The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: assad regime
The Tragic Fall Of Aleppo

The Tragic Fall Of Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – An operation to bring thousands of people out of the last rebel-held enclave of Aleppo was under way again on Monday after being held up for several days, together with the evacuation of two besieged pro-government villages in nearby Idlib province.

Convoys of buses from eastern Aleppo reached rebel-held areas of countryside to the west of the city, according to a U.N. official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

At the same time, 10 buses left the Shi’ite Muslim villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, north of Idlib, for government lines in Aleppo, the sources said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said a total of 12,000 civilians had been evacuated from Aleppo, including 4,500 since midnight on Sunday.

The evacuation of civilians, including wounded people, from the two villages had been demanded by the Syrian army and its allies before they would allow fighters and civilians trapped in Aleppo to depart. The stand-off halted the Aleppo evacuation over the weekend.

“First limited evacuations, finally, tonight from east Aleppo and Foua & Kefraya. Many thousands more are waiting to be evacuated soon,” Jan Egeland, who chairs the United Nations aid task force in Syria, tweeted late on Sunday night.

Syrian state TV and pro-Damascus stations showed the first four buses arriving in Aleppo from the besieged villages, accompanied by pick-up trucks and with people sitting on their roofs.

In Idlib, aid workers said more than 60 buses had arrived from Aleppo. Some evacuees were being taken in by relatives or other residents, while others could be housed in tents.

The recapture of Aleppo is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest victory so far in the nearly six-year-old war, but the fighting is by no means over with large tracts of the country still under the control of insurgent and Islamist groups.

WET AND COLD

Photographs of people evacuated from Aleppo showed large groups of people standing or crouching with their belongings or loading sacks onto trucks before heading off to further destinations.

Children, dressed in winter clothes against the cold, carried small backpacks or played with kittens and one older man, in traditional Arab robes and headdress, sat holding a stick.

Later on Monday, the Security Council will vote in New York on a resolution to allow U.N. staff to monitor the evacuations. The draft resolution was the result of a compromise between Russia and France, and the United States said it was expected to pass unanimously.

On Sunday, some of the buses sent to al-Foua and Kefraya to carry evacuees out were attacked and torched by armed men, who shouted “God is greatest” and brandished their weapons in front of the burning vehicles, according to a video posted online.

That incident threatened to derail the evacuations, the result of intense negotiations between Russia – Assad’s main supporter – and Turkey, which backs some large rebel groups.

The foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey will hold talks in Moscow on Tuesday aimed at giving fresh impetus for a solution in Aleppo.

“It is not a miracle meeting but will give all sides a chance to listen to each other,” an official from Turkey’s foreign ministry said.

At stake is the fate of thousands of people still stuck in the last rebel bastion in Aleppo after a series of sudden advances by the Syrian army and allied Shi’ite militias under an intense bombardment that pulverized large sections of the city.

“JUST WANT TO ESCAPE”

They have been waiting for the chance to leave Aleppo since the ceasefire and evacuation deal was agreed late last Tuesday, but have struggled to do so during days of hold-ups. The weather in Aleppo has been wet and very cold and there is little shelter and few services in the tiny rebel zone.

In the square in Aleppo’s Sukari district, organizers gave every family a number to allow them access to buses.

“Everyone is waiting until they are evacuated. They just want to escape,” said Salah al Attar, a former teacher with his five children, wife and mother.

Thousands of people were evacuated on Thursday, the first to leave under the ceasefire deal that ends fighting in the city where violence erupted in 2012, a year after the start of conflict in other parts of Syria.

They were taken to rebel-held districts of the countryside west of Aleppo. Turkey has said Aleppo evacuees could also be housed in a camp to be constructed in Syria near the Turkish border to the north.

For four years the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and its allies managed to besiege the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.

A Reuters reporter who visited recaptured districts of Aleppo in recent days saw large swathes reduced to ruins, with rubble and other debris clogging the streets and sections of the famous Old City all but destroyed.

Assad is backed in the war by Russian air power and Shi’ite militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

East of Aleppo, several villages held by Islamic State have been captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of militias backed by the United States that includes a strong Kurdish contingent, the Observatory said.

