[Closed] Aleppo despair

What is a Leppo?

You're right, BTW...

****ed up situation.

Perhaps the darkest night of the year. Our Syrian brothers and sisters need our anger more than ever. Write to your MP, protest, raise your voice however you can. Help however you can. Do not think that there is nothing you can do, there are countless groups and organisations sending help, aid and supplies to Syrians, both in their own country and around the world, find them, offer your time, money, skills, voice or whatever you have to offer.

Make no mistake, this is a massacre. A massacre we can not ignore.

Indeed TMH, thoughts and prayers. Desperate situation. Civil wars generally end particularly badly. Many 10's of thousands of Tamil civilians where killed at the end of the Civil war in Sri Lanka.

May those responsible be bought to,justice quickly.

For starting the civil war ? For ending it ? For both ? For failing to intervene ? For intervening ?

this is a massacre. A massacre we can not ignore.

I think we'll find a way.

After all, what do you think we should or could do to actually stop it? invade Syria?

We could use some bigger bombs than those what they are using.
Another needless tragedy ripping apart another country..

After all, what do you think we should or could do to actually stop it? invade Syria?

Show the people of Syria that we are with them. Help them in any small way we can.

The following video is by Abdullateef Khaled, who is a ****ing hero in Syria, he's building a whole town for people whose homes have been destroyed, he's maintaining a network of orphanages and is risking his own life every day getting aid into Idlib and Aleppo.

My wife and her friends filled a container with food, clothes and medical supplies that he has since been able to distribute around Syria to those who need it most. The second container is going out before Christmas.

So no, **** it, there's nothing we can do. 🙄

What about the majority of Syrians who support Assad, and have had loved ones butchered and raped by Wahhabi / Salafi crusaders trained and funded by the West? Are they not 'Syrian' enough to deserve sympathy?

What about the majority of Syrians who support Assad, and have had loved ones butchered and raped by Wahhabi / Salafi crusaders trained and funded by the West? Are they not 'Syrian' enough to deserve sympathy?

To be fair, I don't get anything from the OP's post about taking sides, just that the whole situation is a human tragedy and expressing his emapthy.

Correct I wasn't. Merely disturbed (1) by reports last night of desperate citizens writing their wills as I sat comfortably watching TV and (2) by the moral questions, I was/am strongly against our military involvement largely due to the fact that we had no strategy and a history of making things a lot worse. But this position is challenged daily by the appaling suffering that is being witnessed in a daily basis.

An appaling, appaling situation.

They could just stop fighting..

That'd be progress.

But they choose to kill each other instead.

Leave em' to it.

Even the little kids?
N0b

Channel 4 news last night made for grim viewing. You felt genuinely sorry for the poor bastards stuck in the middle of all that carnage. What a monumental ****-p the whole situation is

[quote=teamhurtmore ]Correct I wasn't. Merely disturbed (1) by reports last night of desperate citizens writing their wills as I sat comfortably watching TV and (2) by the moral questions, I was/am strongly against our military involvement largely due to the fact that we had no strategy and a history of making things a lot worse. But this position is challenged daily by the appaling suffering that is being witnessed in a daily basis.
An appaling, appaling situation.

+1

HArd to see how we can help or make it stop though 😥

You could rationally argue that the sooner one side weakens, the sooner the other wins - then the current level of killing will drop drastically.

While both sides are being propped up as proxies the killing will carry on.

Originally I would have voted for some intervention, now I think that would just prolong the misery. We wont go to war with Russia, so perhaps the least worst outcome is to stop any support.

We don't have a good track record of interfering in other peoples conflicts.

Praying for them may make you feel better, but its as pointless as asking the Jedi to use their force to kill the baddies.

I'm not a N0b, you are able to write that word nob without the swear filter kicking in.

Everyone in that city knows someone who is connected to the war on either side, it's a well known and proven fact of war that.

Kids sadly are affected "obvz" but thier parents are connected to the war, yet they decide not to do something about it.

These are proven facts of War, read up on it.

N0b

Assad has inherited "form" from his father Hafez:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre

They won't stop until Aleppo has been virtually destroyed. I've been there many times; it's not a beautiful city but it was a thriving, important place and I ate the best meals of my life there thanks to the fresh local produce.

The trouble is that both sides are now at the point where they believe that if they waver or relent in any way then the other side will wipe them out and their entire ethnic or religious group will be either driven into exile or exterminated.

And the sad fact of the matter is that this fear is far from baseless on both sides.

Good old religion .....smiting the weak from the earth.

Its probably capitalising on the transition between Obama and Trump as well... maybe a push to finish ousting the rebels before January 21st, but yes, a desperate situation..

Stories this morning are not good. As I said hopefully this won't reach the levels of civilian casualties we saw in Sri Lanka.

@phil the civil war had little to do with religion, it was much more about the "Arab Spring" and trying to overthrow Assad.

