The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) featured an interesting article last week which dug into reporting on the breakdown of the ceasefire in Syria brokered by the U.S. and Russia in early 2016 (“How Media Distorted Syrian Ceasefire’s Breakdown“).

The long report by longtime investigative reporter and national security policy analyst, Gareth Porter, dings the media for “forgetting” the chain of events that led to the breakdown of the ceasefire.

And he further criticized news coverage for viewing the ceasefire primarily as an issue in the global rivalry between the U.S. and Russia rather than for its impact on the people living in the Syrian war zone.

Porter argues the ceasefire was undermined when so-called “moderate” rebels supported by the CIA joined in a military offensive in concert with the fighters from the Al Nusra Front, which he refers to as “the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria.”

The ceasefire, or “partial cessation of hostilities,” covered the Assad government and the moderate, non-jihadist armed groups. But it explicitly excluded the conflict between Assad and both Al Nusra and ISIS.

It was expected to prompt the so-called “moderate” groups to distance themselves from ISIS and Al Nusra.

Porter wrote:

But instead of separating themselves from Nusra Front, the US-supported armed opposition joined with Nusra and its jihadist allies in a major offensive aimed at destroying the ceasefire. Charles Lister, a leading British specialist on the jihadists in Syria, has recounted being told by the commander of a US-backed armed group that around March 20, Nusra officials began a round of meetings with non-jihadist opposition groups from Hama, Latakia and southern Aleppo—including those supported by the United States—to persuade them to participate in a major offensive against the Assad regime, rather than in a ceasefire and political negotiations.

But most mainstream reporting that followed ignored the rebels joint military offensive and implied that it was the Assad government and its Russian backers who were responsible for the collapse of the ceasefire and the new round of open warfare.

In any case, it is a very interesting read.

And an important one, given the central role that the Syrian conflict now plays in both the reemerging cold war between the U.S. and Russia, and the refugee diaspora that now threatens Europe in many different ways.