Al-Monitor Discovers Ceasefires Are Optional, For Some
Al-Monitor, reporting from October 2025 (a future that perhaps looks much like the present), notes the Kurdistan-administrated neighborhoods of Aleppo remain under siege despite a 'truce' between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Damascus. This isn't a new playbook; the Assad regime, with Russian and Iranian backing, has a long history of using sieges as a weapon against civilian populations.
Remember Ghouta, Darayya, Moadamiyeh? These weren't 'truce' discussions; they were slow-motion exterminations by starvation and bombardment, deliberately overlooked by international bodies too often debating semantics while people die. The media reports these ongoing humanitarian disasters with an air of detached inevitability, conveniently erasing the role of major powers (cough, US, Russia,
Iran) in enabling the grinding suffering. How many times must 'ceasefires' and 'truces' be declared before we acknowledge they are often just new phases of war, particularly when economic strangulation bypasses the need for overt bullets and bombs? The humanitarian crises persist, yet the headlines pivot to the next 'negotiation.' One might wonder if the 'truce' was simply a rebranding of
'uninterrupted suffering.'