The long-negotiated truce to quell the fighting among over 100 factions that has torn Syria apart for the last five years came into effect at midnight Friday night—and, for the most part, to the surprise of almost everyone, has held. The Washington Post called the sudden lull in fighting “unthinkable.”
ABC’s Alexander Marquardt, “They didn’t bomb today!” this gang of boys told us in Jaramana today. All from families displaced by the war. reporting from a camp of displaced families in the southern Syrian city of Jaramana, quoted a group of young boys exclaiming “They didn’t bomb us today!”
Children and their plight were at the center of various messages. From Reuters came a heart-wrenching story of Zhino Hasan [1], a wheelchair-bound 17-year-old, who “sat silently and alone for most of Friday in front of a closed border gate, hoping that Macedonia would relent and allow her and her family to resume their northward trek through the Balkans to Germany.”
Her father, Sarkawt, had gotten her to the closed gate at daybreak on Friday, hoping to get a head start in the queue whenever the border Greece shares with Macedonia in the small community of Idomeni reopens. By Saturday night, it hadn’t.
Meanwhile, Syria’s soignée first lady, Asma Bashar, was featured on the Syrian presidency’s Instagram account delicately embracing [4] a little boy costumed in military fatigues.
In a devastating analysis, however, the New York Times’ David Sanger, quoting François Delattre, the French ambassador to the United Nations, said the cease-fire could may end up being no more than a “a smoke screen allowing someone to crush the Syrian civilians and the opposition.”