A year later, Aleppo still wrecked by war
CITY HAS BARELY BEGUN TO RECOVER FROM THE DEVASTATION
Aleppo’s largest square was packed with people of all ages: young men performing a folk dance, children playing, others buying ice cream, popcorn, peanuts and salted pumpkin seeds. A giant sign spells out in colourful English letters, “I love Aleppo”.
The scene in Saadallah Al Jabiri Square on a recent day was a complete turnaround from what it was during nearly four years of warfare that wracked the Syrian city. For much of the fighting, the square stood near the front line dividing the government-held western half of Aleppo from the rebel-held eastern half, withstanding a brutal assault by the regime of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, backed by his top ally Russia.
Guns are silent
Thirteen months after regime forces captured the east, crushing rebels, there have been some improvements in Aleppo. The guns are silent, allowing life to return to the streets. Water and electricity networks are improving. But the city has barely begun to recover from devastation so great and a civilian flight so big that residents find it difficult to imagine it could ever return to what it was.
Aleppo’s eastern half remains in ruins. Its streets have been cleared of rubble but there’s been little rebuilding of the blocks of destroyed or badly damaged buildings. Though some residents have trickled back, hundreds of thousands still have not returned to their homes in the east, either because their homes are wrecked or because they fear reprisals for their opposition loyalties.
Also, after the victory by the forces of Bashar Al Assad, there’s little sign of attempts at reconciliation in Syria’s largest city or talk of how part of the city rose up trying to bring down Al Assad’s rule. To reporters, residents — whether out of genuine sentiment or fear of state reprisals — express only pro-Al Assad sentiment and dismiss the rebels as militants backed by foreign powers. Diehard opposition sympathisers likely have not returned or keep it to themselves, and everyone is more focused on grappling with the destruction in the city.
“I feel very sad, I cry. Sometimes I cry in the morning because this was a very good neighbourhood,” said Adnan Sabbagh, standing on a balcony in his building in the once rebel-held eastern district of Sukkari.
Landscape of wreckage
The view from his balcony is a landscape of wreckage. Across the street is a pile of rubble a block long that used to be the Ein Jalout school compound that his three daughters and two sons once attended. Beyond it stand apartment buildings that have been sheared in half, their internal staircases jutting out. The building adjacent to Sabbagh’s has been levelled to a hill of broken concrete, rebar and stone.
Sabbagh’s own six-storey building still stands but the top three floors have had all their walls blasted away, leaving slabs of concrete floor dangling precariously.
The 47-year-old construction worker fled to live in the coastal town of Jableh five years ago as soon as the rebels overran Aleppo’s east. All three of his daughters are married to soldiers in Al Assad’s army, so he feared the fighters would not tolerate his presence.
In the autumn of last year, he returned home and fixed up his apartment on the second floor where he now lives with his wife and youngest son, Hamza. He relies on generators set up in the neighbourhood because like most other parts of east Aleppo, there’s no electricity in Sukkari — the government is still working to reinstall electricity poles. But running water has been restored — though it’s available only every other day, as is the case throughout the city east and west.
Commercial hub
Aleppo, with a pre-war population of 2.3 million, was Syria’s largest city and its commercial centre. More than that, it was a culture all its own within Syria.
Aleppans take enormous pride in their own accent of Syrian Arabic and their city’s famed cuisine with its own styles of roast meats and mezze appetisers. The city’s history spans millennia, and tourists were drawn by its historic citadel, Ummayad Mosque and covered bazaar.
In July 2012, rebels stormed eastern parts of the city where they found a welcome among many of its poorer residents. For the next few years, the opposition fighting Al Assad around the country saw their enclave in Aleppo as the jewel of their uprising, their strongest urban centre. It tore Aleppo in two, however, with destructive battles between the two halves as tens of thousands fled the city.
In 2016, regime forces backed by Russian air strikes surrounded the enclave, besieging it for months, pounding it with barrages. By the end, the rebels and residents trapped with them in a shrinking area of neighbourhoods faced either being crushed or starving. In December 2016, they surrendered. Since then, some have filtered back. The top UN official in Syria, Ali Al Zaatari, said the numbers are uncertain but that the UN is aware of close to 200,000 now living in the east, based on those who have registered for assistance.
Most of the factories in Aleppo’s 15 industrial districts are still closed, many of them damaged either from looting or from bombardment by government forces when they were held by rebels. Despite the relative peace, insurgents on Aleppo’s western outskirts fire shells occasionally. That has slowed the return of production at Lairamoun, an industrial district only few hundred metres from rebel positions.
Gassan Nazi, owner of a textile factory in Lairamoun, said that once the rebels are pushed back, he will reopen his business. Touring the now silent factory, he said it was used as a prison by a rebel faction called the Badr Martyrs. He said he’s suffered some $5 million in losses.
Feeling of liberation
In western Aleppo, where damage was much less, there’s a feeling of liberation from life under warfare. Power comes several hours a day and will soon run round the clock. Sand berms that had been set up on many streets have been removed, and security checkpoints have been pulled from the heart of the city to its entrances, freeing traffic.
Im Al Nour, a 51-year-old woman who drives a taxi — the only female cab driver in the city— has seen a boost in work. She can now operate in the east, where conservative women call her to avoid riding with a male driver.
2.3m was the pre-war population of Syria’s largest city
200,000 the number of people now living in the eastern part of Aleppo