Fox News, Dec. 29

“The major players involved in the long-running Syrian conflict have agreed to a cease-fire set to begin at midnight on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier in the day.

The deal will be guaranteed by Russia and Turkey. It's set to be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and opposition leaders. The Syrian parties would meet in Kazakhstan for the talks, though no date has been set.

Some terror groups are to be excluded from the cease-fire, though, aside from ISIS, it's unclear which -- if any -- that refers to. The head of rebel group Fastaqim told Reuters the truce only excluded ISIS. The Syrian army earlier said the agreement would exclude ISIS, the group formerly known as the Nusra Front and any group linked to it.

Ahmad Ramadan of the Syrian National Coalition said the truce reached Thursday includes a halt to airstrikes and shelling.

Ramadan said in text messages sent to The Associated Press that members of the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of several moderate rebel factions, will abide by the truce -- but retaliate to violations by government and allied forces.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said President-elect Donald Trump's administration would be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition. Several previous attempts to halt the civil war have failed.

Let’s pray for the ceasefire to hold and be observed by all parties and that these peace talks can go ahead and bring an end to this destructive conflict.

The Fall of Aleppo

December 13, 2016 

I sit in safety, less than one hour by air, only a few hundred miles from the besieged city of Aleppo that today has finally fallen to the forces of the Assad regime. I hear the cries of the innocent who wait for death even as they race to find a place of safety, a way out of the inferno of madness that is war. Their cries echo through the fractures of my breaking heart, tears fall and I grieve for the unjustifiable loss of life, for the children, for the men and women who will not see tomorrow. In the wrong place at the wrong time, some are simply civilians whose crime was that they lived in a rebel enclave. Others - aid workers, rescuers who sought to save and heal, remain alongside activists for freedom – all trapped together under the threat of indiscriminate armaments roaring over their heads, exploding in their streets. War, its strategies of conquest and death, its madness and sophisticated violence, its use of ever stronger force blindly focused to eradicate all resistance whatever the cost.

The world watches, waits for the aftermath when the last enclave falls. Breaking news informs of reprisal, the inevitable massacre has begun. The execution count unashamedly includes tens of women and children, all of them deemed enemies.

Helpless to help, I can but weep and plead for mercy

The Fall of Aleppo

We close our eyes

and think because

we cannot see the darkness

it is not our own.

War in real time,

voices emerge from the rubble,

disembodied cries rise amidst the ruins.

From under mounds of wreckage

telephones still beep their signals

to an anesthetized world.

Death-rattles tweet

into the hollow bright realm

of supercomputers,

thought-fast communications.

Their android voices twitter

through labyrinthine cyber-nets,

crossing continents

at the speed of light,

disseminating darkness

as multitudes fall, swallowed

in the maw of today’s real time war.

Lisa Loden ©

December 13, 2016