Aleppo: How Americans are being lied to

[valley ranch]

[waltky]

Well, it's about time they came to this conclusion...

UN declares Syria's east Aleppo 'besieged'
Thursday 6th October, 2016: The rebel-held east of Syria's Aleppo has officially been declared a "besieged area", following a months-long government offensive and a lack of access for aid workers, the UN said Wednesday (Oct 5).

United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke said eastern Aleppo now met all three criteria used to define an area as besieged. That includes military encirclement, lack of humanitarian access and the lack of free movement for civilians. The UN estimates that there are 275,000 people in eastern Aleppo under siege, Laerke said. The west of the city is controlled by the government and has continued to receive relief supplies.

Once Syria's economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been devastated by the country's brutal five-year civil war, with the suffering intensifying since regime troops cut off the last supply route in July. The UN and Red Cross have been pushing to get aid into east Aleppo for weeks, but those efforts have been stalled by insecurity and bureaucratic problems, including obstacles imposed by both the Damascus government and rebel commanders.

After being formally declared besieged in OCHA's latest report to the UN Security Council, eastern Aleppo will "be included automatically in the monthly plans for access either through cross-border deliveries or cross-line deliveries," Laerke said in an email. There are now 18 besieged areas in Syria, according to the UN. Eastern Aleppo has replaced Daraya on the list, after the latter town was emptied of residents and opposition fighters under a deal with the government.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...d/3182606.html

See also:

Life under siege
Wed, 05 Oct 2016 - Some 250,000 people are trapped in rebel-held parts of a city at the centre of Syria's war - where do they get their food and are the children going to school?

Aleppo was once a place of culture and commerce, with a jewel of an old city that was on Unesco's list of world heritage sites. Now, the five-year civil war that rages in Syria has left much of it destroyed and divided roughly in two, with President Bashar al-Assad's forces controlling the west and the rebels the east. A month ago, government forces re-imposed a siege on the east, and launched an all-out assault to take full control of the city, accompanied by an intense and sustained aerial bombardment. Activists say the offensive has left hundreds of civilians dead, but the government and its ally Russia have denied targeting them and blamed rebel fighters for operating in residential areas. But what about the more than 250,000 people who are trapped there? Where are they getting their food from? Do they have enough water and medicine?

The quality of daily life depends on where you live

There is no single group in charge in eastern Aleppo - it is divided between mainstream rebels backed by the US and its allies, the jihadist group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, and Kurdish forces who say they support neither the government or the opposition. In the Kurdish-controlled district of Sheikh Maqsoud, markets are well stocked and prices are stable, according to the Reach Initiative, which is in touch with people on the ground to gather regular humanitarian reports. One road out of Sheikh Maqsoud has opened up in the daytime, allowing people to get out and goods to get in. But the district is surrounded by checkpoints, meaning people from the other areas under siege cannot get in and out easily. In other parts of eastern Aleppo, the situation is more urgent. Generators are running out of fuel, meaning electric power is sporadic, and some air raid shelters - where residents may spend hours or wait overnight for bombing to stop - are not wired with electric light at all.

Food and water have become weapons of war

Humanitarian aid agencies have been unable to get into eastern Aleppo since the siege resumed on 4 September. Both the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been calling for humanitarian corridors to be opened up since then, but so far those calls have been ignored. That said, charities are still in contact with people who live there. Reach says some markets are still up and running in parts of Aleppo under siege, but for key foodstuffs like eggs, flour, vegetables, fruit, chicken and cooking oil, whether you will get them or not is touch-and-go. In three districts - Qadi Askar, Masakin Hanano and Tariq al-Bab - markets have run out of flour completely. Reach says some people are rationing their last pieces of dried bread and tubes of tomato paste, while others are bartering what is left in their cupboards. For food that you can get, the price is hugely inflated.

Before the conflict, seven pieces of flatbread cost 15 Syrian pounds. Now, it comes in packets of six pieces, costing 451 Syrian pounds on average (£1.66, $2.12) - expensive in a city under siege, where many ways of earning money have disappeared. Water, too, has become a weapon in the war as government forces attempt to make the rebels and civilians in eastern Aleppo surrender. Pumping stations have been damaged in the bombing and most of the city - including parts of the government-held west where some 1.2 million people live - has no running water coming out of the taps. People are buying water from wells and privately-owned water tankers, and carrying it home in buckets. Many have reported that it tastes bad, and there is no guarantee that it is free of disease. It is hard to say whether anyone has died of hunger in the siege because with aid agencies unable to get inside, they cannot accurately diagnose the level of malnutrition. But Pablo Marco from the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said: "The siege is pushing people towards starvation."

There are hardly any doctors left

[valley ranch]

They're still paying them, still giving them weapons and ammo. I don't see an end to that yet.

[AeonPax]

`
`
Perpetual War means a steady source of profits for the banks and US arms dealers.

