We live in Aleppo, here’s how we survive
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Every day we have new pictures of bloodied/dead Syrian children, articles describing the horrors of war and frantic warnings of a genocide that could happen any day now.
Now ask yourself: Why did you hear practically nothing about Syria for the past 4 years? Moreover, is anyone under the illusion that war isn't horrible? Did you think it was only strong, burly men getting killed before you saw that video of the kid in the ambulance?
I'm not trying to take away from this story, but I also see it for what it is: manipulative propaganda being pushed by a country that has a proxy war to win.
Finally, ask yourself this: Do you think all of the guns, bombs and technology we've provided to "freedom fighters" in Syria were only used to kill strong, burly men?
The media campaign on Aleppo is just the war drums beating subtly to hopefully get the public behind a future intervention. Especially under a future Clinton admin.
The coverage has been a disgrace though, hardly even acknowledging that the rebels in E Aleppo are overwhelmingly jihadists, fighting for an exclusionary Sunni theocracy.
The only reason there has been a response and coverage of ISIS is because of terrorist attacks in the west. As far as what is happening in Syria, ISIS is not particularly worse than most of the rebels in Idlib and Aleppo.
The "Arab Spring" was just part of that; people who couldn't work, couldn't feed themselves or their families. It was always going to go downhill, but people love their narratives of hope.
That makes me think that the CIA is pushing for more intervention after the election. I think this also explains why Hillary is taking every opportunity to resurrect Russia as America's boogyman, given that they're on the opposing side in Syria.
Even if she doesn't? The domestic political angle is a much better reason to bring it up in the debates than some 9-dimensional plan to invade Syria. It's an election.
What if Russia is not the evil empire?
She also laid out her parameters for any potential future intervention in Syria, in the same debate, and there was no talk of massive escalation, just the same secret ninja stuff we're presumably already doing. America doesn't have an appetite for another nation-building experiment, and we've got way less interest in Syria than Russia does.
I realize "just take her at her word" sounds a little naive, but you're not exactly on firmer ground when you say "no, trust me, I know her secret plan".
Nobody knows, but I have a strong feeling that you're gonna look back at that comment in a years time and feel pretty foolish about it. Her stint as SoS showed you all the evidence you need of her hawkishness.
I could take a blanket bet against "any conspiratorial theory about Hillary Clinton" and clear 80% of them.
Her stint as SoS featured a 20-something-day operation in Libya, laying groundwork for detente with Cuba and Iran, while getting the chemical weapons out of Syria without a shot fired.
I'll go on record that we just keep doing the same stuff we're doing in Syria. Unlikely that we even do a no-fly-zone, there's absolutely no reason to risk open combat against Russia. That's crazy.
EDIT: Maybe US advisors with the Kurds in Mosul wind up technically in Syria while helping get rid of ISIS. But it's likely that Assad will be shored up enough at that point to demand no US troops over the border and we go along with it.
"The alliance was formed in March 2015 under the supervision and coordination of Saudi cleric Dr Abdullah al-Muhaysini. It consists of Islamist rebel factions mainly active in the Idlib Governorate, with some factions active in the Hama and Latakia Governorates. In the course of the following months, it seized most of Idlib province. It is actively supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
In an October 2015 publication, the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War considered Jaish al-Fatah as one of the "powerbrokers" in Idlib, Hama, Daraa and Quneitra provinces, though not in Damascus province, being primarily "anti-regime" and "anti-Hezbollah" but not necessarily "anti-ISIS".
At its founding, Jaish al-Fatah contained seven members, three of them—al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, and Jund al-Aqsa—were directly connected to al-Qaeda or have a similar ideology. With Ahrar al-Sham being the largest group, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham together were reported to represent 90 percent of the troops." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Conquest
Discussion on Al Jazeera Arabic, "Should We Kill All Alawites?". (Alawites are the largest group in Syria backing the Assad government.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtNYSUqYHw
Plenty of people in our cushy western societies are unaware of the realities of war. You want proof? Have a look at how much people have complained about the 5000-odd US military dead in Iraq over a period of greater than a decade. That's 10% of the dead in Vietnam in a similar, and there were single days with more dead soldiers in WWI and the US Civil War.
