The UN is mulling “light touch” options for monitoring a possible ceasefire in Syria that would keep its risks to a minimum by relying largely on Syrians already on the ground, diplomatic sources said.
The UN Security Council on Friday unanimously called on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to draw up within a month options for monitoring a ceasefire in Syria. It is the second time since the Syrian civil war broke out in March 2011 that the council backed a plan for peace talks and a truce.
The talk about the UN’s role as monitor has gained urgency along with a new push for a ceasefire in Syria to take effect as early as next month, in parallel with talks between the government and opposition.
More than a dozen major powers, including the US, Russia and major European and Middle Eastern powers, have drawn up a road map for Syria peace talks.
UN planning for truce monitoring would seek to avoid repeating the “disaster” of a mission sent to Syria in 2012, diplomats said.
That operation failed because the warring parties had no interest in halting the fighting, they said.
Under the light-touch mechanism under consideration, the UN would rely on Syrian actors on the ground to report violations. This could possibly involve a small group of non-uniformed UN officials in Syria to carry out investigations of ceasefire violations, diplomats said.
“There’s the idea of ‘proxyism,’ where they were going to look at who would be credible on the ground to get information and to create a reporting mechanism from them to the UN,” a diplomatic source said.
To make the proxy approach work, major powers would need to agree on who is considered a credible Syrian actor.
“Who is it who’s responsible for the credibility of the information?” one diplomatic source asked. “The Syrians on the ground or the UN — which receives the information?”
The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations is likely to present an option to put UN peacekeepers on the ground. However, that approach is likely to be ruled out immediately, given the brutal war that has claimed more than 250,000 lives.
Diplomats on the council — which would be asked to approve any monitoring plan — also said that option is impossible.
Diplomats said they want to avoid a heavy UN footprint in Syria. A large number of UN officials on the ground in Syria would require a large security detail to protect them.
The UN had to suspend operations once before in Syria. After deploying about 300 unarmed monitors in April 2012, it was forced by August of that year to end the mission after the moderators became the target of angry crowds and gunfire.
The Security Council had sent in monitors after it endorsed then-UN Arab League mediator Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan for Syria calling for talks and a truce.
At that time, death toll estimates for the Syrian civil war were about 10,000 — a fraction of today’s estimate.
“The UN team that went in back then were very courageous and pushed their mandate as far as they could,” Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs professor Richard Gowan said.
The UN Disengagement Observer Force which monitors the border between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights, has repeatedly seen its Blue Helmets under fire and even kidnapped by militants fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
“It is clear that the security situation in Syria will be far, far worse this time around, so Ban needs to be creative,” Gowan said, adding that the use of surveillance drones is an option.
The planned ceasefire would not apply to the Islamic State group, al-Nusra Front and other jihadist groups.
That would make any truce “wildly complex” to monitor since its territory would be constantly shifting, one diplomat said.
Adding to the danger, the US, French, British and other militaries are bombing Islamic State group fighters and other jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, and Russian forces are attacking a wide array of rebel fighters, many of them backed by the West.
Preparing ceasefire monitoring options is a pointless exercise since none of the parties actually want to end the fighting, one analyst said.
“All the discussion at the UN seems to me entirely disconnected from reality,” Council on Foreign Relations analyst Max Boot said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in