War of words over Aleppo
With city’s capitulation seemingly a matter of time, UN is unable to halt a war of attrition |
t is a strategy that both the Syrian government and its Russian allies have long embraced to subdue Syrian rebels, largely by crushing the civilian populations that support them.
But in the past few days, as hopes for a revived ceasefire have disintegrated at the United Nations, the Syrians and Russians seem to be mobilising to apply this kill-all-who-resist strategy to the most ambitious target yet: the rebel-held sections of the divided metropolis of Aleppo.
The killing and destruction in Syria, of course, has stupefied much of the world during the past five years. But it could pale in comparison with a military assault to retake all of Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city and still home to about 2 million people, roughly 250,000 of them in rebel-held territory.
East Aleppo would be by far the biggest and most fortified area that government forces had sought to retake with scorchedearth tactics of siege and bombardment — called “starve-orsubmit”, after slogans scrawled outside besieged areas by progovernment militiamen.
Encircled suburbs
The tactics have succeeded in much smaller areas: in encircled suburbs of the capital, Damascus, and in rebel enclaves in the central city of Homs — first in the historic Old City and, most recently, last week, in the outlying neighbourhood of Waer.
In the past few days, progovernment forces have signalled that they are escalating efforts to press the tactics to their conclusion in Aleppo, step by step. On Sunday, Syria’s UN ambassador punctuated the message, declaring that the government would reclaim all of the city.
First came new waves of airstrikes, Aleppo’s worst bombardment of the war. The bombings were so ferocious that the United States and Britain accused Russia of “barbarism” and “war crimes” for backing the Syrian air campaign.
But it was not just the volume of bombs that made the airstrikes devastating. They also hit, one by one, the systems that have kept life inching along.
Rescue workers in Aleppo reported that their cars and headquarters were among the first targets hit on Friday. The effect was instant: Now, when people are buried in rubble, no one comes. Or it takes longer for them to arrive.
Next, a much deadlier weapon than had been seen before was introduced: a heavy-duty ground-penetrating bomb, known as a bunker-buster. Turning whole buildings into craters metres deep, these bombs also threaten basement shelters and water pipes — not to mention the schools, clinics and even playgrounds built underground over the years to help minimise the damage of airstrikes.
Offers of help
As medical workers, rescuers and residents navigate the chaos, every now and then, on their phones, a text message pings, offering help. The texts, from the government, say that Russia is providing aid to people in the government-held side of the city, and is available to any who return to the bosom of the state.
Russia says it has opened safe corridors, and Syrian state television has reported that people have fled through them. Other residents say they have tried to approach the corridors, only to be shot at; each side blames the other for trapping people there.
Yet if other places are any indication, some people in East Aleppo may eventually take a deal at any cost. In Homs, in the Damascus suburb of Daraya and elsewhere, fighters and civilians have concluded that they are stuck in a war of attrition. They have agreed either to take their chances in government territory — seeking “regularisation” of their status and the clearing of any criminal records, but risking rearrest — or to be bused to rebel-held territory, where they risk further bombing.
Russia has been directly and repeatedly accused of war crimes at the UN Security
Council in an unusually blunt session, as hopes of any form of ceasefire were flattened by the scale and ferocity of the Syrian regime’s assault on eastern Aleppo.
“Bunker-busting bombs, more suited to destroying military installations, are now destroying homes, decimating bomb shelters, crippling, maiming, killing dozens, if not hundreds,” Matthew Rycroft, the UK ambassador to the UN, said during the emergency security council session on Sunday.
Most in need
“Incendiary munitions, indiscriminate in their reach, are being dropped on to civilian areas so that, yet again, Aleppo is burning. And to cap it all, water supplies, so vital to millions, are now being targeted, depriving water to those most in need. In short, it is difficult to deny that Russia is partnering with the Syrian regime to carry out war crimes.”
Rycroft later walked out of the chamber with his US and French counterparts before the Syrian government representative began speaking, in protest at the regime’s bombing campaign.
In Moscow, meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov slammed the United States and Britain for accusing Russia of “barbarism” and war crimes.
“We note the overall unacceptable tone and rhetoric of the representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States, which can damage and harm our relations,” Peskov told reporters.
At the Security Council meeting, Rycroft’s French counterpart, François Delattre, said the use of bunker-busters and incendiaries on urban residential areas was a war crime.
“They must not be unpunished,” he said. “Impunity is simply not an option in Syria.”
“Aleppo is to Syria what Sarajevo was to Bosnia, or what Guernica was to the Spanish war,” the French envoy said. “This week will go down in history as the one in which diplomacy failed and barbarism triumphed.”
White Helmets
The US ambassador, Samantha Power, highlighted the targeting of three out of four centres in eastern Aleppo used by the volunteer emergency services – the White Helmets – with the consequence that lifesaving equipment had been destroyed and “those buried in rubble in Aleppo are much more likely to die in the rubble”. She said while Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had been talking about restoring peace in Syria at council meetings, incendiary bombs were being loaded on to Russian planes in preparation for the new offensive.
“What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counter-terrorism. It is barbarism,” Power said.
In response, the Russian envoy, Vitaly Churkin, blamed the breakdown of a week-long, US-Russia-brokered ceasefire on rebels, including the “moderate opposition” backed by the west. Extremist groups in eastern Aleppo were holding its population hostage, Churkin claimed, stopping them from leaving and using them as human shields. He added that the Syrian government had showed restraint.