Aren’t they just prolonging the suffering of the inhabitants by fighting on? There is surely no way that they can hold on or achieve any kind of local victory now. The Syrian government has already offered safe conduct to the fighters to rebel-held areas in the east of the country. Don’t they owe it to the beleaguered citizens of the rebel-occupied districts of the city to end this terrible siege by an honourable withrawal?
I have a terrible feeling that the rebels would rather see Aleppo reduced to rubble and its people dead in the hope that this would draw support fom the US and Europe for their cause. That seems to be the way that things are done in that region, as in Palestinian terrorists firing their rockets into Israel from places like hospitals and schools, and ISIS using civilians as human shields.
I do hope the rebels see sense before the worst happens.
I partially agree with you. In spite of how awful Assad is I can’t imagine just letting him stay in power would have been worse for anyone in Syria than the current situation for. The problem is of course that once Assad reasserts control, he will likely purge his opponents, and anyone who could conceivably have assisted them. So the stop of the war doesn’t mean the stop of the killing.
As far as Assad offering safe conduct, they have no reason to believe he would keep his word. So they probably think they are safer where they are than they would be out in the open.
Basically the whole thing is a giant clusterfuck no good solutions and nothing but misery ahead. Fortunately all we need to do is wait for another couple of months until Trump can fire all the generals implement his secret plan and solve everything. :rolleyes:
If the rebels withdrew from the eastern part of Aleppo, that just moves the fight to another area that is likely populated, albeit not as densely. The rebels aren’t the ones who have been conducting aerial barrel-bombing and parachute bombing indiscriminately in civilian areas. The rebels aren’t the ones who have been deliberately targeting schools and hospitals filled with civilians. The rebels certainly are nowhere near perfect, but Assad (and the Russians) could conduct their war in a much more humane fashion if they chose to do so. They have chosen otherwise.
Withdrawing from Aleppo just means other towns and villages are next for indiscriminate bombing.
They should’ve surrendered years ago if they cared about “civilian” casualties. It reminds me of an analysis I read about the Bifaria rebellion, that all foreign “humanitarian” aid accomplished was to keep rebels fighting longer and prolonging misery.
Which is why the rebels should surrender completely. Regardless of the ethic of the situation, the pragmatic reality is that after 5 years the rebels have proven both that they cannot oust Assad with their own resources, and that no external actor is going to provide decisive aid that would allow them to achieve that.
The rebels cannot win, and should at this stage be negotiating a surrender of some kind. To be clear, I in no way condone or support the continuance of the Assad regime, but simply consider that at this stage, it’s the least worst of a number of atrocious options.
There are negotiations going on right now (or recently), but the Assad regime characterized the early peaceful protests in 2011 as being foreign and terrorist-backed and has continued to bang that drum. If the rebels surrendered, they would either be slaughtered or imprisoned (and then slaughtered). Assad does not want and could not tolerate keeping around those who rebelled against his rule and were allowed to live, for fear that it or they could encourage the next popular uprising. The rebels have largely managed a military stalemate everywhere else outside of Aleppo, and they are likely content with that for the moment since it provides for their continued survival and means that Assad would have to use up more of his mercenary ground forces than he could likely afford in taking it back.
The plurality of the rebel forces in Aleppo are Nusra, Zenki, Jund al Aqsa and other Al Qaeda affiliated jihadists. They happily drive explosive laden suicide trucks into their enemy’s lines every day, so the welfare of civilians around them are probably not a priority. Even from a purely pragmatic guerillas-are-fish-peasants-are-water standpoint, most of these groups get their material support from Turkey, the Gulf monarchies, or the CIA, they don’t need anything from the civilian population and can keep fighting if every last civilian in Aleppo dropped dead tomorrow, it just won’t make for good television. I would say the vast majority actually are but I don’t want to get into pointless circle-citing, even most pro-moderate rebel people will probably agree with a plurality. Even if the moderate rebels decide to surrender the jihadists will immediately liquidate them, if for no other reason to seize their American weapons. Of course I don’t believe that there are actually any moderate rebels anyway for this very reason but you know.
Assuming that’s accurate, which I believe it is, why in the name of God are any Western agencies arming any of those people ? This is, I suspect, Islam’s 30 Years War :- all we can do is keep the more lethal weapons out of the situation.
U.S. law (primarily the Leahy amendment) forbids the U.S. from supplying arms or military training to any forces believed to be committing human rights violations. Any group receiving U.S. arms is also required to be vetted for extremist or terrorist acts. For the Nusra Front or any other overtly Islamic extremist group, the U.S. is not the country supplying arms or training. In Syria, the U.S. is mainly aiding the Kurds and a small but growing Arab force that is being trained with the aid and support of the Kurds.
The competing fiefdoms of the DoD and the CIA fund respectively the Kurds and other groups in seperate programs, their respective proxy armies often fight each other openly - the DoD backed Kurds have been continually at war with at least various Turkish backed North Aleppo rebels and intermittently with CIA backed rebels too. Zenki was vetted and armed by the CIA until they released one too many beheading videos and were not vetted anymore.
Vetting, particularly in that area with limited boots on the ground and dealing with individuals and non-government groups with little to no documentation or background, is a massively flawed process and it only measures things as they stand during the time period that the vetting takes place.
It’s actually a good thing that U.S. arming approvals change given new information and new developments. That shows that it’s not a blank check with no expiration date.
