Fragile Calm Settles Over Syria

(The Wall Street Journal)- A cease-fire appeared to be taking hold across Syria on Friday, despite allegations of violations by both sides, as government forces and armed rebel groups paused hostilities as part of a wider agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey to end the country’s nearly six-year conflict.

There were reports of skirmishes near Damascus and in the northern province of Hama, where rebels said the government carried out airstrikes, but large-scale fighting seemed to be on hold.

Previous truces this year, including one backed by Moscow and Washington, have failed in relatively short order, leaving the civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, to grind on.

Syria’s armed forces said Thursday that they would stop combat operations under the deal. Russia, which has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Turkey, which has supported opposition groups, said they would serve as guarantors of a cease-fire.

Some rebels expressed hope the truce would hold and pave the way for peace talks. “As long as we’re not seeing Russian warplanes in the skies, this means that the Russians are serious,” Zakaria Malahifji, a top political official with rebel group Fastaqim Kama Umrit, said Friday.

The truce effort reflects shifting geopolitics in the region, with Russia and Turkey acting without U.S. involvement. Russian air power and special forces have helped Mr. Assad expand the territory under his control, while the U.S. has scaled back support to rebels.

The government retook Aleppo, the country’s commercial capital, last week, a major victory for the government side.

A major challenge to stopping the long-running fighting, even temporarily, has been the disparate stands of dozens of rebel factions that battle each other as well as the government in Damascus. One of the largest, Ahrar al-Sham, said on Thursday it wouldn’t go along with the deal.

Russia and Turkey have also said Islamic State and the Syrian Conquest Front, a group with ties at al Qaeda are excluded from the truce. The U.S. has designated both as terrorist organizations.

Opposition activists said Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group fighting for Mr. Assad, fired rockets at rebel positions near the capital, Damascus, on Friday. Pro-government media said Hezbollah struck Syrian Conquest Front fighters. Rebels said more moderate groups were also hit and that Hezbollah was looking to make territorial advances, something prohibited under the terms of the truce.

Hours after the truce went into effect at midnight local time, rebels attacked a government checkpoint in northern Hama province, killing six Syrian troops, according to a pro-Damascus news site. Rebels confirmed there had been fighting, but not which side started it.