US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shake hands after agreeing on new steps they said could make a difference in Syria, Moscow, July 15, 2016. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Press Association. All rights reserved. On 9 September 2016 in Geneva, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, came to an agreement about Syria. If you rely on the mainstream media in Britain for your information about the ongoing conflict in Syria, you will probably think the agreement was for a ceasefire followed by the provision of humanitarian relief to besieged populations, in particular, in the eastern part of the city of Aleppo, which is under the control of anti-government forces – but that Russia broke the ceasefire on 19 September 2016 by attacking a humanitarian UN convoy on its way to eastern Aleppo and since then has been engaged along with the Syrian government in a ferocious attack on eastern Aleppo.
In fact, the agreements between the US and Russia – there are actually five of them – were much more fundamental than that. In one of them, the US agreed to join with the Syrian government and Russia in taking military action against Jabhat al-Nusra, the erstwhile al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which plays a leading role in the armed opposition in the northwest of the country, including in eastern Aleppo. To facilitate this, the US undertook to separate the so-called “moderate” groups in the armed opposition (some of whom are armed and supported by the US) from al-Nusra with whom they co-operate. This extraordinary proposal has gone largely unreported by the mainstream British media.
This extraordinary proposal has gone largely unreported by the mainstream British media, when a headline along the lines of “US to join Assad in fighting al-Qaeda” would not have been inappropriate. Had this proposal been put into effect, the US air force would have been giving air support to the Syrian army and its allies, Hezbollah and Iran, in their battle against al-Nusra and, by so doing, bolstering the Syrian government, headed by Bashar al-Assad.
