Sun Mar 17, 2024
March 17, 2024

Aleppo: from siege to war

By Victorios Bayam Shams.

 

After the siege, Aleppo is back in the core of the world events. The Syrian regime and sectarian allied militias use the genocide policy of siege against cities and neighborhoods like Madamyia-Sham, Daraya, Zabadani, Al-Qusayr, Alwar (Homs province) and Deir-al-Zour, to block the provision lines and perform continuous air strikes.

Aleppo is the oldest continuously inhabited city of the world, and it was a strategic point in the Silk Route. It was the biggest Syrian city (around 5 millions inhabitants), and also the main economic, commercial, agricultural and cultural center of Syria, with reflections in Middle East as a whole.

In Aleppo, a mix of superposed nationalities and communities have lived together for hundreds of years, surviving different regimes and occupations. Before the current Syrian Revolution, the one known as “The Great Syrian Revolution” of 1925 fought the French occupation that tried to split the country in five “states”, being Aleppo one of them, to be called “Syrian Union”.

After the take of power by Hafez al-Assad, in 1970, Aleppo enters a decline, due to the boycott of the regime, because of the opposition of some local sectors. The situation got worse with the arrival of his son, Bashar al-Assad, to power, in 200, when the “planned economy” of Hafez ‘kingship’ was substituted by a “market economy”, opening even more space for the corruption, the bureaucracy and the nepotism.

The unemployment rate varies between 22% and 30%, according the last census, in 2012, announced by the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Radwan Habib. Even the Arab Institute for Planning presented a final study in 2010, pointing a deep social inequality. According the study, 20% of the poorest used only 7% of the public wage, while the 20% richest used over 45%, being most of these “new rich” all close with the Assad family.

The free-trade agreement with Turkey, negotiated in 2004, was implemented in 2009, with the signature of Syrian Council of Ministers, by advise of the vice-president of Economic Affairs, Abdullah Dardari. It consists of 27 specific agreements on petroleum, gas, investments, double taxation and tax evasion, besides the conformation of the Turkey-Syria Chamber of Commerce. Thos agreements had devastating effects on the Syrian industry, which had no conditions of competing with Turkish products, better and cheaper, with special impact in the economy of Aleppo.

On the contrary of the agrarian neighborhoods of the province, which joint the revolution since its beginning, Aleppo’s city joined later due the concentration of industrial capital later out flew to Turkey and then Egypt, taking financial and hardware resources.

The late entry of Aleppo to the revolution served as pretext for the intellectuals linked to the regime to affirm there was no revolution, as its two main cities, Aleppo and Damasco, were not part of it.

Since Aleppo joined the revolution, the next year, it suffered hard punishments by the regime and its allies. Led by the Commandant of the Qods Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Suleimani, sectarian militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan initiated the air strikes over the city using all kind of weapons, including weapons that are forbidden by International Conventions, such as cluster bombs, fire with chemical weapons and phosphorous, as they did in other Syrian cities.

Along this year, in only 3 months, the Syrian regime cause 16 massacres, in which 1000 martyrs were killed (including 165 women and 331 children), and all the six hospitals were bombed (only one of them works, partially). The international silence was understood as a green light for the regime and its allies to complete the destruction of the city and dislocation of the population, enabling its occupation, with the consequent demographic implications. After taking the street of Al-Castelo, in July 11th, the 350 thousand inhabitants of the freed zones in Aleppo were finally besieged, and the Russian authorities (not the Syrian ones) announced they would guarantee the safe dislocation of its population, but they would not guarantee the entrance of any humanitarian help.

After the intensification of the siege, it was called the International Day of Fury for Aleppo, in July 31. The same day, the social networks showed children and youth of Aleppo burning tires to avoid the Russian aviation to bomb the city, due to the raising smoke. At the same time, the militias of the Free Syrian Army, together with Islamic militias, started the fight to break the siege, in the so-called “Great War for Aleppo”. They rapidly got to break the siege and control the military headquarters of the regime in the South and South East of the city, after six days of violent combats.

To sum up, the Great War for Aleppo was decisive to break the siege and serve as example to other battlefronts. But it is still not over, as the regime and its allies will not spare efforts trying to destroy the city through all the ways possible.

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Translation: Sofía Ballack.

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