'US discards Jabhat Fateh al-Sham to save other militants in Syria'

Press TV has invited Ammar Waqqaf, a Syrian political commentator from London, and Michael Lane, head of the American Institute for Foreign Policy from Washington, to take part in this edition of 'The Debate' for a discussion on the Syria ceasefire brokered by Russia and United States.

“This particular ceasefire has a better chance of holding on,” Ammar Waqqaf said, since it is “not just an agreement between the United States and Russia on having a ceasefire, but there is a significant shift in the position of the United States in Syria that led to this agreement.”

The commentator believes that the United States has made the decision to ditch Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front) in order to preserve other factions; however, he argues, not all American allies in the region, like Saudis and Turks, feel that this should be the right course of action.

He further noted that when the Saudis and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham found out that the Americans had made up their minds to discard the group, Saudis tried to convince the US that they had brought it under their own umbrella. But, he added, the Americans knew that the Russians, the Syrians and their allies would always consider the group as an al-Qaeda-linked organization and would continue bombing them, so they strategically decided to separate [themselves] from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.  

When asked about the consequences of violating the ceasefire by a group, the analyst replied that the agreement would not be affected, but that Russians at least would  have a psychological victory over |Americans, holding them responsible for whatever happens in the future.

“If the ceasefire doesn’t hold on,” the analyst said, “the Syrian side, the Russian side and their allies always have the alternative of going back to the previous tactic, which is to use force in order to convince certain groups that fighting is not going to help them at all.”

He went on, “If that doesn’t hold now, the rebels and their backers, like Saudi, would find themselves, a couple of months down the line, in a much worse negotiating position.”

Also attending the program, Michael Lane told Press TV that he believed the United States had changed in a “flip-flop fashion” and accepted Russia’s view of what the future of Syria should be. “The United States has tacitly accepted that Bashar al-Assad will stay as the president of Syria,” he added.

According to Lane, there is less than a “fifty-fifty chance” that the truce is going to survive a week, since there exist other players in the region all of whom have conflicting interests with no international consensus.

Still, he believes that among all the ceasefires that have already been put in place, this one has perhaps the strongest possibility [of success].

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