[Peter1469]

Yes, I posted a thread about an arms dealer charged criminally by the US. He was involved in the gun running into Libya and then from Libya to Syria. Once the prosecutors figured dirt was going to come out on Hillary, they moved to dismiss all charges.

[waltky]

Not much Obama can do to keep Aleppo from fallin' to Assad...

Little consensus within administration on how to stop fall of Aleppo to Assad
October 8,`16 - It may be no small irony that President Obama’s peripathetic secretary of state will travel next week to Rwanda, where up to a million people were killed in a three-month ethnic genocide in 1994, and has tentative plans to attend an international meeting on Syria, where civilian dead are fast approaching the halfway point of that number.

Bill Clinton, president at the time of the Rwandan massacre, has said that U.S. failure to intervene there is one of his biggest regrets. Just two years later, an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces in the town of Srebrenica while “the world’s great nations,” including the United States, “failed to respond adequately,” the United Nations later said. As Obama constructs the final months of his legacy, both historical events loom large. “Another Srebrenica, another Rwanda” are “written on that wall in front of us unless something takes place” to stop the slaughter, Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. envoy to Syria, said late last week as Russian and Syrian aircraft and artillery continued their relentless bombardment of rebel-held eastern Aleppo.

The Syrian government has dropped two chlorine bombs in the past month on the besieged, rebel-held city.

But there is no consensus within the administration about what the United States can or should do to try to bring a halt to the killing and stop what now appears to be the increasingly inevitable fall of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, to government forces. The Pentagon has argued for years against direct U.S. military action as risking deeper involvement in Syria’s civil war and detracting from the separate fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Early last month, defense officials objected to a deal reached with Moscow by Secretary of State John F. Kerry that would couple a cease-fire and delivery of humanitarian aid with U.S.-Russian counterterrorism cooperation against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda linked forces in Syria.

When the cease-fire fell apart, the Aleppo onslaught began and Obama ordered up a new assessment and policy alternatives, some senior officials perceived a shift in the Pentagon’s position. At a Sept. 28 meeting of national security deputies, military officials described options against Assad’s forces that might provide leverage over Moscow. Among them were cruise missile strikes against Syrian military activities directly involved in Aleppo operations. The idea, said a nonmilitary official who approved of the concept, was more a shot across the bow to jolt hesitation into a new paradigm, rather than any full-scale U.S. entry into the conflict.

A general view of the area of Awijah as Syrian pro-government fighters advance in Aleppo's rebel-held neighborhoods.

To the State Department and other agencies that had urged a more muscular policy, it seemed that a corner had been turned. Kerry, who has long advocated U.S. military action, had recently told a meeting of Syrian activists that he had lost that argument long ago, according to a recording of the session obtained by the New York Times. Now the State Department was sure the Pentagon had switched sides, according to several senior administration officials who described the ongoing, closed-door debate on the condition of anonymity. But last Thursday, as the discussion moved up the chain to a contentious White House meeting of national security principals, top defense officials made clear that their position had not changed. They advised a possible increase in weapons aid to opposition fighters but said the United States should focus its own military firepower on the anti-Islamic State mission rather than risk a direct confrontation with Russia.

MORE

[PeoplePower]

Not much Obama can do to keep Aleppo from fallin' to Assad...

Little consensus within administration on how to stop fall of Aleppo to Assad
October 8,`16 - It may be no small irony that President Obama’s peripathetic secretary of state will travel next week to Rwanda, where up to a million people were killed in a three-month ethnic genocide in 1994, and has tentative plans to attend an international meeting on Syria, where civilian dead are fast approaching the halfway point of that number.

Assad should rule Aleppo.
How come you don't do the granny stuff over here?

[waltky]

Oh No!, dey killed Anas the clown... Syria's Aleppo loses clown who warmed war-torn hearts November 30, 2016 — When war is constant, it can be easy to lose sight of how much a single death can matter. But the passing of one committed social worker will be especially devastating to his community in Aleppo.

The 24-year-old Anas al-Basha was a center director at Space for Hope, one of many unheralded local initiatives operating against the odds to provide civil society services to Syria's war-torn opposition areas. He was also a joker who dressed as a clown to cheer up the Aleppo's traumatized children. He was killed Tuesday in a presumed Russian or government missile strike on the Mashhad neighborhood in the besieged, eastern side of the city. In a now largely bombed-out enclave, Space for Hope supports 12 schools and four psycho-social support centers in eastern Aleppo, providing counseling and financial support for 365 children who have lost one or both parents. Many of the staff of 34 learned social work on the job as the country's five-year civil war unfolded. Anas's supervisor, Samar Hijazi, said she will remember him as a friend who loved to work with children. "He would act out skits for the children to break the walls between them," she said. Anas's parents left city before the government sealed its siege of the rebel-held eastern districts last summer. He chose to stay on, and had his salary sent to their place of stay in the countryside. The siege has been immensely trying for the men and woman who shouldered the burden of looking after Aleppo's traumatized children. "All of us in this field (of childcare) are exhausted, and we have to find strength to provide psychological support and continue with our work," said Hijazi. Space for Hope has suspended its operations in Aleppo for the time being. A renewed government assault on the city's eastern neighborhood has brought shelling and bombardment at an unprecedented rate, displacing tens of thousands of civilians in the span of four days and killing dozens of civilians daily. Anas is survived by his wife, who remains trapped in Aleppo. They married two months ago. https://www.yahoo.com/news/syrias-al...80.html?ref=gs

[waltky]

Aleppo's residents await safe passage...

