The United Nations has warned of “shocking” violence and abuses in and around the city of Aleppo, as Russian and Syrian attacks against innocent civilian raised questions about the internationally endorsed Munich accord on “cessation of hostilities”
On Monday, the United States condemned airstrikes conducted in and around Aleppo against innocent civilian targets, including a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières and the Women’s and Children’s hospital in Azaz city.
“That the Assad regime and its supporters would continue these attacks, without cause and without sufficient regard for international obligations to safeguard innocent lives, flies in the face of the unanimous calls by the ISSG, including in Munich, to avoid attacks on civilians and casts doubt on Russia’s willingness and/or ability to help bring to a stop the continued brutality of the Assad regime against its own people,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said.
The Obama Administration called on all parties to cease attacks on civilians and take immediate steps to grant humanitarian access and the cessation of hostilities that the Syrian people desperately need.
Soon after the international community agreed on Munich truce plan, Syrian opposition groups and nervous neighbors voiced deep concern over Russia exploiting loopholes in the accord to continue its bombing campaign in densely populated areas. The agreement that has been planned to go into effect this week calls for a halt to fighting but allows action against terror groups like ISIS.
Late last week, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, strongly condemned rapidly worsening human rights situation in and around the city of Aleppo and other parts of Syria, where he said “shocking violations and abuses are committed on a daily basis.”
“The warring parties in Syria are constantly sinking to new depths, without apparently caring in the slightest about the death and destruction they are wreaking across the country. Women and children, the elderly, the wounded and sick, the people with disabilities are being used as bargaining chips and cannon fodder day after day, week after week, month after month. It is a grotesque situation,” he warned.
Hussein added, “the deliberate starvation of civilians as a method of warfare constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law.”
“The targeting of civilians, including thousands of children, is abhorrent and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Those responsible for such acts, including under command responsibility, must be brought to justice.”
According to an analysis in The Daily Beast last week during a single 24-hour period Russian and Syrians warplanes pulverized the provincial capital of Aleppo with 900 strikes, while there is no ISIS in the city.
Syrians have been subjected to worst atrocities and human rights violations by militant groups and the Damascus regime in the last five years since Bashar al Assad unleashed indiscriminate state terror to quell the 2011 Arab Spring revolution for democracy – more than 260,000 killed, half of the population displaced, and a quarter forced out of the country as hapless refugees.
The battlefield could be seen broadly in three ways that includes Assad regime, Russia, Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy, the ISIS, Jabhat ul Nusra militant outfits, and rebels and a group of moderate political forces partly backed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the Western nations.
The agreement in Munich, endorsed by the United States and Russia, had evoked a mixed response. While observers and the suffering humanity of the devastated country say the “temporary cessation of hostilities” would finally halt the cycle of bloodshed and allow restoration of humanitarian and emergency work, it remains to be seen, how the UN institutions and the world powers monitor the unfolding fight.
The latest Russian and Syrian attacks confirms worst fears of Syrian political groups in and out of the country are deeply worried that the international community’s allowing Russian warplanes to rain bombs would be even more disastrous, as it would inevitably result in the killing of civilians.
A Middle Eastern region divided along deadly sectarian and political lines amidst a shifting balance of power, and a world unsure of its own plans, faces another stiff test. Will the world be able to save Syrians from further bloodshed ? The scenario looks bleak in the face of three-way possibilities – Russia, Iran and the ruthless Assad regime would probably continue their campaign of indiscriminate killings with impunity, the militant outfits would continue to inflict their own terror on people, and an unnerved coalition of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar reacts to the situation militarily.
The Syrian regime’s taking back Aleppo from rebels will involve ground fighting – a street-to-street combat, a house-to-house search – and further exacerbate the agony of the population, although some analysts say, the defeat of rebels in Aleppo will boost chances of success in the fight against ISISi in its headquarters Al-Raqqah. Meanwhile, Assad has declared that his regime aims at wresting control of the entire Syrian territory.
Inflicting a blow to the terror groups, undoubtedly, should be a common goal and help all players find convergence of interests. But at the moment, Assad and his backers are killing Syrian civilians, and as reported by the UN with scant regard for human rights and even at the cost of life-saving food and medical supplies reaching desperate women and children besieged in Aleppo.
A cessation of hostilities across Syria, must immediately go hand in hand with an internationally crafted political roadmap that pulls the ancient Arab country out of its bottomless pit of violence and murder with the introduction of constitutional democracy – a democratic governance that helps defeat ISIS militancy and its lethal narrative. At the same time Syria will need to have a strict UN-mandated and closely observed demonstration of militaristic non-interference by regional countries. The proposition may look improbable given the entrenched interests of regional powers but it appears to be the most viable way forward for the suffering Syrians and with it the volatile region.
The question is how to make that mission happens diplomatically, and more importantly how to move forward democratically and inclusively, taking into account imperatives of interfaith affinity, and political aspirations of all ethnic and sectarian groups. Rescuing Syria must mean ending the excruciating suffering of all Syrians – Russia and Syria feel no pressure to heed that call.