The Leahy Amendment is relatively recent - 1997. It set up a sub-system within existing weapons sales and procurement processes to check the human rights record of the intended government and military force it is being sold to/procured for. Recent U.S. Appropriations laws added to it for Syria and Iraq that added checking for terrorism-related accusations to be checked for also. It is very imperfect, especially when dealing with people that are not and have never been associated with a government or formal military force.
Given that Congress has used any and every excuse to investigate the Obama administration, if weapons were sold or provided to groups without going through this process in the last 8 years, they would almost certainly be plastering it all over the news and would have made it a major campaign issue.
Any weapons provided to foreign governments by the U.S. now-a-days or approved for sale from a U.S. defense contractor (which is subject to U.S. Government approval if it is an item on the U.S. Munitions List, 22 USC 2778, 2794(7)), are also subject to export controls requiring further U.S. Government approval before the weapons or sensitive equipment could be re-sold or transferred to a third party. If it happened anyway without U.S. approval, the Saudis or any other country would face being cut off from any future U.S. arms deals since the U.S. wouldn’t be able to know or trust where those weaponss might end up and whether they might be used against U.S. forces.
It’s funny how this gets twisted. It’s the rebels fault, somehow, that Aleppo is being bombed to rubble and schools and hospitals are being destroyed. I recall when the US was in Iraq and every instance of the US or it’s allies hitting civilians by accident was dissected and criticized with the US being evil monsters and wholly at fault for every collateral death. Here we have a regime with a major power aiding them, and they are DELIBERATELY targeting schools and hospitals as well as civilians, yet it’s the rebels that are at fault with nary a complaint about how the Syrian’s and Russian’s are conducting the war. Assad et al don’t even pretend to TRY and say that this is collateral damage or mistakes. And the calls are for the rebel groups to lay down their arms and surrender.
Leaving aside the double standard, I don’t see what the benefit would be for the rebels to lay down their arms. After all, this whole thing started when Assad et al overreacted to peaceful protests, and I’m not seeing how they have softened their position on these things since then. If anything, Assad has ramped up the brutality. So, what would the benefit be of the rebels surrendering? I mean, would Assad treat those prisoners well? And leaving aside the obvious ‘they will be posing for gunfire or put in brutal internment camps’, the wider issue is…will Assad et al change anything if the rebels surrendered tomorrow? Would life in Syria be better in the medium and long term if Assad’s grip on power is re-consolidated with a stronger Russian presence and interaction? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that, at least as far as the rebels are concerned (as opposed to folks spouting off on a message board), the answer to that is ‘no’…probably ‘hell no!’.
So, that’s the answer. Should they? Depends on from who’s perspective we are talking. A regime willing to do what they have done so far in this civil war is probably not the best group to consider surrendering to and allowing to regain their brutal grip over the country. YMMV of course.
What does it matter whose fault it is? What matters is the hard reality of the situation. The bombing and killing isn’t going to stop until the rebels are beaten or surrender. What is the point of continuing? Assad won’t massacre the civilian population when the city is taken although they will continue to die in their thousands if it isn’t. What’s your alternative? And by that I mean an alternative that isn’t fanciful given the facts as they are not as you might wish they were.
Unlike your rebels and insurgents should just surrender scenario, right? The ACTUAL reality is that the rebels and insurgents aren’t going to simply surrender, since they pretty much know what that would mean for them…and I doubt they have your rather fanciful notions of post surrender life in Aleppo. If the rebels and insurgents surrendered tomorrow then thousands would still die, IMHO. And many of the inhabitants would, at best, be in internment camps under the loving care of the Syria army.
I don’t have a good alternative, as, IMHO there is no best course…merely a host of choices that are all bad. The best case, ultimately and IMHO, is that Assad is assassinated or deposed and with him, his government falls and that there is a coalition of the groups fighting that are strong enough to take control…and fend off ISIS and AQ. Not too realistic. But then, neither is the idea that the rebels should or would simply pack it in and surrender in Aleppo at this stage.
Dictators and juntas which successfully win a civil war don’t institute a sunshine and happiness policy as soon as the war is over. The bombing may stop, but the killing will continue. If the rebels surrender and are unable to flee, they will be imprisoned and killed, along with anyone who the regime even remotely suspects of being associated with or having sympathized with the rebels, let alone being thought of as potential threats in the future. It happened in the Spanish Civil War:
Assad and his regime’s violent and brutal action in the early days of the peaceful protests show that he and his goons believe that any dissent must be violently repressed. They will want to make an example not only of the rebels themselves, but those civilians who either collaborated with the rebels or tolerated their rule by facilitating it through the sales of supplies, allowing them to stay in certain buildings, or are otherwise suspected of harboring rebel sympathies.
Really pessimistic replies. In other words this has to continue until all the rebels in Aleppo are killed and until then civilians will continue to die. There is no white knight. Trump is determined to put a halt to illegal action to topple Assad (and it is certainly illegal). It’s very unlikely an assassin could get to Assad and even if they did what would change? His faction is immensely popular in the areas he controls and Russia, Iran and Hezbollah would continue to support his successor. No, there is only one end to this, the defeat of the rebels and that can either involve further civilian suffering or a surrender. And of course Assad isn’t going to set up internment camps. He is an astute leader, as the West is learning to their cost having scornfully written him off years ago. He’s not Gadaffi or Mubarak, he’s like his father, a survivor.
The ACTUAL reality is that the rebels and insurgents aren’t going to simply surrender, since they pretty much know what that would mean for them…and I doubt they have your rather fanciful notions of post surrender life in Aleppo. If the rebels and insurgents surrendered tomorrow then thousands would still die, IMHO. And many of the inhabitants would, at best, be in internment camps under the loving care of the Syria army.