Aleppo: Into the heart of darkness

Shelley Walia

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star. 

— T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

SYRIA has been in the grip of a violent internal strife since 2011. It began as a prank when a group of kids wrote an anti-government graffiti on their school wall, a provocation leading to their incarceration and torture. The people, freshly imbued with the spirit of rebellion on the heels of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, demonstrated for extensive reforms and liberalisation. This quickly spiralled with the defection of few soldiers who collectively formed the Free Syrian Army. The rebel army subsequently became a formidable force, with a disparate collection of rebel militia throwing in their support. Thus began one of the fiercest civil wars in human history.  

Left to its own resources, life would have returned to normalcy after a short period of fierce turbulence. However, to the tragic misfortune of a wretched population, Syria turned into a conflagration with international actors aligning with opposite factions.  And into the arena arrived the ruthless soldiers of the Islamic State, exacerbating the war for its hard-nosed ambition of establishing a Caliphate in Syria. What began as a small rebellion for reform escalated into a regional conflict, with the entire Middle East embroiled in fighting the larger war between Shia and Sunni, while the country systematically desecrated with hundreds of thousands of people killed and displaced. 

The ultimate metaphor of this historic global disgrace is the annihilation of the city of Aleppo, often referred to as the jewel of Syria, a bustling city of over two million citizens and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The shining city, with its famous citadel built in 3000 BC, and a treasure of antiquities, lies stripped off its roots, its people beleaguered, a powerless pawn in the hands of the government and the rebel militia. Kurtz's last words at the end of Joseph Conrad's novel, The Heart of Darkness echo the fall of Aleppo: The Horror! The Horror! 

In 2012, its eastern part fell to rebel hands. The Syrian army failed to end the rebel hold which gradually became stronger. In a rapidly deteriorating situation, Assad failed miserably to make substantial headway in recovering Aleppo. And when other parts of Syria began to slip out of his control he sought help from his unswerving international ally Russia to counterbalance the pressure exerted by the US on him to agree to free and fair elections.  

For Russia, this turned into a strategic coup, serving Putin's grand scheme of becoming the saviour of the besieged rulers who were being strong-armed by the US. With Russia's help and sponsorship, Assad began a relentless war of incessant shelling of rebel-occupied Aleppo, including chemical weapons to obliterate the entire landscape of the city. Putin even threatened to visit upon Aleppo the fate of Grozny, the Chechen capital razed to the ground by Russian bombers in 1990. 

The war continued for six years, nearly 400,000 people lost their lives, and more than 11 million were displaced, out of which nearly 5 million are now refugees in other countries. Since September this year, more than 600 civilians have been killed, more than 200,000 remain in rebel hands, and there is no food, fuel, water or medical care as the area is choked by the army. And finally Aleppo has fallen. After the ceasefire deal brokered by Turkey, Iran and Russia, the evacuation of thousands from Eastern Aleppo has begun.  More than 131 have been taken to Turkey for medical attention and many have died in the bitter winter cold. President Assad's victory in the six-year-old war is at the cost of one of the most terrible catastrophes, which the United Nations has called “a complete meltdown of humanity.” However the war is far from over. Large parts of the country still remain under the insurgents. The Syrian army is engaged in a ruthless purging of the rebels and citizens as they flee from their homes. The retribution will be swift and merciless, and Assad will unleash his machinery of extermination on the remainder of the rebel areas till the entire country is brought back under the repressive regime. There are hard lessons to be learned, especially that authoritarian rulers cannot impose their iron will on the majority as the will of the people is irrepressible; any outside intervention has to be astutely deliberated and judiciously implemented.  While it is morally unconscionable for a dictatorial ruler to perpetrate this ruthless suppression on his people, the cost of trying to dethrone such well-entrenched regionally supported heads of State is heaviest on the most vulnerable populace.  A disturbing aspect of this war has been the entrenchment of ISIS in parts of Syria, which continues its reign of terror on citizens exhausted from a prolonged conflict. The only silver lining in this dark scenario would be if US President Elect Donald Trump can use his positive social capital with Putin and negotiate with Assad and the regional powers to bring an immediate end to the war in Syria and focus on ISIS, the one enemy that is equally culpable in terrorising both the East and the West.

Before we relegate this unfortunate war to the annals of history, we need to ask some fundamental questions: Are we not, as a global human community, accountable to nearly half a million members of our race who have been wiped off the face of the earth? Do we not owe five-year-old, blood-smeared  Omran Daqeesh and thousands like him a commitment that we will not let this horror unfold again, and that we recognise and honour his right to grow and flourish in his native land without the spectre of violence haunting him? Unless these questions are pondered and given due consideration, this dark chapter in our human civilisation will recur, and the next Aleppo may very likely be in our own backyard. 

It is said that to the Victor go the spoils, but as in most wars, the spoils here constitute the remains of a country scorched, its people scarred, mercilessly dehumanised, homeless and abandoned. Shame on Assad, on the rebels and all their proxies for unleashing the most ferocious armed conflict on the Syrian citizens since World War II. Shame on all the nations that have participated in this unspeakable cataclysm, and on those who have remained mere bystanders. 

The writer is former Professor at the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University.