed Syrian forces had reconquered the Eastern Ghouta enclave on the outskirts of Damascus with an operation that capped a years-old siege.
With around three million people living in the Idlib region, the aid community feared an offensive would trigger death and displacement on a scale yet unseen this century.
The truce deal provided for a horseshoe-shaped demilitarised zone to isolate the IS-dominated bastion from government-held areas. The buffer zone loosely followed the borders of Idlib province, straddling slivers of the neighbouring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
All fighters were to remove their heavy weapons while hardliners were to withdraw combatants altogether from the demilitarised zone, which was due to be patrolled by Russian and Turkish forces.
The agreement also stipulated that two key highways running through the region — one linking second city Aleppo to Damascus, the other to the port city of Latakia — should be reopened by the end of 2018.
The only provision of the deal that was implemented was the removal of heavy weapons from the buffer zone by militants and rebels by the end of October 2018.
The militants including former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al Sham however refused to fully withdraw themselves and the buffer zone never became a reality, with joint patrols also never materialising. The roads key to the Syrian government’s trade as it attempts to revive a moribund economy have also yet to re-open.
The regime’s military operations to retake the territory it lost years ago resumed in late April, first with months of bombardment then last month with advances on the ground.
Close to 1,000 civilians have been killed since then, mostly in air strikes and shelling, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The deal helped delay the onslaught and reduce its intensity however, a relief for Turkey which had feared an unstoppable influx of refugees over its border.
“The agreement slowed the onslaught, which has made the burden easier for Turkey to bear,” said Aaron Stein, a Syria analyst with the Atlantic Council. “I think the agreement serves a broader purpose, which is to create a forum for trilateral dialogue,” Stein said.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani are to meet in the Turkish capital to discuss Idlib’s future.
The talks come after Moscow late last month announced a ceasefire that has since reduced the violence.
Aron Lund, from the Century Foundation think tank, concurred to say some aspects of the deal had survived.
“I wouldn’t say it’s completely dead. Both Russians and Turks continue to refer back to it. It still matters symbolically and politically,” he said.
The shortcomings of the Sochi deal have also highlighted that its signatories are not equal partners. — AFP
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