Richard Engel: US-Turkish ceasefire is NOT holding

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

Richard Engel ✔ @RichardEngel

A senior US official and the top Kurdish commander both tell @NBCNews that the US-Turkish ceasefire is NOT holding. They say Turkey is using the ceasefire to continue to advance and take territory in and around the border city of Ras al-Ayn.

10:58 AM - Oct 19, 2019

[Firestorm49]

1. What a shock! As if you can believe anything this administration says.

DONALD Duck diplomacy.

[Sneederbunk]

2. Sounds as if not everyone is "happy."

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Not holding??? Don't think it ever was started.

[Igel]

4. That's how ceasefires often "hold."

People treat it in far too binary a fashion--either it's 100% or 0%, holding everywhere or it's not a ceasefire at all.

There's a difference between "The ceasefire's completely failed" and "there's still combat in a small town split across the border, where the town's edges are 1 mile from the border."

If you look it up in Google maps, beware: For some reason Ras al-Ayn is labeled that way in Arabic, but the Latin-alphabet name is Sari Kani. I wonder if that's transliterating the Kurdish name for the berg.

There were many "ceasefires" in the Donbas that were proclaimed universal but nonetheless were partial back in 2014 and 2015. Those who enjoyed the relative peace where the ceasefire held and who were able to reprovision, flee, or just not have to live under the threat of being killed by an artillery shell were glad for the partial ceasefire that there was, for as long as it lasted. That they were partial in the event and didn't live up to the billings wasn't such a big deal then.