Russia, Syria to keep fighting US-backed terrorists: Analyst

Kerry said on Sunday that he and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov have struck a provisional deal on terms of a cessation of hostilities in Syria, but adding that the two sides are still in disagreement on some issues.
 
Eric Draitser, who is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City and the founder of stopImperialism.com, said the deal is not likely to affect the situation in a dramatic way.
 
“The question is, ‘Is this real progress in a political negotiation?’ or, ‘Is this merely rhetorical progress?’ and I would of course argue the latter,” Draitser said. “In fact there is absolutely nothing that will change on the ground whether this so-called cessation of hostilities or ceasefire actually goes through or not.”
 
He said such agreements will not resolve the conflict as long as Washington continues to repeat its “utterly debunked” talking point that “Assad must go.”
 
Draitser said Russia’s anti-Daesh military campaign in Syria, which began in September last year upon a request from Damascus, has disrupted US plans to remove President Bashar al-Assad from power.
 
The US knows that it is incapable of making any changes on the ground in Syria “but it has to maintain the illusion that it has the upper hand,” the analyst added.
 
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the ceasefire conditions exclude military operations against organizations "recognized as terrorist by the UN Security Council."
 
Draitser explained that Daesh (ISIL) and al-Nusra terrorist groups are UN-designated terrorists who receive American weapons through Syria’s neighbors such as Turkey, and Moscow and Damascus will never cease their operations against them.
 
 “In other words, even with a ceasefire, there will be no cessation of hostilities in the fight against terrorism,” he said.
 
The reason the West denies this, is because “al-Nusra Front is especially embedded in and allied with all of the so-called moderate rebel groups,” including the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), Jaish al-Islam or the Ahrar al-Sham, he said.
 
“It is a hollow, it is a vapid form of sophistry from the United States and the Western powers and of course Moscow knows this, Damascus knows this, [and] that is why they continue to insist that they will fight on against these terror groups because it in many ways undermines the very talking points that Washington and its toadies use,” Draitser continued.
 
The only positive point about the deal in principle, however, is that it can be seen as a basis for future negotiations, according to the analyst.
 
Concluding his remarks, Draitser said that the years-long bloodshed in Syria can only be resolved through diplomacy and that is why Syria and its allies are so hard at work to eliminate the threat of terrorism before they can have a say in a post-war scenario.
 
“That is what the fight is about now, and that is what the fight is going to be at the negotiation table,” he noted.