This Fire Won't Cease in Syria.

It would have been laughable, the latest ceasefire moves by the UN in Syria if the situation in that country, especially in Eastern Ghouta, has not been so pathetic. On Saturday, the Security Council managed to secure a ceasefire resolution, barely an hour after Russia had strongly objected to the list of groups exempted from the ceasefire. Russia knew anyway that securing a resolution was the only possible part of the whole rigmarole, complying with the ceasefire was well nigh impossible. Of course, by Sunday, barely a day after, Sweden and Kuwait, the originators of the Saturday document, were appealing for a new truce, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, having said the ceasefire would only come into effect until the details were worked out. By Monday, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and Emmanuel Macron, the French president were virtually on their knees begging Vladimir Putin to do something. You would hardly see a more heartbreaking sight in international diplomacy. Russia seems to have scored very big in Syria and that only by brushing squeamishness and pity and humane pretensions aside and realizing the conflict was in effect, a fight to death, a war in which no quarter would be asked or given. The US has long abandoned her dreams or lack of them, in the country, its influence having been reduced to a sliver of territory being controlled by Kurds in Eastern Syria, and even Turkey is making her uncomfortable there.
The whole gobbledygook of the ceasefire was likely to flummox you and me. So if you are excluding big, hardline, Islamist groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, formely Al-Nusra Front or Jaysh al-Islam or Faylaq al-Rahman from the deal, whom are you expecting to observe the truce? These are the most ferocious and active groups in Eastern Ghouta and their contributions to the conflict has been the most intense. Even if the government forces and their allies were going to stop fighting, the rivalry and fight for turf among these rebel groups were going to make aid convoys reaching those in need a very huge task indeed. It is a bitter truth Russia is very  conversant with and is ready to exploit happily for its burgeoning influence in the Middle East: It is a reality the UN is so distant from and which it has mishandled with pitiable comedy.
Tuesday morning, the UN had abjectly reduced its hopes and pretensions from thirty days of ceasefire to just five hours. Again, Putin was sitting high on his throne, calling the shots. A semblance of peace managed to reign for two hours and then the shelling and airstrikes resumed pell-mell. The two hours in itself was a miracle in Syria, though no succor got to those besieged. Folks in the ultimately senseless revolution have long given up on the miracles the UN is still hopelessly trying to conjure.
The besieged in Hom only got relieved when the rebels could no longer continue with the fighting and had to shipped out. The same with Aleppo. It is a bit difficult saying this but the mot plausible hope for the starving and desperate in Eastern Ghouta lies in the blasphemy of the fight being allowed to continue for some time in the hope that the government forces will ultimately gain the upper hand. That is the solution is military. This in itself is little hope. Check out the geography. Benign territory for rebels to withdraw to from where they are presently entrenched lies far, very far away and the only reasonable scenario is a fight to death. Ceasefire is out of the question and the conflict is going to be drawn out, as is expected of resistance from people happily fighting to die.
And for the 400,000 trapped in Eastern Ghouta, too bad they are caught up in a war not of their own making. Too many proxy wars being fought by so many powers. They don't have many choices now, except miracles they themselves don't believe in. And which the UN is only believing in because of the fear of being seen to be doing nothing.