The fall of Aleppo

For months now, Aleppo has been in the grip of hell on earth. Indeed, it would be difficult to say whether or not what the people of Aleppo have experienced is worse than any hell imagined by the likes of Dante Alighieri.

An evacuation effort that began on December 13^th, and that Russia had vowed to monitor and protect, was suspended on the 16^th, with both sides blaming each other for truce agreement violations. The government accused rebel militias of trying to smuggle out prisoners and heavy weaponry under cover of the evacuation, while each side accused the other of firing on evacuation and aid convoys.

At one point this past week, prior to the evacuation attempt, bombs were falling on the shattered, ancient, Syrian city at a rate of one every twenty seconds. It was so dangerous to be on the ground there that war correspondents from major worldwide media were filing their stories from a safe distance outside the city or from neighboring nations like Turkey and Lebanon, and aid workers were operating—whenever that was at all humanly possible—under extremely hazardous conditions. All hospitals were shut down and civilians remaining in Aleppo were hemmed into a tiny sector of the city, surrounded by Syrian troops and their Russian and Iranian-backed allies. Information from within a small patch of remaining rebel-held urban territory was reaching the media from a handful of individuals who were still managing to transmit from their phones or computers, and the pictures they painted were of desperation and despair.

There were widespread reports of gross human rights abuses: In one incident, Syrian troops were reported to have summarily executed over eighty men, women and children from an Aleppo neighborhood believed to be staunchly loyal to armed anti-government rebels. As the Russian military sought to convince the world that it was heading up a humanitarian effort to evacuate civilians from eastern Aleppo—after its troops and air command bolstered the strength of forces loyal to the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, thus making the Aleppo takeover possible—last-ditch messages were transmitted to the worldwide media.

East Aleppo English teacher and anti-Assad activist Abdulkafi al-Hamdo, shared an emotional video on Twitter in which he indicated his disillusionment with the international community.One such message, posted in a video on Twitter, was from anti-Assad activist Lina al-Shamy, who said: “This may be my last video. More than 50,000 civilians who rebelled against the dictator al-Assad are threatened with field executions or are dying under bombing.” She added that more than 180 civilians had been “field executed” in areas most recently taken over by the regime. She said that remaining civilians were “stuck in an area that doesn’t exceed two square kilometers.”

“Don’t believe anymore in (the) United Nations,” he said. “Don’t believe anymore in the international community. Don’t think that they are not satisfied with what is going on. They are satisfied that we are being killed.” Specifically regarding the Russian military alliance with the Assad regime, Hamdo added, “Russia doesn’t want us to go out alive. They want us dead. Assad is the same. Yesterday there were many celebrations (in) the other part of Aleppo. They were celebrating on our bodies.” With defeat in his voice and words, Hamdo said, “We were a free people. We wanted freedom. We didn’t want anything else but freedom.”

The message that captured worldwide attention this week was from a seven-year-old girl, who tweeted:  “My name is Bana, I’m 7 years old. I am talking to the world now live from East #Aleppo. This is my last moment to either live or die.”This was a clear reference to the fact that this devastating war has grown out of what was, in late 2011, a peaceful protest movement formed by common citizens weary of the repressive, 40-year Assad regime. Protesters were holding peaceful marches to call for reforms that would provide for greater freedom and democracy in Syrian society. The civil war began when the regime responded to the protests with extreme violence and cruel repression, and citizens decided to arm themselves and fight back.

In an op-ed published on the international affairs commentary website War in Context, Scott Lucas, professor of international politics at Britain’s University of Birmingham, opened his article by saying, “Let us be clear. The imminent victory in Syria’s largest city of Bashar al-Assad’s government—and of its essential supporters, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah—is built on war crimes.”

“Rebels and civilians will get some respite, if (the) agreement for their removal from Aleppo to other areas in northwest Syria is implemented. But this is only the end of one chapter: the war goes on, as it has since the uprising against Assad in March 2011.”He continued: “For months, hundreds of thousands of people in opposition-held areas of Syria’s largest city have been besieged and bombed. Thousands have been killed. Men of fighting age seized in recent days by pro-Assad forces face conscription into the Syrian military or detention and torture. Scores of residents (were) reportedly executed in the 24 hours before a ceasefire was announced on December 13.