I was in favour of airstrikes in 2013 to try and bring the war to an end, imo not doing anything has cost 100,000-150,000 lives. As Trimix says the best end to a war is a quick one. Public opinion post Iraq has very much been to not get involved, this I can understand but the cost can be very high.

Everyone is always so fixated on what our government and/or military chooses to do. Neither our government or our military are capable of acting in the interests of the Syrian people. Air Strikes kill civilians and make the fundamentalists' argument more appealing. Troops on the ground will drag the conflict out and suppress the inevitable civil war, which will break out again when we leave (see Afghanistan/Iraq). Offering logistical support to the FSA creates a proxy war (which is kind of where we're at) which will drag on for years to come. So there's nothing constructive that our government/military can do.
Then we have to ask ourselves what [i]we[/i] can do, either individually or collectively. Now, we can't put an end to the bloodshed, we can't stop the massacre. But we can do our best to support those who have dedicated their lives to protecting and supporting the survivors. We can show the people of Syria that they are not alone, that we are trying and they are in our thoughts.
We cannot control the war, but, like the aftermath of a natural disaster, there will be much to do. It will be done quicker and more lives will be saved if it is done with our help and support.

Don't wait around expecting your government to help, they can't.

THM, maybe now you and othera will finally understand the position of Christopher Hitchens in regards to Iraq. Worse things than this latest round of attrocities occured on Saddams watch. Doesn't matter though when it's Kurds does it? Because they aren't proper Muslims and so not worthy of the lefts outrage.

Sometimes the left ****ing sickens me.

Fin25 that's a cop out, once a society accepts losing face by asking for foreign intervention then western governments can help - we have done previously - I work with some Zanzibarians who want UN intervention in their country.

THM, maybe now you and othera will finally understand the position of Christopher Hitchens in tegards to Iraq. Worse things than this latest round of attrocities occured on Saddams watch. Doesn't matter though when it's Kurds does it? Because they aren't proper Muslims and so not worthy of the lefts outrage.

Wat?

Thank you Tom, please can you clarify what my position is for me and what I need to understand that I do not understand already. That would be helpful, cheers.

Fin, well said (edit) both times.

A mess we should feel guilty about

Interesting related viewing, if you've got a spare three hours. Adam Curtis - Hypernormalisation. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b183c

Just when you think the bottom of the swamp has been reached, it gets worse.

Shooting children.

Merry Christmas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38301629

How am I copping out by suggesting we all do more? I was actually suggesting that sitting around hoping the government fixes it for us is very much a cop out.

Methinks someone has a narrative they want to fit us all into.

You're comparing Zanzibar to Syria, right?
Because they're the same thing? I see where you are coming from, but the situation in Zanzibar is one where external intervention by a UN backed body may be helpful to avert further tensions spilling over into violence. I think Syria is a bit past that point, don't you?

With Zanzibar though, the fact that it has yet to really kick off could be an argument against intervening as you may push the situation into quite literally blowing up in your face.

But I don't get the worry about collateral damadge and hearts and minds, when every available barrel bomb and kayatusha is already being lobbed in every direction and the countries cities look like Stalingrad.

The only way we could make Syria worse now, is if we turned it into a nuclear playground with Russia.

So you're saying the best thing to do in international relations is to wait until all out hell breaks out, then jump in and blow the piss out of everything?

Thank you Tom, please can you clarify what my position is for me and what I need to understand that I do not understand already. That would be helpful, cheers.

second attempt, although it was never my intention for this thread to be [s]a w*nkfest[/s] derailed.

Sorry THM, should have ignored him, really.

Not at all, your paragraph above was a very valuable addition and no harm in addressing Tom's seemingly odd comments.

Mr Woppit - Member

Just when you think the bottom of the swamp has been reached, it gets worse.

Shooting children.

Merry Christmas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38301629

I thought the bottom of the barrel was reached when U.S funded rebels sawed the head of a 12 year old boy they accused of being a spy?

Maybe you didn't catch that video.

What we need are actions by goverments not thoughts and prayers but in the absence of that going on talking to a sky fairy is as helpful as anything.

jimjam - Member

Maybe you didn't catch that video.

Well I suppose that gets you the "One-Upmanship Award" for today. Well done.

Thanks for underlining the point, anyway.

😥

anagallis_arvensis
What we need are actions by goverments not thoughts and prayers but in the absence of that going on talking to a sky fairy is as helpful as anything.

You're clearly blind to the power Facebook Likes.

Mr Woppit

Well I suppose that gets you the "One-Upmanship Award" for today. Well done.

Not trying to one-up anything Mr.Woppit, just making the point that there is no bottom of the barrel here.

you're saying the best thing to do in international relations is to wait until all out hell breaks out, then jump in and blow the piss out of everything?

Well, if that offends you - maybe we should have intervened much much earlier 🙂

I'll explain myself more clearly when Im not posting from a mobile, but I will say the faux surprise from anti-interventionists that syria got like this really boils my piss.

dunno what you are all moaning about, civil war is good business.