Aleppo evacuations: From one war zone to another
Thu December 15, 2016 - Evacuations began for thousands of civilians and rebels from Syria's eastern Aleppo on Thursday, but for many, fleeing their homes means leaving one war zone for another.

Most of the civilians will be taken to rebel-controlled area in the neighboring province of Idlib, one of the few remaining footholds rebel groups still have in the country -- and most likely the regime's next target for recapture. Rebel fighters were also being allowed to move there. Approximately 3,000 people and more than 40 wounded were brought out of eastern Aleppo during the first two evacuations on Thursday, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria, Marianne Gasser, said in a statement.

Evacuations are expected to continue throughout the night and into Friday, according to Syrian state TV. But while the world's attention has been focused on Aleppo, Idlib has been pounded with regime airstrikes and dozens of deaths have been reported in recent weeks.

Wounded Syrians and their families gather at the rebel-held al-Amiriyah neighbourhood as they wait to be evacuated to the government-controlled area of Ramoussa on the southern outskirts of the city on December 15, 2016.Russia, Syrian military sources and rebel officials confirmed that a new agreement had been reached after a first evacuation plan collapsed the day before amid fresh fighting. Syrian state television reported that some 4,000 rebels and their families were to be evacuated.

Latest developments

* Syrian President Bashar al-Assad congratulates Syrians on "liberation" of Aleppo
* But CNN sources on the ground say rebels are still in control of some of the city
* Evacuations have begun, with many civilians bound for Idlib province
* Thousands of others remain in rebel-held Aleppo
* Convoy carrying injured civilians came under fire, leaving one dead and four injured

Grim choice for families

See also:

Bana Alabed, Aleppo girl, pleads to Michelle Obama for help
December 16, 2016 | A 7-year-old Syrian girl who’s been tweeting from war-torn Aleppo with the help of her mother has reached out to first lady Michelle Obama requesting help. Bana Alabed and her mother, Fatemah, have been writing heartbreaking dispatches about their daily lives amid the protracted Syrian Civil War. Their Twitter feed has gained more than 300,000 followers since it was launched in September.

On Friday morning, NBC News correspondent Richard Engel, who previously interviewed Fatemah via webcam, shared a video on social media that the mother and daughter recorded that they hope Michelle Obama will ultimately see. In the 44-second video, Fatemah tries to appeal to Obama on an emotional level, mother to mother. “Hello, this is Fatemah. This message is for the first lady, Mrs. Michelle Obama. I would like to tell you that we are still here in East Aleppo,” she says. “I talk to you as a mother. I know that you have two beautiful daughters and I have three children — one of them is Bana. I implore you to help us and make us in a safer place because we are so afraid, please.” Then Bana adds, “Hello Mrs. Obama. Please help us.”

There was widespread concern for Bana’s safety earlier this month when her Twitter account mysteriously disappeared. When it came back online, the Alabeds tweeted that they were once again in the midst of bombardments. Their social media activity juxtaposes typical childhood moments — like losing teeth or reading “Harry Potter” books — with the horrors of being a civilian caught in the crosshairs of war. Her dispatches have drawn frequent comparisons to Anne Frank’s diary during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. But it’s worth noting that there are key differences, perhaps the most salient being that Bana’s words are being read in real-time whereas Anne’s were read after her death and the Allied victory over the Axis powers.

Bana Alabed is asking for help from U.S. first lady Michelle Obama.

Though Bana has endeared herself to thousands of people throughout the world, she is just one of the many children in harm’s way amid the devastation of the Syrian civil war. On Wednesday, children at an orphanage in eastern Aleppo shot a video pleading for help fleeing the city. An evacuation of eastern Aleppo ground to a halt on Friday as another cease-fire between rebels and government loyalists fell apart, with accusations of duplicity coming from all sides. Fatemah and Bana Alabed both tweeted additional pleas for help escaping the danger on Friday morning.

Share this message to whole world. #Aleppo ceasefire broke, civilians are in danger. I beg world u do something now to get us out. – Fatemah

— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) December 16, 2016

Please save us now. – Bana #Aleppo

— Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) December 16, 2016

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bana-alab...33.html?ref=gs