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Marang Lesedi
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No dispatch from Aleppo? 17 January 2017, 14:20
Ever since December 2016 when Aleppo ‘fell’ to ‘pro-Assad fighters’ there has been a near shut-down of news dispatches from the city. In the days leading to the city’s liberation the public was inundated with headlines that painted a bleak picture of the situation on the ground; the last hospital had been bombed, the last pediatrician and surgeon had succumbed to indiscriminate barrel-bombing by regime and Russian war planes.
And then there were the desperate last tweets from Bana the child and countless others fearful of massacre following an imminent take-over by ‘regime forces’, not to mention the wild comparisons to Sarajevo and Stanlingrad.
Now that the ‘murderous regime’ of Assad is in control of the city one would’ve expected a steady flow of reports of executions, and murders, and more hospital bombings, etc. But nothing – no news from the usual sources. The bits of information that are available come from sources that we’ve been warned are deceiving us with ‘fake news’ and propaganda. It is then up to interested readers to conduct research and use their judgement when choosing to accept or reject this information.
Readers must understand that after Islamist rebels came to town there was a stalemate that resulted in the division of the city into the Eastern section controlled by invading fighters and the government held Western section, where the majority of residents – numbering in the millions (compared to at most a few hundred thousand in the East) found themselves. This meant that people caught up on the Eastern side of the city could not meet up with their families and friends on the West unless they either paid extortion fees or were willing to simply make a dash for it and risk rebel-sniper fire.
West Aleppo continued to remain secular while the governors of East Aleppo turned Shariah. What you might not have known was that rebels systematically and indiscriminately fired ‘hell canons’ – crude projectiles made from a gas cylinder and detonator, into West Aleppo supposedly to ‘liberate’ it. The Syrian army would respond with air strikes, and whenever news reports came out that Aleppo had been barrel-bombed by ‘regime helicopters’, the reports would in fact be referring to rebel-held EAST Aleppo. Of course, the parts about the hell canons were conveniently omitted.
The Syrian army would finally surround EAST Aleppo and a deal was struck to give the rebels safe passage out of this sector. However the reports came out in ways that conveyed a message that civilians were being evacuated from the entire city to escape an invading horde of Assadist troops. The fact is that these evacuees were not innocent civilians but rebel fighters and their families who chose to leave the city because they didn’t belong there in the first place. After the last green bus left East Aleppo the previously besieged residents started coming forward with shocking tales of torture, deprivation, and starvation. Stories were told of how aid meant for distribution among vulnerable civilians was instead horded by rebels and sold at hugely inflated prices and, indeed video clips emerged purporting to show hungry residents raiding storage sites after rebels left town. There was no sign of the famed, Nobel Peace Prize nominated White Helmets and residents knew little or nothing of them. The government set up mobile hospitals provided by the Russians, distributed food, medicines, clean water from China, India, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Russia. Just as in previously liberated Palmyra, Russian army engineers were brought to neutralise booby traps, landmines and other exploded munitions.
Thousands of unused hell canons and mortars were found stored in schools and hospitals – evidence that rebels used human shields in their failed errand to overrun the city. Russian military police were deployed to maintain law and order. Interestingly there has been NO AID contribution of whatever form from the world’s foremost defenders of democracy and human rights.
In short, Aleppo City is no longer under siege. The rebel mercenaries have been bussed to Idlib and a sense of normalcy is slowing returning to the city. The ‘trusted’ news media that once painted our TV screens with harrowing images of Aleppo have seemingly moved elsewhere for stories more newsworthy.
– MyNews24
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