As the clock races toward the deadline for Syria’s warring parties to declare them in or out of a proposed “cessation of hostilities,” the stakes could hardly be higher — for those groups vying for power, for the Syrian people, for the Middle East, for Europe — and for the world as a whole.
A proposed cessation of hostilities announced jointly earlier this week by Russia and the United States is scheduled to go into effect at midnight Friday in Damascus (5 p.m ET). The parties on what has become perhaps the most brutal and confused battlefield in recent decades have until noon (5 a.m. ET) to declare themselves in or out.
The arrangement does not apply to ISIS or the al-Nusra Front — terrorist groups, both.
Civil war has raged over Syria for five years now, ever since protests during the hopeful days of the Arab Spring were brutally repressed, sparking brutality, repression war and extremism.
More than a quarter of a million people have died so far. Half the country’s population has been uprooted and has fled. People in some Syrian cities are starving. More than a million people entered Europe without the required papers last year — most of them, by far, Syrians. The European Union’s commitment to the free, borderless movement of people is in danger of collapse.
The need for humanitarian aid inside Syria is extraordinary.
As the deadline approached, regime and Russian airstrikes continue to pound different parts of the country.
