Is the West sitting on the fence over Syria?

THE humanitarian crisis in Aleppo has shown us the sorrow war brings. Thousands have died as President Bashar al-Assad clings onto power while the major powers have turned Syria’s scorched landscape into a geopolitical chess game. Meanwhile, Aleppo’s civilians are largely left to fend for themselves amid the carnage of war. The Russian and Syrian air forces have acted with impunity, without restraint and with total disregard for human life. An estimated two million Syrians are without running water, and many thousands, if not millions, have no adequate health care. The UN must condemn the actions of the Russians and the Syrian forces loyal to Assad in the strongest terms. The siege of Aleppo by both forces amounts to a war crime. International condemnation of Russia alongside Assad’s government will put pressure on them for a new cessation of hostilities and a move towards an overdue diplomatic solution to the conflict.

OLIVER B. STEWARD, Norwich. ASSAD may be a tyrant and a despotic dictator (like many Middle Eastern and African rulers, about whom we in the West do nothing or even actively support with our muchderided foreign aid) but under his rule his people had water, electricity, schools, food and hospitals and could live in relative civilised safety — albeit under a repressive regime. Not so now. Consider the anarchy caused by Western intervention in Iraq and Libya and the tragedy of Aleppo. In Assad’s Syria, homosexuals weren’t thrown off high buildings, people weren’t beheaded in market places, or burned alive in metal cages, and he was — arguably — inclined to be a friend of the West when it came to Islamic extremism. The alternative is ISIS, with all of its brutal, hideous and barbaric, medieval fundamentalism. The West must choose: President Putin has already taken his stance. What’s ours? We really can’t sit on the fence any longer!

DENNIS NISBET, Whickham, Tyne & Wear.