The advance is part of a campaign backed by an international coalition to drive Islamic State from its Syrian capital of Raqqa.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall, Humeyra Pamuk, Stephanie Nebehay, writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership)

IMAGE: A member of forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad stands with a civilian on the rubble of the Carlton Hotel, in the government controlled area of Aleppo, Syria December 17, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

Thousands Still Trapped As Aleppo Evacuation Stalls

Thousands Still Trapped As Aleppo Evacuation Stalls

By Laila Bassam, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and John Davison

ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – The evacuation of the last opposition-held areas of the Syrian city of Aleppo was suspended on Friday after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people should also be brought out of two Shi’ite villages being besieged by rebel fighters.

The second day of the operation to take fighters and civilians out of Aleppo’s rebel enclave ground to a halt amid recriminations from all sides after a morning that had seen the pace of the operation pick up.

Aleppo had been divided between government and rebel areas in the nearly six-year civil war, but a lightning advance by the Syrian army and its allies that began in mid-November deprived the insurgents of most of their territory in a matter of weeks.

Russia said the Syrian army had established control over all districts of eastern Aleppo although government troops were suppressing isolated areas where rebel fighters continued to resist.

Rebel sources accused pro-government Shi’ite militias of opening fire on buses carrying evacuees from east Aleppo. Road blocks went up and a bus convoy was forced to turn back.

Rebels in eastern Aleppo went on high alert after pro-government forces prevented civilians from leaving and deployed heavy weaponry on the road out of the area, a Syrian rebel commander in the city said.

A Syrian official source said the evacuation was halted because rebels had sought to take out people they had abducted with them, and they had also tried to take weapons hidden in bags. This was denied by Aleppo-based rebel groups.

But a media outlet run by the pro-government Hezbollah group said protesters had blocked the road from the city, demanding that wounded people from the Shi’ite villages of Foua and Kefraya in nearby Idlib province should also be evacuated.

Iran, one of Syria’s main allies, had demanded that the villages be included in a ceasefire deal under which people are leaving Aleppo, rebel and United Nations officials have said.

A Syrian rebel source said Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, had agreed to let injured people out of the villages. But a Nusra source denied this.

The chaos surrounding the Aleppo evacuation reflects the complexity of the war with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on each side.

Though both Russia and Iran back Assad, rebels have blamed Tehran and the Shi’ite groups it backs in Syria for obstructing Moscow’s efforts to broker the evacuation of eastern Aleppo.

ALEPPO EVACUATION

Aid agencies involved in the Aleppo evacuation had been told to leave the area without explanation after the operation was aborted, the World Health Organization said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said a total of 8,000 people, including some 3,000 fighters and more than 300 wounded, had left the city in convoys of buses and ambulances since the evacuation began on Thursday morning.

Photos sent by an activist waiting to leave the rebel-held sector of east Aleppo showed crowds of people in thick coats in a street lined with flattened buildings in the cold winter air.

Private cars and minibuses with bundles strapped to their roofs filled the street, as people sat on rubble or stood next to bags of their belongings.

In a message sent to journalists, the activist said children were “hungry and crying” and people were “exhausted”, not knowing if buses would arrive to take them out.

By early Friday morning, nearly 200 evacuated patients had arrived in eight “overwhelmed” hospitals in opposition-held rural western Aleppo, Idlib and Turkey, according to the WHO.

The United Nations says 50,000 people remain in rebel-held Aleppo, of whom about 10,000 would be taken to Idlib province and the rest would go to government-held city districts.

Idlib province, mostly controlled by hardline Islamist groups, is not a popular destination for fighters and civilians from east Aleppo, where nationalist rebel groups predominated.

Idlib is already a target for Syrian and Russian air strikes but it is unclear if the government will push for a ground assault or simply seek to contain rebels there for now.

Turkey has said Aleppo evacuees could also be housed in a camp to be constructed near the Turkish border to the north.

Two potential sites just inside Syria have been identified to set up a camp, which could host up to 80,000 people, Turkish officials said, adding that they expected up to 35,000 people to come. Turkey would continue to accept sick and wounded coming from Aleppo.

PUTIN SEEKS CEASEFIRE

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Syria’s most powerful ally, said he was working with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to try to start a new round of Syrian peace talks aimed at securing a nationwide ceasefire.

Speaking in Japan, Putin said the new talks could be held in Kazakhstan and would complement U.N.-brokered negotiations that have been taking place intermittently in Geneva.

“The next step is to reach an agreement on a total ceasefire across the whole of Syria,” the Russian leader said.