It's a lot easier to be hawkish when someone else has to deal with the consequences of your opinion.
Among many, many, fascinating topics, Curtis details the fluctuating celebration and denouncement of Col. Qaddafi of Libya by western powers and media as a means to distract from the more complicated issues that were actually linked instead to Syria, such as the Lockerbie bombing.
Syria, for decades, has both been a distraction and a distractive force in great power politics. We're only really paying attention now because, as Thomas L. Friedman put it: "Libya implodes, Syria explodes.
One side in the war is methodically bombing bread queues and hospitals.
Our media is reporting that one side in the war is methodically bombing bread queues and hospitals.
I'd say the former is connected tightly to the latter.
Don't try to paper that over.
I guess the world really is that black and white then. Just like your movies.
There is more than enough evidence to show that Assad has, in fact, been methodically bombing bread queues and hospitals.
Maybe that should bother you more than the media reporting on it.
Does the CIA sponsor moviemakers if they show things this way or that way? Does someone blackmail journalists into following a line? Who decides what is the story to develop? What's in it for a journalist or a scenarist when they have to sway from depicting the situation neutrally and when they have to add a twist that may discredit them if discovered? Is it marketing which demonstrates that some topics are currently popular, therefore they all align on the same topic? Do they receive money from private interests who need to push war, do they receive blackmail, career advancement or are the journalists and scenarists simply endoctrined into those topics?
The fighting in Syria and the associated problems has been regularly and frequently covered in US mainstream media since it started, shortly after the Arab Spring events in the region.
I personally know friends who've been suffering from Al Nusra front shelling their residential areas in Aleppo for the last three year; The majority of Aleppo residents are supportive of the Syrian gov and Russia finally, going after the terrorists; except for about 10% who are supportive of Al Qaeda and al nusra front.
in the following video, a british journalist goes to Aleppo, and meets with people there, and you'll be shocked that the TRUTH is exact opposite of what propaganda outlet like WAPO, CNN, etc. want to spread.
The situation in Syria as it stands today is complicated, sure. But it's also pretty easy to summarize why Aleppo and its outcome is important in the proxy war.
Aleppo is a major population center and a "hub" in the spoke-and-hub network of cities and towns in Syria. When - and if - there is a political transition for the government of Syria, the forces that stand in Aleppo will have an outsized influence in the outcome.
In this manner Aleppo has been an important battleground for the current administration in Damascus and the Russians who have national security interests in the secular government of Syria. For the same reasons the opposition - the rebel and terrorist forces in Syria - have been trying to take and hold Aleppo.
The United States and Russia had been trying to broker a ceasefire, but ultimately the city's value to proxy forces and foreign backers proved too much and the mutual trust between great powers too little for a negotiation to be reached.
Now that the ceasefire is off the table, the United States does not have a legal option for intervening. It has not ruled out - and may be engaged today in - covert illegal activity with respect to attacks on Syrian Government forces and infrastructure. On the other hand Russia was invited in by a government that is still internationally recognized and can intervene in Aleppo on a legal international basis.
One option open to the United States is to try to intervene in Aleppo on account of a humanitarian basis, in which case it needs public opinion and material support to bolster a legal argument.
This is the reason that the United States and its media companies have been focusing so much on the situation in Aleppo, narrating it as a particularly horrible instance of the civil war.
The same sort of narrative campaign, it is easy to notice, is absent from reporting on Sanaa (Yemen), on the current operations in Mosul, of the Turkish (illegal?) military invasions of Greece and Iraq, of US bombing in Northern Syria, of Kabul and of military operations in Afghanistan, or of the mass innocent casualties in a number of places around the world from the Predator Drone mass assassination programme.
