Juan,
I find it amazing to read that you have discovered the "hard truth" about Syria and feel so confident of your facts that you can explain, almost justify, the destruction of East Aleppo and the expulsion of its population. First of all the prelude to the fall of east Aleppo was not a "likely" war crime. If you know International Humanitarian Law, the concerted and systematic destruction of the medical structure and the necessities for the survival of the civilian population is not just a war crime but a crime against humanity. To say rebels "bear some of the blame for their defeat" is beside the point when we're talking about a city that was besieged, starved and bombarded for the past six months.
Some elements of your analysis are flat wrong, and others are weakened by the omission of critical facts. How can you say East Aleppo fell because the population chose to go to the regime? What would you do if you lived in East Aleppo and your choice was death or escape? And saying that the Russians were "especially" going after Nusra, from everything we know, has no basis. The Russians were besieging, starving and bombarding a civilian population, using the pretext it was going after Nusra. Accepting their pretext is a breathtaking assumption.
Maybe one of the most baffling things you write is your description of "the Kurds' as "largely post-communist leftist feminists." Are you referring to the PKK command of Rojava, which was installed by the Assad regime and is allied to it, or to the Kurdish population, upon whom PKK rule was imposed? Of course the Kurdish fighters didn't rush to the defense of the Sunni Arab fighters; indeed YPG forces in Sheikh Maksud helped impose the siege in the first place last July. Are you not aware of their relationship with the Assad regime?
The other thing that I notice you left out altogether is a description of who the regime forces are in Aleppo; you say rather opaquely that regime forces won. Turkish media today ran photos showing Qasim Suleiman strolling through Aleppo, marking Iran's latest victory. Surely you must be aware that the ground forces which took east Aleppo are not Syrians but Shiite militias under Iranian command.
So there's another way to look at the situation of Arab rebel forces: they are besieged by Iran-directed ground troops, the Russia air force, ISIS fighting that all too often fight in parallel with the regime (see my three part series in Daily Beast earlier this month on Assad's relationship with ISIS) and what's left of regime forces. Meanwhile despite all these foreign interventions, the vetted rebel forces have been held to old levels of support by the Obama White House. It seems to me the fact that the moderate rebels are still out there when they're fighting on a minimum of three fronts shows that they think their cause is worth dying for. And we should never underestimate any force that's so motivated. Regards Roy
Juan,
I find it amazing to read that you have discovered the "hard truth" about Syria and feel so confident of your facts that you can explain, almost justify, the destruction of East Aleppo and the expulsion of its population. First of all the prelude to the fall of east Aleppo was not a "likely" war crime. If you know International Humanitarian Law, the concerted and systematic destruction of the medical structure and the necessities for the survival of the civilian population is not just a war crime but a crime against humanity. To say rebels "bear some of the blame for their defeat" is beside the point when we're talking about a city that was besieged, starved and bombarded for the past six months.
Some elements of your analysis are flat wrong, and others are weakened by the omission of critical facts. How can you say East Aleppo fell because the population chose to go to the regime? What would you do if you lived in East Aleppo and your choice was death or escape? And saying that the Russians were "especially" going after Nusra, from everything we know, has no basis. The Russians were besieging, starving and bombarding a civilian population, using the pretext it was going after Nusra. Accepting their pretext is a breathtaking assumption.
Maybe one of the most baffling things you write is your description of "the Kurds' as "largely post-communist leftist feminists." Are you referring to the PKK command of Rojava, which was installed by the Assad regime and is allied to it, or to the Kurdish population, upon whom PKK rule was imposed? Of course the Kurdish fighters didn't rush to the defense of the Sunni Arab fighters; indeed YPG forces in Sheikh Maksud helped impose the siege in the first place last July. Are you not aware of their relationship with the Assad regime?
The other thing that I notice you left out altogether is a description of who the regime forces are in Aleppo; you say rather opaquely that regime forces won. Turkish media today ran photos showing Qasim Suleiman strolling through Aleppo, marking Iran's latest victory. Surely you must be aware that the ground forces which took east Aleppo are not Syrians but Shiite militias under Iranian command.
So there's another way to look at the situation of Arab rebel forces: they are besieged by Iran-directed ground troops, the Russia air force, ISIS fighting that all too often fight in parallel with the regime (see my three part series in Daily Beast earlier this month on Assad's relationship with ISIS) and what's left of regime forces. Meanwhile despite all these foreign interventions, the vetted rebel forces have been held to old levels of support by the Obama White House. It seems to me the fact that the moderate rebels are still out there when they're fighting on a minimum of three fronts shows that they think their cause is worth dying for. And we should never underestimate any force that's so motivated. Regards Roy