About 70,000 desperate Syrians are thronging the Turkish border in icy weather
Take a city with a population similar to that of Chicago, an urban area more or less the size of Manchester, England.
Now, bomb it. Not just one bomb. Not a campaign of urban terror, like the Paris attack last November that left 130 people dead.
Go even further than the attacks of September 11, 2001, that killed close to 3000 people. In us
Aleppo, once a Levantine gem and formerly the largest city in Syria, with a population of about 2.5 million, has been a battleground for close to four years. As of January, 2013, Syrian president Bashar Assad lost control of the city to a rag-tag league of rebel forces, that alongside local noncombatants, is now being bombarded by the Russian air force as no civilian population has been since the end of World War II.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is Assad’s top backer. Chris Woods, the editor of the monitoring website www.airwars.org [1], told The Media Line there is “no doubt that a major Russian air campaign is going on right now.”
Thus supported by Russian firepower, Assad’s forces, that flailed and failed to retake the city for years, now have besieged Aleppo.
“There’s one main reason for the change in the Syrian situation,” writes Ha’aretz military analyst Amos Harel. “The deployment of Russian fighter planes to northwestern Syria in late August, and the nationwide aerial assaults they began a month later.”
“Russia’s entry into the picture prevented the regime’s collapse,” he continues, which is “something Assad had genuinely feared in the spring and summer, and quickly stabilized its defensive lines.”
Atlantic Council scholar Frederic C. Hof published an article this week arguing, in effect, that the United States has been played by Russian President Vladimir Putin who had a plan all along.
According to Hof, the Russians ‘aim in Syria was to decimate rebel groups and divide the country into two zones, one controlled by Assad, the other by the Islamic State (ISIS) so as to force western powers to choose between Assad, who they have long detested, and ISIS, the new and barbaric bugaboo. Assad, according to this plan, would then survive.
“Civilians already subjected to indiscriminate air attacks would, with the arrival of regime ground forces on their doorsteps, have one more nightmare with which to deal: the prospect of regime intelligence operatives and shabiha gangsters going door-to-door to kill, loot, arrest, and rape as they wish,” Hof writes.
And indeed, Aleppines are fleeing for their lives.
Somewhere between 35,000 and 70,000 refugees are now thronging the Turkish border in inclement, wintry weather, and a jittery Turkey, that has already taken in 2.5 million Syrian refugees, is for now keeping an eye on them but keeping them out.
The desperation of Aleppo’s remaining population, that is estimated to be about half a million people, is such that they are willing to risk their children’s lives to escape. About a dozen children have drowned to death in the attempt t9o make it to Europe in the past few days alone. Those who are stuck in the city—the old, the infirm, the disabled—are frightened and bitterly resigned.
Now, kids are also dying in bombardments. The Syrian Network [2], an independent, non-partisan, organization, is posting images of murdered children on its heartbreaking Twitter feed. At press time, the last was the sweet-looking Yazan Al Badawi, who was killed on February 8 by “regime warplanes” firing missiles.
Yazan AlBadawi, a Syrian child killed in a bombardment (Syrian Network)
Jenan Moussa [3], [4] a reporter for Arabic Al Aan TV, tweeted “I am speaking over Skype with an activist from Aleppo. He sums it all up. ‘Civilians have no say in what is happening in Syria. People are waiting with rice. If regime army comes in, people will throw rice in celebration. If Russia comes, they will learn Russian. If U.S. comes, they will learn English. If Saudi comes, we’ll use the rice to make mansaf (rice dish) in celebration.”
Stung by the accusations that Russia is causing a humanitarian disaster, the Ministry of Defense [5]posted an angry retort directed at NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, posted on its Facebook page.
“The crisis in Syria has been caused not by the operation conducted by the Russian Aerospace Forces, but by the thoughtless activities of the NATO member-states, which have brought the region of the Middle East into the chaos,” the post reads.
More mysteriously, it continues, “before the Russian aviation arrived in Syria, the NATO member-states had already imitated fighting against international terrorism in the format of ‘Nanai kids wrestling.’”
And then, directly, “Concerning the words of Stoltenberg on the “tension” in the region caused by the Russian presence in Syria, that is – nonsense,” the Russian defense ministry writes. “If there is anybody who is “strained” by the actions of the Russian Aerospace Forces in Syria they are terrorists. The Russian Defense Ministry has been openly telling and showing this to the whole world since the start of the Russian operation.”
For the thousands of desperate refugees at the border, this offers a very cold comfort.
“We are expecting 70,000 is Aleppo falls,” sighs, Seyfi Taşhan, the president of the Foreign Policy Institute in Ankara. “Turkey is in a very difficult situation.”
“It’s a slow process,” he explained, in a conversation with The Media Line, with Turkey supervising temporary camps just across the Syrian border, “trying to keep them safe and look after them but at the same time providing careful scrutiny.”
Highlighting the urgency of the situation, German chancellor Angela Merkel was in Ankara on Monday. “We are talking with our European friends and we’ll see what we can do,” Taşhan said.
Then, losing his customary diplomatic reserve, he continued “Europe will do nothing as they have done in previous crises. I don’t know. Europe is a self-centered and egotistic place. Europe can hardly move its finger. Have you seen the crisis in European countries after the migrants came to its doors? I don’t expect much from Europe. I think the United States and Russia will have to sit down and talk about a real solution.”