The U.S. military reportedly has no formal role in monitoring or enforcing the new ceasefire in southwest Syria.
Three Pentagon officials told BuzzFeed News that the U.S. military currently has very little — if any — connection to the ceasefire.
“You’d think we would be a part of it,” one of the officials told BuzzFeed News.
A Pentagon official stated that the military community has likely not been informed of its role in the ceasefire because the deal came together so quickly.
“This was quickly negotiated by the diplomatic community,” a Pentagon official noted.
What’s currently known about the deal is that the United States, Russia and Jordan have agreed to establish a violations monitoring center, which would be based in Amman, the capital of Jordan.
While Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that both the U.S. and Russia agreed to enforce compliance, it’s unclear how the U.S. military will be involved in an area of Syria where the Islamic State doesn’t have much of a presence. Rather, the region is home to forces backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces like Tahrir al-Sham that used to be known as al-Nusra. The U.S.-led coalition has not hit the area in the last month.
President Donald Trump stated Sunday on Twitter that the deal appears stable.
“Syrian ceasefire seems to be holding,” Trump said. “Many lives can be saved. Came out of meeting. Good!”
The United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has stated that the ceasefire so far is holding steady.
“When two superpowers … agree fundamentally at that level in trying to make that ceasefire work, there is a strong chance that that will take place,” Mistura said Monday at a news conference in Geneva.
Mistura’s remarks come at the start of five days of peace talks in Geneva.
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