UN votes to send monitors to Aleppo
Thousands flee in deal that puts Assad back in full control
ALEPPO // Thousands of traumatised Syrians left the rebel enclave of east Aleppo yesterday as the UN Security Council voted to deploy observers to the battered city to monitor evacuations.
Families had spent hours waiting in below-freezing temperatures, sheltering from the rain in bombed-out apartment blocks and waiting desperately for news on when they might be moved.
After a fraught delay, evacuations resumed yesterday in a complex deal under which government forces will exert full control over Syria’s second city.
More than 7,000 people travelled in 100 buses out of Aleppo yesterday , while dozens more vehicles were preparing to leave, said Ingy Sedky, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“We will continue throughout the day – and however long it takes – to evacuate the thousands more who are still waiting,” Ms Sedky said. Ahmad Al Dbis, who heads a team of volunteers coordinating evacuations, saw dozens of buses and ambulances arrive at the staging ground west of Aleppo.
He said the evacuees were in “a very bad state after waiting for more than 16 hours” at a regime checkpoint without being allowed off the buses.
The evacuees included seven- year- old Bana Al Abed, whose Twitter account had given a tragic account of Syria’s nearly six-year war, as well as 47 children who had been trapped in an orphanage. The government had suspended removals on Friday, insisting that people also be allowed to leave villages in the northwest under rebel siege. According to the ICRC and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, about 500 people left in a dawn convoy from Foua and Kefraya. The Observatory said at least 14,000 people, including 4,000 rebels, had left east Aleppo since the relocations began on Thursday. At least 7,000 remain. A rebel representative said that hundreds of people would also be evacuated from Zabadani and Madaya, two army- besieged rebel towns near the border with Lebanon, as part of the deal.
Mr Al Dbis said the Aleppo evacuees’ departure was delayed for hours in temperatures well below freezing.
“They hadn’t eaten, they had nothing to drink, the children had caught colds, they were not even able to go to the toilet,” he said. He described families wrapped in several layers of coats getting off the buses, which then returned to Aleppo to bring out more people.
The UN’s children agency, Unicef, said some of the children rescued from the orphanage had been in critical condition because of injuries and dehydration.
“Many vulnerable children – including other orphans and children separated from their families – remain in east Aleppo and need immediate protection,” it said. Residents of east Aleppo, which had been a rebel stronghold since 2012, lived through three months of siege before pro-government forces began an assault to retake opposition-held areas of the city in mid-November.
“The people we are welcoming have been through hell,” said Casey Harrity of the international NGO Mercy Corps.
The French-drafted resolution was unanimously adopted yesterday in the first show of unity in months among world powers grappling with the Syria crisis.
The measure gives the United Nations the responsibility for carrying out “adequate, neutral monitoring and direct observation on evacuations from eastern Aleppo and other districts of the city”.
The foreign and defence ministers of Russia, Turkey and Iran are due to meet in Moscow today to discuss Syria.
As 2016 draws to a close, Vladimir Putin can look back with satisfaction on a year in which Russia’s quest to reassert itself scored some notable successes.
In the face of sanctions intended to punish Russia for what the US and some of its European allies saw as Moscow’s disruptive meddling in Ukraine, Mr Putin has maintained his grip on Crimea while Russian-backed separatist regions in the east of the country continue to defy Kiev. In Syria, the collapse of rebel resistance in Aleppo signals the successful outcome of a military intervention aimed at bolstering Bashar Al Assad’s regime. Mr Putin can now plan his next steps fully aware that the western powers have been sidelined in Syria and are showing signs of disunity over Ukraine.
Although the EU voted to renew its sanctions against Russia, the Kremlin is likely to be confident that it can bide its time while Donald Trump formulates his foreign policy goals and several major European countries are preoccupied with internal elections.
Moscow will observe with particular interest the outcome of the French presidential race in May 2017. The two candidates expected to contest the final run-off round of the election, the National Front’s Marine Le Pen and the centre-right republican François Fillon, are both more sympathetic to Russia than is François Hollande. The Kremlin will hope that a new French government will seek to moderate German chancellor Angela Merkel’s hard line on the current sanctions regime.
Russia’s economy is in urgent need of respite. It is estimated that Russia’s national reserves have been depleted by as much as two thirds to $30 billion since Ukraine crisis erupted in March 2014. The finance ministry has had to sell off large quantities of foreign currency in order to balance the budget.
In addition, Credit Suisse estimates that Russian living standards declined by nearly 15 per cent between mid-2015 and mid-2016. It is likely that as many as one in six Russians now live in poverty. While Mr Putin continues to achieve approval ratings as high as nearly 90 per cent, survey evidence suggests that many Russians are disenchanted with rising inflation and unemployment.
Although presidential elections should pose no threat to Mr Putin’s dominant position in Russia, the Kremlin will continue to use its foreign currency reserves and loans to maintain current expenditure. But it is likely that hard decisions will soon be unavoidable. Many state- own corporations are being propped up with public funds. In addition, military operations in Syria are costing the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars every month. Consolidating Moscow’s hold on the disputed territory of Crimea through spending on social services and infrastructure is another drain on reserves to the detriment of budget allocations for other needy regions in Russia.
The ailing economy will be factored into the Kremlin’s calculations over future policy in Syria. For all its influence over Damascus, Russia does not have the power to impose a final settlement in Syria. While air strikes helped defeat the rebels in Aleppo, Iranian forces bolstered by Hizbollah and Iraqi Shia militias played the decisive role. Although Russia and Iran have worked closely to shore up the regime, Mr Putin remains wary of forging too close an alliance with Tehran given Moscow’s interests in building on its military relationship with Egypt and energy cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
Having won in Aleppo, Mr Putin is now looking to lead peace talks aimed at some form of political solution to the Syrian conflict. The Kremlin has announced that it will work with the Turkish government to host ceasefire talks between the Damascus government and opposition factions in Astana, the Kazakhstan capital. Although Mr Putin has stressed that his initiative is intended to run as a parallel process to the UN-led talks in Geneva, his exclusion of the US and its allies from the talks is a deliberate rebuke aimed at highlighting the marginalisation of Washington in Syria.
The principal obstacle to the joint Russian- Turkish démarche is that the rebellion is by no means over. Moderate and extremist rebel groups still control a significant proportion of Syria’s territory and insurgents may now seek to wage hit-and-run attacks rather than allow themselves to be drawn into intense urban fighting again. ISIL’s recent reoccupation of Palmyra demonstrates the continued inability of the Syrian government’s military to effectively combat rebel forces without Russian air power and Iranian ground forces.
Although the West has accused Moscow of playing a cynical role in Syria, Mr Putin’s opportunist approach has successfully exploited policy discord in the US and Europe. Despite his evident successes, however, the Russian president may ponder the advantages of de-escalating tensions over Ukraine and Syria.
While Russia’s strength has waxed in proportion to the waning of the West’s unity and resolve, Mr Putin ambitions could be increasingly frustrated by the very real constraints on Russia’s ability to project power beyond its “near abroad”. The advent of the Trump administration in Washington, combined with political changes in Europe, may offer Moscow a tempting and timely opportunity to restore relations with the US and its allies before a struggling economy undermines Russia’s renewed great power status.