Siege tightens hundreds of thousands trapped in Aleppo?

[Anthea]

Aleppo rebels brace for long Syrian government siege

Rebel areas of Aleppo have stockpiled enough basic supplies to survive months of siege by Syrian pro-government forces that cut off their half of the city last week, even though some goods are running out, an opposition official said.

Government forces backed by allies including Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Russian air force advanced last week to within a few hundred meters (yards) of the only road into the rebel-held part of Aleppo, making it impassable for the several hundred thousand people living there.

The advance has brought Damascus closer to achieving its long-held aim of encircling rebel districts of Aleppo, Syria's largest city and a potent symbol of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad now in its sixth year.

Rebel forces are fighting back in an attempt to reopen the Castello road. The opposition does not expect the Syrian army and its allies to storm the populous, rebel-controlled sector of Aleppo, and is preparing for the possibility of a long siege.

Russian officials said Moscow was there to help Damascus in its fight because the road had been used to supply armed groups, but the United States urged Russia to put pressure on the Syrian government to cease its onslaught.

With prices rocketing in Aleppo, opposition authorities were seeking to ration consumption to prevent hoarding and prevent traders from overcharging, said Brita Hagi Hassan, president of the city council for opposition-held Aleppo.

He said opposition authorities were also moving towards opening "alternative ways" into the rebel-held part of the city.

"We have the capability to open new ways because the situation is still under control," Hassan told Reuters. The plans were secret, he added, speaking from a rural area west of Aleppo after twice failing to enter the city last week.

Prices of non-perishable staple foods have tripled and fresh produce has gone up by even more, if it can be found at all. A kilo (2.2 pounds) of tomatoes, which are now in season, costs at least five times more than they did before the blockade.

AIR STRIKES

The city council has stockpiled flour, wheat, fuel, sugar and rice, and residents were being urged to adapt to the new situation, Hassan said. "I reassured people on this matter ... we can remain for several months without a problem.

"There are posters, pamphlets and there will be a press conference about this matter, so that the people are aware of the new situation, because the situation is very bad."

Operators of generators had been told to cut back their use to two hours a day, and the council had set aside fuel for essential uses such as bakeries.

As part of their counter-attack, rebels bombarded government-held neighborhoods of Aleppo, where the population is estimated at slightly over 1 million people. Air strikes have also targeted rebel areas of the city.

"The streets are abnormally quiet after several barrel bombs hit our neighborhood. People are waiting," said Malek Idrees, a father of five who lives in a rebel district.

"I could not find fresh produce for the last two days ... but there are no severe shortages ... most goods (are) still in the markets. I could not find bread yesterday," he said.

The United Nations said it was worried about increased fighting in and around Aleppo and called for humanitarian aid access and the safe and rapid evacuation of civilians.

U.N. spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci said that intensified hostilities had cut off 300,000 people. Hassan estimated the population in the rebel zone to be 400,000.

Assad is backed by Moscow, which launched air strikes in September, as well as by Iranian and Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah has said it regards Aleppo - Syria's pre-war commercial hub - as the most important battleground in the country, equating it with the defense of the capital Damascus.

"The fact is that the (Castello) road has been very actively and heavily used to supply various terrorist groups," Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Tuesday. "Clearly in that kind of a situation, the government has to fight back and we're there to help them in this regard."

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told a U.N. Security Council meeting Assad's bid to encircle eastern Aleppo would have "potentially devastating consequences.

"Russia, as a co-sponsor of the cessation of hostilities, should use its influence on the regime to help stop these attacks," Power said, referring to a truce agreed in February that subsequently unraveled.

Assad's allies say they are battling the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in Aleppo. But Western-backed nationalist insurgents loosely grouped under the banner of the Free Syrian Army say they control the rebel-held part of the city.

Nusra Front said it and the Nour al-Din al-Zinki insurgent group had fought back and advanced in an area near the Castello road late on Tuesday. There was no immediate Zinki comment.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-midea ... SKCN0ZS211

[Anthea]

Rebels fear Assad victory in Syria as noose tightens around Aleppo

Just over a month into Syria’s uprising in 2011, the leader of Lebanon’s Druze sect, Walid Jumblatt, travelled to Damascus to visit Syria’s then security tsar, Mohammed Nasif. As well as being the Assad family’s most trusted senior official, he was also the linchpin of Syria’s close ties with Iran and Hezbollah, a man bound more than most to the fate of the regime.

“He said to me at the time, it’s either us, meaning the Alawites, or them, meaning the Sunnis,” Jumblatt recalled. “I knew which way this was going then. He added, ‘even if it cost us a million dead’.”

