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New U.N. Proposal To Freeze Syrian Conflict Amid ISIS Threats And Refugee Crisis

People walk on rubble of collapsed buildings at a site hit by what activists said was barrel bombs dropped by government forces in Aleppo's Dahret Awwad neighborhood January 29, 2014.
Freedom House
/
Flickr
People walk on rubble of collapsed buildings at a site hit by what activists said was barrel bombs dropped by government forces in Aleppo's Dahret Awwad neighborhood January 29, 2014.

On Tuesday the United Nations announced a new plan to freeze fighting in the besieged northern Syrian city of Aleppo. If it’s successful, it will be implemented in other areas throughout the war-torn country.

U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said unlike previous attempts at broad-based ceasefires, the narrow focus of this one may actually lead to the de-escalation of violence. The only real solution to the ongoing conflict, though, will be a political one.

Joshua Landis, author of the popular blog Syria Comment and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is skeptical of the U.N.’s new plan.

“There have been a flurry of attempts to get new strategies to try to bring this to an end, but all of them seem very difficult,” Landis says.

This includes the U.S. strategy in Syria. President Obama also announced this week that the White House would be revisiting its approach to fighting ISIS in the region.

“Our allies, the ‘vetted militias’ that we're supposed to be partnering with, largely have been beaten up by the radicals,” Landis says. “So everybody’s scratching their head and trying to figure out if there's a way to move forward on this in a positive way.”

U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have had some success. Many senior ISIS members are believed to have been killed in a coalition airstrike earlier this week. ISIS leader and Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was originally thought to be among them.

On Thursday, though, a statement supposedly read by al-Baghdadi was released on social media calling for his followers to redouble their attacks.

“The Caliph issued a statement clearly trying to make everybody understand that he was still alive, asking for the followers of the Islamic State around the world to erupt in volcanoes of jihad,” Landis says.

Al-Baghdadi singled out Saudi Arabia in particular because of its role in coalition airstrikes.

“He claimed that Saudi Arabia is the head of a snake that's against the Islamic State, and he's asked his followers to cut it off,” Landis says.

These followers have also grown in number. Radical groups in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen announced this week that they are allying themselves with ISIS and that they accept al-Baghdadi as their caliph.

“This is a battle that's far from over,” Landis says.

This is bad news for the 10 million Syrian refugees who have fled their homes since fighting began three and a half years ago.

A joint report published by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) found that conditions for Syrians and Syrian refugees have continued to worsen.

Over the course of the conflict more than three million refugees have been taken in by neighboring Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. Almost a million of these have gone to Lebanon, a country of just 4.5 million people.

Now these countries are beginning to shut their doors.

“States are running out of patience,” Landis says. “People are very angry. We've seen vigilantism in Turkey and in Jordan because all these countries, particularly in the smaller ones like Lebanon and Jordan, the economy is terrible. I know many people who have lost their jobs because Syrians are willing to do them for half the price.”

The joint report calls for international support to take the strain off of these countries. So far only 2% of Syrian refugees, about 50,000, have been accepted by states outside of the region.

Of those, just 166 have been resettled in the United States. A few hundred more have been taken in by European countries like Germany, France, and Great Britain.

“They aren't taking the refugees in,” Landis says. “They know that once a Syrian gets into their country, they will demand refugee status and it will be almost impossible for local judges to deny them because Syria is such a hell-hole.”

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