Aleppo is a tragedy. Truly. The proxy war in Syria - and all of the regional and foreign power who have made it worse by pumping weapons and funding into it (including the US) - is a horror, and an acknowledgement that we still aren't at a place with our civilization where we can resolve tensions of competing international interest with rules, peace, diplomacy, and mutual benefit.
What?
Know that the invasion of Iraq is of course much more serious, as the are all of the others in the list. The inclusion of the Greek islands was just verbosity from yours truly, and not intended to imply more than a touchpoint for those familiar with Turkey's illegal incursions.
Please don't let that distract you from the more important general topic written above. If you want ignore the aside about Greece - it's not important to the overall message.
Still, I'm afraid that it won't be enough. The war drum is already beating towards Syria, and I wouldn't be surprised if the US mounted an offensive shortly after HRC is crowned--to stop some imminent genocide or other humanitarian crisis, no doubt.
After reading this, you realize it's happening to people like you. One day, they were minding their own business, studying, going to work, doing everything you do, and the next their house got bombed and now they don't know whether they'll be alive next month.
The world sucks.
1) The only winning move is not to play.
Zugzwang.
SOmetimes, I'm in a cab and the driver's confused about directions, and I HAVE TO SWITCH TO FRENCH! THE HORROR!
Seriously, we could let them all in and they'd barely be noticed.
Nice? No. But what's the alternative, committing state-level suicide? That's why the first rule of rescue is ensuring the safety of the rescuer: if the rescuer is down, there's no hope left for the victim. And if Europe goes down, that will not help any migrants, either.
Any concerns regarding massive immigration, cultural differences, homeland security, etc. are labelled as xenophobic hate-mongering, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
And let's not delude ourselves: the giant social welfare states in Europe and the United States act as magnets for refugees and immigrants.
The level of cynicism in the world's leaders is breathtaking. How many leaders said anything along the lines of, "We will take as many refugees as our people are willing to feed, house, and clothe, since the people of this nation are the most generous, loving people on earth"? Not a single one. It's always got to be the job of the State when a politician comes up with an idea. And of course the people get to pay for it through coercive taxation no matter if it's a good idea or not ;-)
Putting that aside, this would be happening in some form without that, because of climate change. The sad fact is that we're entering a period of increasing global instability, as previously livable regions become unlivable, and visa versa. I can't think of a single reason why some desperate Eritrean (for example) would say to themselves, "Oh no, these people who have been central to that process of climate change don't want me to live with them. I guess I'll just stay here and try to make it work. Maybe I'll starve and die, but hey, it's the law."
Personally I find it hard to believe that the USA is backing Al Qaida (or what ever they have decided to call themselves this week), but that is middle east politics for you.
You mean, until we sent the CIA in to train them, fund them, and arm them with Stinger missiles?
Even if they did, international treaties/law banning weapons tend to go out the window in times of war. Take white phosphorus for example, which is banned by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons for use as an incendiary weapon but has reportedly used by the US, Israel, Ukraine, Armenia, Taliban and Iraq under Saddam Hussein for such purpose.
It's a mad world.
I really can't understand his reason to remain in Aleppo after 4 years of war. I could probably see his point at the beginning of the conflict, but once the war has been going on for such a long time, what is the point? He is playing Russian roulette every day; "It was an airstrike less than 100 meters behind ". Yes, the city is under siege, and currently it may be almost impossible to leave, but that doesn't seem to be his reason for staying.
Humans tend to be very irrational in times of duress, particularly when sentimental things are at stake, like the house you raised your family in.
> My wife and I are among about 250,000 people trapped here in the besieged eastern section of the city.
Stopped reading right there.
Meanwhile there is 1 to 1.4 million people in Western Aleppo.
Also there is this.
> While aid groups estimate anywhere from 175,000 to 300,000 people still live in eastern rebel-held Aleppo, it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of figures from rebel territory. For example, Darayya, another besieged rebel-held city, was said to have more than 8,000 occupants. But last week, when government forces evacuated the entire town, they found fewer than 2,000 people still residing there.
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-syria-aleppo-m...
[1] And she of course knows little