More than five years later, the toll in the now raging war is well past a quarter of that estimate – international monitors stopped counting last August. The sectarian dimension to the fighting foreshadowed by Nasif is a reality. So is the destruction of much of the country, including the ancient city of Aleppo, which after years of being viewed as the key to Syria’s fate last week slipped from the grasp of the opposition and into the hands of the Syrian regime’s allies, led by Hezbollah.

The encirclement of Aleppo is a significant moment in a war that has led to more unrestrained savagery, international repercussions and unlikely alliances than most others in modern times. Another emerged last week, as Hezbollah and Syrian troops were beating back the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra from farmlands to the north of the city. As that battle raged, the US was drafting a deal with Russia that would create a joint operations centre to coordinate attacks on al-Nusra and Islamic State.

The move has created despair among the ranks of the Syrian opposition, which insists that a pact between Moscow and Washington will entrench the Syrian leader, whom Russia and Iran have saved from defeat over the past 12 months. Adding to the alarm of the now diminished rebel ranks is a detente, also signed during the week, between Moscow and Ankara, after a seven-month standoff, as well as the Turkish prime minister’s remarks that Ankara was interested in peace with Damascus.

“This all means that Assad is no longer at risk,” said a senior official in the western-backed Syrian opposition. “This means that he has won.”

In the eyes of the exiled political opposition and rebel fighting groups still in Syria, the political realignments mark a decisive phase in a war that they believe they can no longer win. In recent years, as Bashar al-Assad’s allies have weakened the rebels’ position, a belief endured among opposition military leaders that if they could not win the war, Assad could not either. That view has changed.

“I’m sitting here in a ruined house in eastern Aleppo,” said Abu Sobhi Jumail, a Syrian opposition fighter who has fought across northern Syria for the past five years. “I have the Russians in the skies, the Syrian air force too, when its planes can fly. I have Isis to my east, Hezbollah to my north and al-Qaida [Jabhat al-Nusra] in between. They abandon us, and tell us to rely on God, and then condemn us when we are forced to seek help [from al-Nusra]. Without them we would all have been killed a year ago. That is not politics. That is life and death.”

Since Russia launched its large-scale intervention last October, opposition units that had been backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the US have been the prime targets of Moscow’s bombers. Isis has largely been spared, with notable exceptions such as in Palmyra.

Turkey, too, has mostly left the jihadis alone, concentrating its fight on Syria’s Kurds, whom it views as a subversive extension of Turkish Kurdish groups, which Ankara continues to fight.

Though remaining a supporter of the Syrian opposition, including Islamic elements such as Ahrar al-Sham, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has focused much of his energies on ensuring that Syria’s Kurds do not seize control of more of the shared border and that their use by the US as proxies in the fight to seize land from Isis in eastern Syria does not amplify the Kurds’ ambitions.

“We are doomed in Aleppo,” said Suleiman Aboud, who fled with his family from the rebel east of the city in February. “The next phase of this will be revenge. No one has paid a price for all these abuses. That is what hugging Assad does. This revolution was noble. It may not have been fully democratic, but people are allowed to fight oppression. We have the same rights to safety and freedom as you.”

Acknowledging the immense suffering across rebel-held parts of the country, Gareth Bayley, the UK’s special envoy for Syria, said: “The situation on the ground in Syria is dire. The UK is deeply concerned by the regime and its allies taking ground and harming civilians in Aleppo and rural Damascus. This is in direct violation of the cessation of hostilities and there is appalling suffering amongst the population.”

There is no way out of eastern Aleppo and north to the Turkish border, with the last remaining supply line severed. A blockade that has all but taken hold over the past year is now likely to be enforced, say the few remaining residents of the eastern half of the city.

“For a long time people have been out of ideas,” said Abu Subhi. “There is no enthusiasm to assist us. They want it all to go away. But you will all be judged for what has happened in Syria. I won’t be alive to witness it, though.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... are_btn_tw

[Anthea]

Syria, Russia seek rebel surrender with Aleppo siege

The Syrian war might be at its most significant juncture in years, as regime troops complete their encirclement of rebel-held parts of eastern Aleppo, the former industrial capital of Syria’s north.

The idea is simple: to starve the rebel groups into complete submission or create enough domestic pressure on them, from civilians residing there, to pack up and leave. The other option would have been for the Russian and Syrian armies to pound Aleppo from the skies, completely destroying the ancient city, with an astronomically high collateral damage and loss of human life.

