Politics

Why a new ceasefire in Syria is likely before long

The opposition fighters making such strides on the battlefield want to carry on all the way to Damascus. For everyone else, there are reasons to call a halt to proceedings sooner rather than later

Bakr Alkasem/AFP

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadist fighters fire towards Syrian Army troops in the Rashidin district on the outskirts of Aleppo on 29 November 2024.

Why a new ceasefire in Syria is likely before long

Robert Ford

last update on 02 Dec 2024

While there are losers and winners following the Syrian opposition’s swift and unexpected capture of Aleppo and towns south into Hama province, all will need a ceasefire in the coming weeks.

Those to lose out after the March 2020 ceasefire deal collapsed on Saturday include the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, plus his backers in Moscow and Tehran, while Turkey has come out stronger.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that they should work to stabilise the country. The question now is not ‘if’ there will be a ceasefire but ‘when.’ Assad certainly needs one quickly.

His army has not performed well in recent years, but the November 2024 debacle was especially bad, as advancing opposition fighters overran and killed small Russian and Iranian detachments on their way through Aleppo. The Syrian Army had to escape to Hama 130km south to try to establish a new defensive line.

Assad’s losing hand

Assad needs more troops but has few to call on. Still, losing Hama and Homs would be a catastrophe. Damascus will now be asking if it can and should withdraw its military units from the east in Deir Zour (which it recaptured from Islamic State in 2017) to the more urgent battles in the west.

Withdrawing from eastern Syria at the end of 2024 would be a new humiliation and losing that region as well as Aleppo will be a sign of Assad’s complete failure to stabilise Syria. Once again, he needs urgent help from his friends.

Assad needs more troops but has few to call on. Still, losing Hama and Homs would be a catastrophe

In 2013, Iran ordered Hezbollah to intervene at the Syrian city of al-Qusayr near Homs. The Lebanese militia helped the Syrian Arab Army defeat the Syrian opposition and stabilise the situation for two years.

But Hezbollah today is significantly weakened after two ten weeks of Israeli targeting. Even if it were not, in 2013 it did not have to worry about Israeli intelligence and airstrikes attacking convoys and destroying roads in Syria, as it would do now.

Iran's limited options

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is looking for a Plan B and hopes to send Iraqi militiamen as reinforcements to Assad, but the Americans bombed militia convoys on 1 December and the Israeli Air Force can do likewise if needed.

SANA via Reuters — Syria's President Bashar al-Assad meets Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Damascus on 1 December 2024.

There are no good options, especially if IS fighters vacate the vacuum left in the Syrian Badia desert after the withdrawal of the Syrian Arab Army. Meanwhile, Tehran knows that its deterrence against the US and Israel is now vastly diminished, to such an extent that it is now signalling to Europe and the US that it wants to negotiate.

At a time when Tehran wants to avoid powerful Israeli and US airstrikes by a newly emboldened President Trump from 20 January, entering the Syrian conflict would seem to make little sense.

No appetite in Moscow

Like Iran, Russia would also like to press for a ceasefire quickly. Russian President Vladimir Putin is making progress in the slowly grinding attritional Ukraine war, but his military strength is being depleted—he is already deploying soldiers from North Korea and depending on weapons from Iran.

He did not have these problems back in July 2015, when Russia first intervened for Assad, after the opposition overran Idlib and stood threatening Lattakia and Hama. Nine years ago, he quickly deployed the Russian Air Force, which conducted 1,300 missions against armed opposition forces within weeks.

Today, the Russians are conducting just a few airstrikes a day, at most. Putin could send more pilots, aircraft, and bombs, but the air campaign in 2015-16 took months to change the balance of power on the battlefield.

AFP — A Syrian White Helmet civil defence worker and civilians carry a victim after the Syrian Army hit Idlib city, Syria, on 2 December 2024.

Today, and for the coming weeks, his priorities will be to stabilise Syria and keep the focus on Ukraine, so a ceasefire now would help Russia achieve its objectives without undermining its new, improved leverage over Assad.

Erdogan's opportunity

That leaves Turkey, which has a military presence in northern Syria, and which has been supporting armed groups operating in the region. Its Syrian allies want to drive forward, but they will need ammunition, food, and gasoline from Turkey to continue the momentum forward.

Like Iran, Russia would also like to press for a ceasefire quickly, with Vladimir Putin making progress in Ukraine

The biggest domestic political victory for Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now is to see hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrians leave Turkey and return to their homes in the Aleppo region, safe from retaliation.

Every day that the opposition fighters take new towns, Ankara is calculating that more Syrians could leave Turkey. But that is not the only calculation. The threat of Russian and Iranian missile and drone attacks against Idlib, Aleppo and other towns is growing. Ankara has seen what these strikes can do in Syria and Ukraine.

Weighing up next moves

For Erdogan, a ceasefire deal at the right time that sets the stage for huge numbers of Syrians to return home would be a big win, with Fidan saying on 30 November that Turkey's goal is a political negotiation between Assad and the opposition.

Delil Souleiman/AFP — Kurdish gunmen demonstrate in the north-eastern city of Qamishli on 2 December 2024 against attacks by Turkish-backed fighters in areas under Kurdish control in northern Syria.

Of course, Turkey's Syrian allies near Hama have the wind at their backs and will want to try to drive forward, but Damascus in 2024 is not Kabul in 2021; Islamist fighters are not going to rampage through the President's office. Russia and Iran can always find enough forces to stop that.

Even if the fighters who just took Aleppo continued all the way to Damascus, what then? There is no clear leader to whom all opposition groups are loyal, so having fought the national army, they would then likely fight each other after they arrive, all the while trying to manage dozens of new cities and towns under their control.

They need Turkish help with everything from food to medicine to infrastructure repair. Ankara, meanwhile, may want to present its armed allies as powerful and important participants in a new peace process in Syria. There are already several endgames. The question is whose endgame it ends up being.

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