BRUTAL ENDGAME IN ALEPPO
In Aleppo, no one gets much sleep any more, said Catherine Philp in The Times. As darkness falls, families in the rebel-occupied east of the city huddle together in “the single, safest room” in their house – whether it’s a basement, a corridor or a bathroom – listening to the roar of Russian jets overhead, and waiting for their bombs to fall. They know that even if they are lucky enough to have a cellar to shelter in, they are not safe – but at least if they die, they will die together. There are believed to be 250,000 people trapped in this shattered city, at least a third of whom are children. These are mainly the poorest families, the ones who couldn’t afford to get out in the early stages of the war, said Liz Sly in The Washington Post. Now, the area is totally besieged; even humanitarian aid is not being allowed in – and no one can leave.
Over the past four years, the inhabitants of eastern Aleppo have faced daily bombardments, but nothing compared to the onslaught since the Russian-us brokered ceasefire broke down last month. In just a week, it is estimated that 1,700 bombs hit eastern Aleppo, said the Daily Mail. These were not just cluster and barrel bombs – which are devastating enough – but incendiary bombs, which inflict appalling burn injuries, thermobaric bombs, which suck the oxygen out of the air and destroy the internal organs of anyone in the vicinity, and “bunker busters”, designed for use against armoured military installations. Such is the apocalyptic “terror unleashed” that Britain and the US have accused the Russians of committing suspected war crimes, while the UN’S Ban Ki-moon has likened Aleppo to a “slaughterhouse”.
In Aleppo, the children are dying: at least 96 were among the 400 people killed last week, said The Guardian. Health experts are seeing signs of malnutrition in children, and hundreds of thousands of people no longer have access to running water, owing to the bombing of a pumping station – adding to their suffering, and raising the likelihood of waterborne diseases taking hold. President Putin still insists his forces are fighting “terrorists”, but the UN is in little doubt that he, and Assad, are deliberately targeting civilian centres, including hospitals, to crush morale in the ancient city. Last week, eastern Aleppo’s largest hospital, codenamed M10, was one of two repeatedly hit by air strikes. Then on Monday, M10 was hit again, this time by a bunker buster – and completely destroyed. Even before the latest attacks, there were only 30 doctors left to treat the hundreds of patients who are brought in, day and night, with catastrophic injuries, said Sly. Overwhelmed, staff work around the clock, and must make agonising decisions about who to try to save – and who to leave to die. “We try to make sure they suffer as little as possible, but even the supplies we need to do that are running out,” says Maher Saqqur, a surgeon who has been using Skype to help from his clinic in Canada.
Who will stop the suffering? Not Putin, said Mark Galeotti in Foreign Policy. He demonstrated his belief in victory at all costs during the second war in Chechnya, when Grozny was almost bombed out of existence. In Chechnya he learnt the “strategic value of brutality, when applied in sufficient quantities”. Now he is playing the war in Syria to “Grozny rules”, by which insurgents are taught that resistance is not only futile but lethal, through demonstrations of “irresistible firepower”. So the real question is, who will stand up to Putin – and the answer seems to be no one. Moscow has committed countless outrages in the past few years; each time, the West professes indignation, but does nothing. “Power still rules the day,” said Samir Puri in The Observer. If international law is to mean anything, it “has to be enforced, sometimes by force”. But Western countries only “complain from the sidelines”.
Last week, Stephen O’brien, the UN’S under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, described the bombing of Aleppo as “a level of savagery that no human should have to endure”. Now, Syrian ground forces, backed by Iranian fighters and Russian air power, are poised to go in and finish the job, said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. In response, Washington has merely suspended talks with Moscow over Syria. John Kerry, US secretary of state, has been driven to distraction by Obama’s failure to back up demands for a ceasefire with a threat of force. The president has, of course, missed better opportunities to take action in Syria – but it’s not too late to act. He could support Kerry, “impose a humanitarian corridor and, at the very least, air-drop medical supplies and food”. What the US cannot do is stand by, as yet more civilians die. “That’s not a red line. It’s a bottom line.”
“Doctors must make agonising decisions about who to try to save – and who to leave to die”