Regime sources in Damascus, speaking to Gulf News, confirmed that if the Syrian army succeeds in taking Aleppo, it would change the dynamics of the entire northern front and “bring the Syria war to a close”.

There is no projected timetable for the battle of Aleppo, and the siege will last so long as the Aleppo fighters survive. Since 2012, the Castello Road has been the main lifeline for the mostly-Islamist rebels in Aleppo, providing supply and arms from rebel-held towns along the Syrian-Turkish borders, and from within Turkey itself. It has now been seized by government troops, and Turkish-backed rebels have repeatedly tried to re-open it with little luck, due to major air cover from the Russian army and manpower from the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

The full siege puts the rebels of Aleppo in difficult waters: either to starve or to surrender. This has been a common tactic in the Syria war; it happened in parts of Homs in central Syria and, more recently, in the town of Zabadani in the Damascus countryside. Rebels in both these cities were forced to choose between an exit under supervision of the United Nations, or death. In both cases they agreed to be escorted from Homs and Zabadani, with their light arms, and to be resettled in Idlib, a city held by Al Qaida-linked Jabhat Al Nusra, and Al Raqqa, the provincial capital of the so-called Islamic State, or Daesh. The rebels of Aleppo will face a similar fate soon, if they fail at breaking the Syrian Army’s armed “necklace” around Aleppo.

Approximately 300,000 civillians are caught in the middle as the regime lays seige, hoping their their pressure will push the rebels out. Already, since the Aleppo operation started last May, prices of food and basic commodities like sugar, rice, and flour have skyrocketed by 300 per cent, adding further pressure on the city, which is left with no electricity, water, fuel, gasoline, medicine, or internet access.

The Syrian opposition is crying foul, claiming that the United States is doing nothing to help Syrian rebels in Aleppo. They believe that a secret deal has been struck between the Americans, Russians and Turks, at their expense, sacrificing the city of Aleppo in favour of the Syrian regime.

In exchange for Aleppo, the Russians will probably turn a blind eye to US advances on Minbij and Al Bu Kamal, two cities currently held by Daesh. The Turks will back off in exchange for Russian commitment to prevent the emergence of a autonomous Kurdish state on their border with Syria — a nightmare scenario for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

When US Secretary of State John Kerry was asked recently about the US’ counter-terrorism strategy, he identified two rebel groups, Jaish Al Islam and Ahrar Al Sham as “subgroups” of Daesh. The former is a large Saudi-backed militia operating in the Al Ghouta orchards surrounding Damascus while the latter is a Turkish-backed army that calls the s”.

Last Spring, due to Russian intervention, the leader of Jaish Al Islam, Mohammad Alloush, was forced out of the opposition team that he headed at UN-backed peace talks in Geneva. His predecessor, Zahran Alloush, was killed with a Russian air strike on Al Ghouta last December. Alloush’s resignation on one front and Kerry’s statement on the other are testimony that the United States is less committed to a rebel victory than ever before and is slowly yielding to Vladimir Putin’s vision for Syria.

In June, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad gave a speech at the opening of the new Syrian parliament, vowing to liberate “every inch” of Syrian territory. According to opposition sources, rebels used to control 40 per cent of Syrian territory in 2012, and that has now shrunk to 12-13 per cent. With entire chunks of land restored to government control since the Russian army intervened in September 2015, the only major cities still under control of anti-Al Assad groups are Al Raqqa and Deir Al Zor, Idlib, and Aleppo.

The last time Al Assad visited Aleppo was in January 2011, where he toured its famed citadel with his former friend-turned nemesis, Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thanni, former Emir of Qatar, weeks before outbreak of hostilities in Syria. Before that he was a frequent visitor of the city, unlike his father Hafez Al Assad, who never visited Aleppo during his 30 years in power, mainly due to part of the city’s support for an uprising back in the 1980s, led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The ancient city is the largest in Syria and the third largest in the Middle East. It has provided two of Syria’s 20 presidents and, briefly in the late 1940s, its politicians ran the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The city remained relatively calm until 2012, when its eastern parts fell to Turkish-backed militias, simply because they caught government troops off-guard in Aleppo.

The city was so safe that nobody imagined it would fall so easily — a major miscalculation on behalf of Damascus and Tehran. The battle of Aleppo has since been postponed, billed as the “final battle” by government sources in Damascus. The Russians thought otherwise, claiming that they needed to take Aleppo first for the entire rebel command in the Syrian north to collapse, then to march on the rebels in different parts of Syria, believing that their morale would collapse and they would quickly surrender after shouldering a heavy blow in Aleppo.

