While the Trump Turns- the war in Aleppo continues

Although the political universe is focused on Trumpnian theatrics in the media hungry mogel's attempt to gain respect, the people of Syria continue to suffer, with little attention given to their horrific plight. Those continuing to bury heads in the wake of this humanitarian disaster are doomed to face the consequences of inaction.

By Steve Coll in The New Yorker

Syria - ASSAD’S WAR ON ALEPPO
An image of an injured child goes viral, but the fighting continues unabated.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has confounded many observers by holding on to power while his nation is deteriorating and citizens are Mediterranean Sea refugees.

He will be held accountable for war crimes but meanwhile his genocide continues.
On August 18th, Omran Daqneesh, who is five years old, survived an air strike on the apartment building where his family lived, in Aleppo, Syria. Rescue workers pulled him out of the rubble and took him to an ambulance. Mahmoud Raslan, of the Aleppo Media Center, who works in areas controlled by the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, photographed the child on video. 

His face was coated with blood and dirt; he sat staring silently. 

Within days, millions of viewers had seen Omran’s image on social media; the Times put it on the front page. The picture recalled Nick Ut’s iconic Vietnam War photograph of a nine-year-old girl, Kim Phuc, taken as she fled naked and screaming from a napalm attack, or the images widely shared last year of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned off the Turkish coast, and whose body washed up on a beach. For adults to pause and reflect upon the costs of war, they sometimes require confrontation with a child’s suffering.

Omran Daqneesh lived, but his ten-year-old brother, Ali, died from the injuries he sustained. The tragedy stimulated a brief news cycle about the plight of Syrian civilians living in besieged areas. Aleppo, the nation’s largest city, has been in the grip of a fratricidal war since 2012. Assad’s regime controls districts in the west, while rebels are embedded in the east. The rebels include both jihadists formerly allied with Al Qaeda and commanders aligned with the Free Syrian Army, which has been supported sporadically by the Obama Administration. The rebels fire inaccurately into government areas with improvised mortars that they call “hell cannons.” The rounds include gas cylinders packed with explosives and metal shrapnel, designed to terrorize and maim. Assad’s forces, backed by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah militias, have a monopoly in the skies; their aircraft repeatedly bomb hospitals, markets, and residences. (The Islamic State holds territory nearby but is not organized in the city.)

It is hard to imagine a battle like the one in Aleppo getting worse, but it is. According to the United Nations, as many as two hundred and seventy-five thousand people may be trapped in rebel districts, because government forces have cut off the roads. Those people and hundreds of thousands of other residents have no electricity or running water. Despite ongoing international negotiations and periodic agreements to enact ceasefires and allow the provision of humanitarian aid, Assad’s government has slow-rolled or blocked aid deliveries, which often must be made by truck, on contested roads. In May, the Syria International Support Group, which includes Russia, China, the Arab League, European nations, and the U.S., endorsed another ceasefire and pledged to “ensure full and sustained humanitarian access in Syria.” This summer, that promise crumbled, like many before it.

The rebels and the civilians in Aleppo have endured, even though they are largely helpless against aerial assault. In addition to continued armed resistance, they have put together an extraordinary array of rescue workers, ambulance drivers, nurses, doctors, underground hospitals, electronic I.C.U.s, media producers, and low-power radio stations that warn listeners about air raids. The U.S., Europe, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations, along with nongovernmental aid groups and the Syrian diaspora, have financed this infrastructure.

On August 14th, Al Jazeera released a film made by the Danish journalist Nagieb Khaja about the Syrian Civil Defense, a network of nearly three thousand first responders in rebel zones, who are known as “white helmets.” S.C.D. has pledged neutrality toward armed factions, but Assad’s forces and their allies have targeted it in “double tap” attacks, in which Syrian and Russian aircraft strike a rebel target, wait for rescue workers to turn up, and then bomb them as well. Khaja shot his film late last year in Aleppo, where he accompanied a squad of white helmets to the site of an attack. “People! Stop gathering in groups!” one of the rescuers shouts. “Spread out or they will shell!” Assad, through the conduct of his forces, has left little doubt that he is deliberately seeking to destroy medical and civil organizations in rebel areas in order to demoralize and depopulate those districts. (He may be succeeding. On Friday, people began to evacuate Darayya, near Damascus; the population has apparently capitulated, after four years of encirclement and assault.) 

According to Physicians for Human Rights, government forces and their Russian allies have carried out ninety per cent of the more than three hundred and fifty attacks on medical facilities during the past five years. A week ago, Syrian or Russian planes bombed an S.C.D. station in Aleppo.