His statement couldn’t have been more factual: Although a temporary ceasefire was holding on Thursday—if tenuously, since there were reports of rescue vehicles entering and leaving the eastern sector of Aleppo being fired on by snipers—any relief from the fighting for the proportionally small number of people being removed through a “humanitarian corridor” set up by the Russians promised to be short-lived, since these beleaguered survivors were, for the most part, merely being moved to other areas of Syria still in rebel hands. One can only presume that, once Assad and his allies are through celebrating their major strategic victory in Aleppo, those other nearby rebel-held areas will also swiftly come under attack by the regime, if only with the essential help of its international handler, Russia, and regional ally, Iran.

Turkey, which has taken an active role in setting up the Aleppo evacuation, has said that it will be receiving only the most vulnerable of civilians. According to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his country will be accepting “children, elders, those who are really in difficult conditions.”

Kerem Kinik, leader of the Turkish Red Crescent, a humanitarian organization involved in the Aleppo effort, said that priority would be given to the wounded.

The brief 24-hour duration of the evacuation prior to its suspension on Friday only allowed about 9,000 people to be bused to safety. Tens of thousands remained trapped inside the tiny segments of Aleppo still held by the rebels—among them as many as 10,000 children. One of the obstacles to continuing the evacuation was the alleged rebel shelling of the government-held areas of Kefraya and Fua that were also being evacuated, after being besieged by rebel forces.

Most evacuees from rebel-held areas were being taken to neighboring Idlib Province. Despite the regime’s celebration of the fall of Aleppo and Assad’s bluster about victory’s being within his grasp, that area remains under the control of a still strong rebel alliance that includes the jihadist group called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. In fact, there are still large tracts of Syria’s northwestern territory in the hands of hundreds of independent bands of nationalist rebels that have joined forces to overthrow Assad. Other areas remain under the control of ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), which, despite the pounding it has taken from US and Russian air power, from Assad’s troops and from Kurdish Pershmerga fighters, remains a force to be reckoned. A clue as to how over-extended Assad’s military may be—despite all the help that it is getting from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah—is the fact that ISIL recently recaptured the ancient city of Palmayra from government troops that had retaken it, amidst great fanfare, from the jihadist terror organization only a short time before.

At the end of last month, United Nations humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien warned that Aleppo was being turned into “one giant graveyard” as Russian and Syrian forces overran rebel positions. And the Syrian War—which has cost nearly half a million lives since it began in 2011(some 16,000 of them children), and which has sparked the worst worldwide refugee crisis since World War II, with the displacement count currently standing at nearly 5 million refugees and another 6.1 million people displaced within Syrian territory (roughly half of combined total displacement is made up of children)—appears to be far from over. Especially, if the international community continues to use Syria as a battleground for its own proxy wars and geopolitical positioning, rather than seriously working to find a peaceful, workable solution to the conflict.
Russia’s flamboyant and autocratic leader Vladimir Putin said this past week that it was Moscow’s aim to establish a ceasefire across the entire territory of Syria, and that he was personally willing to broker talks to do just that. But the world has heard such promises from Putin before, and so far his words have been little more than hollow, self-promoting propaganda.Up to now, the major powers have only made the situation worse—Russia by taking an active military role in the fighting in order to protect the Assad regime, which acts as the guardian of Moscow’s interests in the region, and the United States, by stepping back and letting Russia take the lead, to the detriment of the democratic opening originally being sought by those opposing Assad. This weekend US President Barack Obama called on Russia push for a resumption of the Aleppo evacuation and a halt to the bloodshed. He also warned Syria’s dictator that he couldn’t “slaughter his way to legitimacy.” But in practical terms, the US is exerting precious little influence at this stage.

What is clear is that the Kremlin is anything but impartial in terms of the Syrian situation, since it is in the Russian interest for Assad to remain in power at all costs.

Trapped between vested interests and worldwide indifference, then, the Syrian people appear destined to continue to endure what is now a half-decade of living hell…and counting.