A senior Syrian opposition leader, Riyad Hijab, said he was willing to attend the talks if the aim was to set up a transition government. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ruled out stepping down as part of a political solution to the war.

Aleppo, a once-flourishing economic center with its renowned ancient sites has been pulverized during the war that has killed more than 300,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and allowed for the rise of Islamic State.

The United States was forced to watch from the sidelines as the Syrian government and its allies, including Russia, mounted an assault to pin down the rebels in an ever-diminishing pocket of territory, culminating in a ceasefire this week.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday that the Syrian government was carrying out “nothing short of a massacre” in Aleppo.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the U.N. Security Council would meet on Friday to discuss a quick deployment of U.N. observers to east Aleppo to ensure there were no atrocities and that humanitarian aid reached the city.

The Syrian White Helmets civil defense group and other rights organizations accused Russia of committing or being complicit in war crimes in Syria, saying Russian air strikes in the Aleppo region had killed 1,207 civilians, including 380 children.

Even with victory for Assad in Aleppo, the war will still be far from over. Insurgents retain their rural stronghold of Idlib province, and the jihadist Islamic State group holds swathes of the east and recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra this week.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam in Aleppo and Tom Perry, John Davison and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, John Irish in Paris, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership)

IMAGE: Evacuees from rebel-held eastern Aleppo arrive to an area on the western edge of Aleppo city which is held by insurgents, in Syria December 16, 2016. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

Iraq War Fallout: U.S. ‘Ally’ Backs Syrian Dictator

The grim realities of the Iraq war, from its multi-trillion-dollar expense to its awful cost in American and Iraqi lives, were supposed to be mitigated by progress toward democracy in the Mideast – or so the neoconservative politicians and pundits who promoted the invasion have long told us. Now the credibility of that argument, which was never compelling, has been decisively undermined by the latest developments in Baghdad, where President Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is lending support to the Assad regime’s bloody repression of non-violent democracy protesters in neighboring Syria.

Troubling questions about the nature of the Shia parties that came to power following the fall of Saddam Hussein – and especially their relationship with the Iranian government — have long been voiced by critics of the war. Yet today, as Maliki and members of his ruling party openly attack the Syrian protesters while promoting economic deals with both Iran and Syria, those questions seem to have been answered. The Iraqi regime has delivered a verdict on the neoconservative justification for the war – and that verdict could scarcely be more negative.

When the Bush administration (and its enablers in academia and the media) began to promote an invasion of Iraq in 2002, neither they nor their opponents imagined the wave of democratic revolution that has crossed from the Maghreb to the Gulf nine years later – a movement utterly distinct from the failed neocon notion that bringing elections to Iraq by force would eventually reform the entire region. As former CIA analyst Paul Pillar noted in an excellent post on The National Interest blog, the movement that spread from Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain and Syria drew no inspiration from Iraq – where the carnage and destruction of the American occupation did no service to the cause of liberty in the rest of the Arab world.

For neoconservatives, who continue to influence Republican legislators (and presidential candidates) today, the scalding irony is that rather than promoting the extension of freedom in neighhoring states, Iraq’s president and governing party have spoken out in oppositon to the democratic movement in Syria. Even as the Syrian military murders that country’s protesting citizens every day, Maliki maintains the warmest relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a distinctly cold attitude toward the Syrian people, whom he has warned not to “sabotage” the regime. Since the protests began several months ago, the Maliki government has hosted official Syrian visits and encouraged construction of a natural gas pipeline across Iraqi territory from Iran to Syria. He has behaved, in short, more like an ally of Iran and Syria than of the United States – and certainly more like an ally of dictatorship than an advocate of democracy.

A report in the New York Times quoted a television interview in which Maliki blamed the demonstrators in Syria for the violence there, and urging them to use the democratic process rather than riots to express their concerns about the government. (Of course he knows that the “democratic process” is even more a sham in Damascus than in Tehran. ) Meanwhile politicians in Maliki’s party have gone still further, publicly smearing the protesters as instruments of Al Qaeda, which is Assad’s own false excuse for his massive killing spree. Such cynical mockery of the Arab Spring and its courageous Syrian upwelling is shameful, but the shame doesn’t belong to Maliki alone. It is a disgrace shared by the people who helped to bring him to power, not only in Iran but in Washington as well.