Ceasefire in Douma a lone bright spot in Syrian civil war

UNITED NATIONS – UN officials celebrated a brief break in the fighting in one Syrian city on Friday, a day after the conflict — which has claimed some 450,000 lives and displaced millions more — entered its eighth year.

“Let us hope that this ceasefire holds, because it is at least one [piece of] good news among very bad news,” said Staffan de Mistura, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ special envoy for Syria, who briefed the Security Council via videoconference from Brussels.

De Mistura spoke hopefully of a six-day ceasefire that is holding in Douma at the culmination of a week that marked a grim anniversary.

Syrians appear to be at once poised for a political breakthrough and bracing for intensified fighting in hotspots such as eastern Ghouta and Afrin, where Turkish forces have engaged with Kurds in northern Syria and in Daraa, in the south, where government forces have clashed with opposition groups.

Airstrikes on Friday killed more than 100 people in eastern Ghouta and other suburban areas outside of Damascus, as a weekslong offensive left more than 1,300 civilians dead and 5,000 wounded.

Doctors Without Borders released a harrowing account this week of a physician’s observations from a hospital inside eastern Ghouta.

“The conduct of this battle and its impact are extraordinary,” said the organization’s nurse and general director, Meinie Nicolai. “During the first two weeks of the offensive, more than 300 wounded and more than 70 dead were brought every day.”

Fresh surges in fighting have occurred even in the face of a unanimously adopted Security Council resolution calling for a 30-day ceasefire. The peaceful lull it promised has not taken hold in most of Syria since it was adopted on Feb. 24.

“I profoundly regret that resolution 2401, concerning the cessation of hostilities throughout Syria, has not been implemented,” said Guterres in a statement. “I urge all parties to the conflict to fully respect international humanitarian and human rights law and guarantee the protection of civilians. ”

The war in Syria stems from the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, when popular movements spread across Arab nations and ousted from power longtime authoritarian governments, including in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Protests in Syria, however were met with a military response in March 2011 that led to an opposition — and foreign fighters from militant groups such as Islamic State and Qaeda — that has engaged government forces and their allies ever since.

Earlier this week, Pramila Patten, the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, released a report that documented extreme forms of violence against women and girls in Syria.

The report found that the Syrian government and associated militias “used rape and other forms of sexual violence as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Syria in order to cause maximum ‘terror and humiliation to the population.’”

“The horrors it describes against Syrian women and girls, as well as men and boys, is yet another aspect of the tragedy that is the Syrian civil war,” Patten said.

De Mistura, while somewhat hopeful about the brief ceasefire in Douma, said conditions in Syria are hardly improving.

“We are witnessing developments of substantial gravity on the ground, we have to recognise, that demand action, and the world is worried and watching.”