Editorial | World must push for lasting peace deal to end agony of Syria

A ceasefire, safety corridor and joint patrols in northwest Syria’s Idlib province agreed at a summit between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan have eased the risk of direct military confrontation between their nations, the main foreign powers involved in the country’s nine-year civil war. But truces have come and gone, and the determined push by Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to defeat rebels ensures that any attempt to broker a peace deal will be challenging. Complicating matters is a humanitarian crisis with a million people fleeing the fighting and Turkey, claiming an inability to cope with the addition to the 3.6 million refugees already on its soil, easing restrictions to stop them from trying to reach Europe. A resolute international response is urgently needed to deal with the human catastrophe and the dangerous geopolitical one.

Syria’s civil war has been a proxy war for competing regional powers. Russia and Iran have been the main backers of Assad’s regime, while Turkey and the United States have been the chief supporters of rebel groups. American President Donald Trump’s decision last year to withdraw his country’s forces, claiming that Islamic State (Isis) extremists had been defeated, created space for the Turkish military to strengthen positions on its southern border in Syria’s north. Turkey was also driven by concern about Kurds, instrumental in defeating Isis but considered a terrorist group by Ankara, creating an autonomous area on its frontier.

A greater Turkish military presence inevitably meant coming into contact with Syrian and Russian forces. Ankara stepped up its involvement last month after 34 of its soldiers were killed in Idlib, the last rebel bastion, in an air strike blamed on the Syrian air force, although Russian fighter jets have also been operating in the area. That Turkey is also the second-largest member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation adds a complication.

The summit in Moscow on Thursday was necessary to cool tensions. But a previous agreement between Russia, Iran and Turkey in 2017 failed to reach a promised negotiated settlement. Ankara has dramatically increased its military presence, setting the stage for a full-blown confrontation between Turkish and Syrian forces. Civilians are trapped, aid agencies overwhelmed and a refugee crisis on the scale of that in 2015, when hundreds of thousands fled to Europe, looms.

The United Nations Security Council should be acting, but Russia, one of the five permanent members with veto power, has rejected resolutions on the crisis 14 times. The matter should instead be referred to the UN General Assembly. The world needs to come together to end the violence and broker a lasting peace.