Since 2013, it has been plain that President Obama believes it would be a mistake for the United States to intervene militarily, except to weaken evil ISIS; last week, in the latest iteration of the war’s shifting and opaque battlefield alliances, Turkish forces, with American support, invaded evil ISIS territory in northern Syria. 

After the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Libya, it’s easy to understand the President’s decision to focus on the immediate threat that evil ISIS poses. Yet the U.S. has engaged in areas where evil ISIS does not figure directly, such as Aleppo, where its policy emphasizes the provision of “nonlethal aid” to civilians and opposition forces. 

That aid helped to keep the rebels in the field, but it has not been enough to defeat Assad, or to deter his forces from employing unconscionable tactics, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that this caution has enabled the apparent war crimes of Assad and his allies. There is surely more that the Obama Administration can do to stop the regime’s attacks on hospitals and doctors, for example, by making the crisis a priority with allies and at the U.N. Security Council, as Physicians for Human Rights and others have urged.

Photographs shared on social media are not a sound basis for making foreign policy, of course. In this conflict, online hoaxes and fake images proliferate, and, even when a picture can be verified, as in the case of Omran Daqneesh, it can be difficult from a distance to peer behind a portrait of individual pain into the environment from which it arose. The image of Omran might be understood as simply a representation of Syrian suffering. It might also be seen as a depiction of the resilient depth of local opposition to Assad’s regime. We saw Omran’s face because rescue workers saved him, a videographer recorded his shock, and an Internet connection carried his image abroad. If Aleppo’s rebels and its civilian volunteers and inhabitants collapse under Assad’s brutal siege, history will remember more than a photograph. ♦  (Yes....and those who continue to ignore this humanitarian disaster are doomed to live with the consequences of their- ie "our" inaction.)

Steve Coll, a staff writer, is the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and reports on issues of intelligence and national security in the United States and abroad.

This article appears in other versions of the September 5, 2016, issue, with the headline “Images of War.”

Syrians were abandoned by President Assad - now Putin is withdrawing troops

American news media isn't giving focus to this important story:

It's difficult to understand how the catastrophic Syrian refugee crises can continue without holding President Assad responsible for genocide.  Perhaps Putin too?

Now, even Russia is pulling out on Assad.  

Russian President Putin couldn't have just decided to withdraw Russian troops from Syria on Tuesday (!), because he just figured out they're causing more trouble than they are solving? Hmmmmm....curiouser and curiouser.

Although I have no interenational experience regarding the human Syrian refugee carnage, my suspecian is that Putin is pulling out Russian troops because there is no benefit to him or his leadership. In my opinion, Putin has no interest in protecting the desperate masses impacted by the horrible refugee crises, but he's focused on himself. 

In other words, he doesn't want to find himself as a defendent in a war crimes trial.

REPORT: PUTIN ORDERS TROOPS OUT OF SYRIA

Daily Beast reports:

According to Russian state media, President Vladimir Putin ordered a withdrawal of the “main part” of the country’s military forces in Syria, claiming they had accomplished their mission. 

According to BBC News, Putin informed officials at the Kremlin that the removal would begin Tuesday (wow! short notice?).

Russia initially entered the Syrian civil war as assistance to its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, against rebel forces and fighters for the self-declared Islamic State.

Soooooo, in my uninformed opinion, (just askin')....does this sudden (Tuesday?) decision have anything to do with Russia's financial situation?  Like, maybe, the military isn't getting paid, for example?  Naaaaaaaa....whadda' I know?  Nyet! 

Republican Mayor in Lewiston Maine writes about refugees who became citizens

Maine's Governor LePage says he'll join other Republican US governors who will oppose accepting Syrian refugees. Yet, the Republican Mayor of Lewiston suggests the governor's statement may be premature. It's not the governor, nor the mayor nor the city council who decides.  Moreover, Lewiston's Mayor MacDonald writes a contradictory opinion column about how recent immigrants have successfully assimilated into the city, but then does an about face regarding those who are likely yet to arrive. 

Governor Pau LePage of Maine - Republican

Mayor MacDonald of Lewiston is running for a third term



Lewiston Maine is a small city, but the reputation of the residents has been to welcome foriegners. Indeed, Franco-Americans from Quebec and French Canada helped to build the city, because they migrated by the thousands, arriving on foot and railroad, during the 19th and 20th centuries. The economic "refugees" from Canada found work in once prosperous manufacturing mills, located along the Androscoggin River.  Those who stayed after the mills closed built important city institutions like hospitals, churches and small businesses.

In recent elections, the Lewiston's voters changed their preference for Democrats and elected conservative Mayor Robert E. MacDonald to lead city government. After serving two terms, Lewiston's Mayor is now challenged in a December 8th run off election, against a well funded challenger named Ben Chin. 