Due to its volatile, wild and rebel-held countryside, the city is swarming with arms and Islamist militants, unlike Damascus, which is surrounded by mixed villages and towns (some being Christian and others being Alawite) that prevented the rebels from creating a full blockade around the Syrian capital.

Additionally while Damascus rebels had no access to the outside world, the militias of Aleppo have open access to Turkey, which bankrolled them with money, arms, and fighters since 2012. Aerial bombardment alone would never be enough for the Syrian Army to retake the city, and street-to-street fighting would whip up a huge death toll among government troops and Hezbollah fighters. Simply, the battle was too costly and difficult in 2012-2015.

The Syrians and Russians created a divergence around Aleppo earlier this year, pretending to march on the city but then turning their guns on Daesh-held Deir Al Zor. As rebel focus shifted from Aleppo to Deir Al Zor, government troops headed back to Aleppo to complete the blockade.

http://gulfnews.com/news/mena/syria/syr ... -1.1864422

[Anthea]

Aleppo: Civilians trapped in Syrian city as UN warns food supplies and hospital fuel running low

Hospitals will soon start running out of fuel in the Syrian city of Aleppo and food supplies may only last one month if humanitarian supplies are not permitted to enter the newly besieged eastern half of the city, the United Nations has said.

Key points:

People now trapped in eastern Aleppo, and no way for supplies to get in
UN warns hospitals could soon close, food running low
Activists say world has failed to act to help Syrians

Russian and Syrian regime airstrikes reportedly killed 28 people in Aleppo on the weekend, including five children and seven women.

Video purportedly filmed after an attack on the rebel-controlled neighbourhood of Al-Maysar shows people carrying lifeless bodies from the rubble, while a teenage boy covered in blood shouts repeatedly for his mum.

But the people in eastern Aleppo now have no escape.

They are trapped — under constant fire from Syrian and Russian warplanes above and now surrounded on all sides by Assad regime forces.

Syrian Government forces seized control of the only road going into rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Sunday, leaving no way for people or supplies to get in or out of the opposition-controlled area.

"They are only a few hundred meters away, they are having fun, waiting for any civilians to pass," 27-year-old human rights activist Muhammad Zain said.

He, like hundreds of thousands of people, is now stuck inside the besieged city.

"Slow death this is what we have here. I can't tell you how much we are concerned and worried, we fear death," he told the ABC over a bad internet connection from eastern Aleppo.

"They are waiting for this moment to punish the people collectively, even punishing people who are not supporting the rebels, nor the regime.

"Any civilian could be a target."

The acting UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, Jakob Kern, told the ABC the UN was extremely concerned about the approximately 300,000 people trapped in rebel-held Aleppo.

"The Castello Road was the last access road into east Aleppo city. Now it's cut off completely humanitarian commodities have been unable to get in or out," Mr Kern said over video call from Damascus.

"We are extremely concerned because of the large number of people — it is 200,000 to 300,000 people, it is a very high number."

'Aleppo is another scale entirely'

Mr Kern said hospitals would soon run out of fuel and be unable to operate. The UN believes there is only enough food in Aleppo to feed 145,000 people for one month.

"We will be concerned in very short time when these supplies are running out," Mr Kern said.

When speaking of Aleppo Mr Kern evoked the situation in Madaya, the rebel-held town near Damascus where children starved to death.

"Potentially we will see the same as in Madaya and in other besieged areas that there will be people rationing of supplies will happen and people will get less and less food. And will get less and less access to medical supplies," he said.

Many observers see the encirclement of Aleppo as a landmark moment in this five-year-long civil war.

"Really Aleppo is just another scale entirely," said James Sadri, t"The UN needs to find its independent voice and really start putting a foot down."he director of The Syria Campaign in Beirut, an advocacy group that calls for humanitarian action in the war-ravaged country.

"Aleppo has long been a key centre of political opposition to the regime in Damascus. Even before the uprising really. So what happens here is absolutely critical."

"The UN needs to find its independent voice and really start putting a foot down."
Mr Sadri said it was unjustifiable that the world had failed to act to help protect civilians in Aleppo.

"You know we have got four of the five permanent security members that are now flying in Syrian airspace and yet none of them is doing anything to stop this aerial war on these civilians which is now focused on Aleppo," Mr Sadri said.

He said it was crucial the UN took a stronger stance towards the Assad regime.

"We need a bold United Nations that can stand up. And it needs to call very clearly out this government siege on Aleppo and make it stop," he said.

"The UN needs to find its independent voice and really start putting a foot down."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-19/t ... ow/7640044