Assad fails to rebuild Aleppo
Recovery is slow and largely out of the regime’s hands
IN EASTERN Aleppo, bodies still lie under the rubble, graveyards are full, people are short of electricity and bread, and some children take classes in mosques because their schools have been ruined by war. Seven months after the army drove rebels from their stronghold in the Syrian city, the state looks paper thin there, with most services provided by residents or with help from international aid agencies or local charities.
Aleppo was Syria’s most populous city and industrial engine before the war and its recapture delivered President Bashar al-Assad his biggest battlefield victory.
Its recovery would not just be symbolic of Assad’s improving fortunes but a signal that the Syrian state was capable of revival after years of weakness.
The UN says about 200 000 people have returned to east Aleppo after it emptied during the fighting, mostly from temporary accommodation in areas held by the government.
However, in the al-Kalasa district, which Reuters visited in both early February and this month with a government official who was present during interviews with residents, the city’s recovery seemed slow and largely out of state hands.
Electricity came from private generators, water from wells or tanks filled by aid agencies, bread from charities, and basic education and health care with help from the UN.
The government removed mountains of rubble from streets after the fighting.
Aleppo’s assistant governor said the state was ultimately responsible for the services provided by aid agencies.
But in Kalasa, retaken in December amid a furious bombardment with help from Russia and Iran, the strongest signs of the state’s presence were a concrete checkpoint and a poster of Assad pledging: “We will rebuild.”
After six years of war, his state is in tatters. Large parts of the country remain outside its control. Western sanctions have hobbled the economy. Water and power services are in ruins, road networks wrecked and hundreds of thousands of working-age men remain under arms.
Eight-year-old Ghassan Batash would have attended the Yarmouk and Sabbagh school but it is unusable. Its walls still carry the logo of Jaish al-Islam, a rebel faction that made the school its base. In the library stands a “hell cannon” or homemade mortar.
In the school yard, two big craters show where air strikes targeted rebel fighters, wrecking classrooms. It left Ghassan with the choice of walking to school elsewhere or going to the mosque. – Reuters