Frankly, I was somewhat surprised to read the Mayor's commentary in Twin City Times newspaper,about the city's Somali immigrant residents. Many of the Somalians are Muslims, who fled the carnage in their African homes and were resettled in Lewiston.

CNN Amy Bass reports - Lewiston, Maine, is a former mill town that sits on the banks of the Androscoggin River and is largely Quebecois in heritage. Two weeks ago, the high school brought home the city's first state boys soccer championship. And they did it with a team that includes players from Congo, Kenya, Turkey, Germany and Somalia.


Now, the challenged Mayor MacDonald writes in Twin City Times about the accomplishments of Lewiston's immigrants. Moreover, he also reminded readers about how immigration is controlled by the US President. This is a contradictory commentary from a conservative city mayor who has a reputation for often being strident in support of conservative political policies. Although the mayor applauds the accomplishments of the city's immigrants, he turns on those who will follow by challenging their benevolent sponsors and advocates.


Mayor MacDonald writes in the November 26th, Twin City Times in his column "Enough is Enough":


During my tenure as Mayor, I have had the opportunity to attend several citizenship ceremonies. These new citizens come from many lands. They speak many languages. They are of many faiths.
But what binds them all tightly together is their new status: they are now proud and patriotic Americans.


I do not use words lightly. Observing these new citizens on taking their loyalty oath dissolves any doubt in your mind. Their facial expression says it all. But many times, this image personally haunts me when I am at an event where native born Americans disrespect our country by failing to remove their hats or talking or paying no attention when our National Anthem is played.


Prior to our city council meeting last week, I was informed that several of Lewiston's citizens had been shouted at and referred to as "terrorists".  This resulted in my warning that this behavior was to immediately cease and that it would not be tolerated.


A great many of our refugees are now American citizens with the same rights enjoyed by all Americans. We have had four years of peace in our city and there is no reason for this type of foolishness.


Our one time refugees have now assimilated into our community. They are productive citizens, owning homes and businesses.  They are gainfully employed and contribute to our local, state and federal government through taxes.  Their children have brought our high school graduation rate up to 70 percent.


The Lewiston High School soccer players are not only state champs, but they hold a high rating in New England and the country.


Upon arriving home one night last week, I turned on the O'Reilly Factor and watched Bill O'Reilly's interview of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the subject of immigration. Christie was asked if New Jersey currently had any Syrians living there and, if so, how many? O'Reilly was taken back by the answer. Christie stated he had some; but did not know how many.


The sad truth is that the federal government contracts with various agencies (in Maine it is Catholic Charities) which then resettles refugees without notifying state or local officials.  In the case of the Syrians, if a Syrian refugee enters into Lewiston's General Assistance Office, an employee in that office will immediately call me so I can call Governor Paul R. LePage and inform him of our newest arrivals.


A few months ago, shortly after the outbreak of war in Yemen, we had refugees from Yemen showing up at our General Assistance Office with no advance warning. The sad truth is, neither the governors, nor the mayors nor the city councilors of our great country can stop this influx. It can only be stopped by the President.


Lastly, I have two questions. The first is for Catholic Charities. How can you morally justify relocating refugees into a struggling city such as Lewiston knowing that these resettlements will lead to either higher local taxes or a decrease in municipal services including layoffs? 


To the United Churches of Maine: Why don't you turn your sanctimonious rhetoric into cash so that you not the taxpaying public, can support them?


Last Friday, I attended a ribbon cutting at Liberty Taxes located at 272 Main Street, Lewiston. It has expanded its service to health insurance in order to help our working poor secure affordable health insurance policies.


While there, I had the pleasure of meeting the mother of a young lady involved in the car-moose accident on the Turnpike. She expressed her overwhelming thanks to Central Maine Medical Center for putting her up at the Arbor House so she could be close to her daughter.  She also expressed thanks for the kindness shown and the help given to her by Liberty staff and he people of Lewiston.  Happy Thanksgiving.


Maine Writer responds - Dear Mayor MacDonald, your premise for writing this opinion is self defeating.  Immigrants have built Lewiston and you acknowledge how the most recent relocations have also assimilated. Therefore, with all due respect, your challenging questions to Catholic Charities and the Maine Council of Churches makes no sense. Immigrants have been law abiding citizens while, as you point out, it's often the native born Americans who seem to be the people who need to be criticized. 


Nevertheless, Mayor MacDonald makes a good point. Neither Governor LePage, nor the Mayor of Lewiston nor anybody else will prevent Syrian refugees from being relocated in Maine, should they arrive here. "Bienvenue", as Franco-Americans say, to all refugees, whoever they are and wherever they eventually live. We cannot victimize these desperate people twice. They are anxious to participate in a new world, after fleeing far from their homes, and, according to Mayor MacDonald, they are largely succeeding.