‘Complete meltdown of humanity’
Sometimes 140 characters can be enough.
Norwegian politician Jan Egeland, United Nations humanitarian adviser for Syria, summed up the tragedy in Aleppo on the microblogging platform Twitter: ‘‘For 3000 years Aleppo gave so much to world civilisations. How come, when Aleppo’s people needed us the most, we gave so little back?’’
Egeland’s tweet went out as thousands of civilians and rebel fighters were finally able to leave the besieged and bombed Syrian city after a negotiated ceasefire that handed victory to President Bashar al-assad.
The collapse of Aleppo is an important milestone in Assad’s crackdown on rebels, called ‘‘terrorists’’ by the regime, that started during the heady and hopeful days of the Arab Spring in 2011.
It is a war supported by Iran, and more recently, Russia.
Nearly half a million have been killed since 2011 and 11 million have been made homeless.
In another of the striking phrases that will come to define this memorable and often dark year, the United Nations called the refugee crisis in Aleppo a ‘‘complete meltdown of humanity’’.
The phrase was used in relation to reports that Syrian soldiers and allies had shot people who tried to flee in recaptured areas of the city and that evacuation conveys had been shelled.
Aleppo is significant for several reasons. The moral and humanitarian tragedy is easy to grasp. But there is a larger issue about what has been called the failure of liberal intervention.
The finest diplomatic language in the world did nothing to stop Assad and his allies from committing human rights abuses and atrocities.
US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said Aleppo ’’will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later’’.
The timing is significant because another shadow hangs over Aleppo and that is President-elect Donald Trump. If US President Barack Obama proved incapable of stopping Assad’s war on his own people, could Trump be worse still?
That all depends on how Trump really feels about Russia. Assad’s victory would have been impossible without Russia’s intervention in 2015 and the Syrian war has given Russian President Vladimir Putin a strategic Middle Eastern foothold.
So far Trump has proved even less willing than Obama to support Syrian rebels and he has echoed Putin’s line that it is more important to fight Islamic State than challenge Assad.
Seldom has Trump’s unpredictability and lack of clarity been more ominous than in the case of Syria and, more generally, his relationship with Putin and Russia.