The enlightened Hitchens view

What the left just does not get, Hitchens argues, is that "Islamofascism" is hellbent on destroying our civilisation, and unless you fancy being bombed back into pre-Enlightenment times, you should bloody well be out there on the barricades, fighting the good fight beside him. Anyone who disagrees is either stupid, cowardly, naive or too lazy to have bothered updating their political faculties "since Woodstock".

But this is from a disturbed mind

Now here was their chance, before it was too late, to prove their manhood....In 2006, Hitchens' wife, the American writer Carol Blue, told the New Yorker her husband was one of "those men who were never really in battle and wished they had been. There's a whole tough-guy, 'I am violent, I will use violence, I will take some of these people out before I die' talk, which is key to his psychology – I don't care what he says. I think it is partly to do with his upbringing."

😯

Urine at 101 degree after reading that kind of shite.

Threads like these always bring out the biggest dickheads on STW.

Fin - where can we donate that has most chance of humanitarian aid getting to those that need it quickly rather than being misappropriated to add to the fighting?

hitchen's seems to me to be pretty ****ed in the head..
He has some interesting ideas that are relevant to finding a way forward but his bitter vengefulness is all kinds of messed up..
he's definitely not very well

More sickness yunki

And so chief among Hitchens' emotions by the end of the day on 11 September was "exhilaration. Because I thought, now we have a very clearly drawn confrontation between everything I hate and everything I love. There is something exhilarating about that. Because, OK, now I know what I'm doing." Just as his father had felt during the second world war? "Yes, exactly," he agrees.

What difference would have early air strikes made? Who would they have targetted?

ctk - Member
What difference would have early air strikes made? Who would they have targetted?

Not flooding the area with arms for 5 years would have been the way to temper the war, but that seems like a fairly controversial idea that no one seems willing to consider..

The plan for military intervention in Syria was only just behind the level of planning for Brexshit. Remember Dave's insight?

(no, nor do I)

yunki

hitchen's seems to me to be pretty **** in the head..
He has some interesting ideas that are relevant to finding a way forward but his bitter vengefulness is all kinds of messed up..
he's definitely not very well

Not well at all.

[i]Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011)[/i]

yunki - Member
hitchen's seems to me to be pretty **** in the head..
He has some interesting ideas that are relevant to finding a way forward but his bitter vengefulness is all kinds of messed up..
he's definitely not very well

You're not wrong there...

Assad's forces which would have brought the conflict to a stalemate and Assad would have been forced to negotiate or permanently ceed the territory. Russia's involvement has meant Assad has emerged as the clear winner.

Commons emergency debate now. As Andrew Mitchell points out the Arab states in the region are irretrievably divided on Syria and as such there is unlikely to be a solution

jambalaya - Member
Assad's forces which would have brought the conflict to a stalemate and Assad would have been forced to negotiate or permanently ceed the territory. Russia's involvement has meant Assad has emerged as the clear winner.

Commons emergency debate now. As Andrew Mitchell points out the Arab states in the region are irretrievably divided on Syria and as such there is unlikely to be a solution

Tbh the moment Putin made an arse of the US in regards to Syria, was the moment to say, right the game's up, support Assad and lets get this nonsense over with. The US was shown as a bit part player from that moment on and there was only ever going to be 1 "winner".

Beyond humanitarian aid, we can't do anything.
The forces at play are local, regional and global politics.
It's a mess, a long with many other places in the world right now.
I do my bit by volunteering to pack donated kids clothes for refugees.
I'd love to do a bit more in giving direct aid to people in Syria too, but I'm yet to be convinced that it would actually reach them. Again, bigger scale politics probably prevents much of it being effective.

Err, without wishing to derail the thread even further I'm doing this to raise funds for the children affected in the conflict in Aleppo.

[url= https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Wil-Kitcher ]Just giving page for Aleppo[/url]

In the scheme of things, it isn't much but I thought it better than sitting in front of the TV thinking how awful it is, then switching over to Fast and Loud and forgetting all about it.

I've been training like a mad man for it, but I still think it's going to be an utterly miserable experience. There's some blurb on there about why I'm doing it, but regardless of whether Assad or the separatist fighters are the ones to blame (I have my own views), killing children is 'the bottom of the barrel' for me.

EDIT: Cokie - I was very much of the same opinion about financial aid and sending it overseas to help. I spoke directly to Unicef who gave me some assurances and whilst there are no certainties, I feel a lot more 'comfortable' (for want of a better word) giving money via the route I am in the hope that it'll reach those who need it most.

Everyone is always so fixated on what our government and/or military chooses to do. Neither our government or our military are capable of acting in the interests of the Syrian people.

well why cant they intervene? didnt they act in the interests of the iraqi people when they invaded iraq to overthrow saddam?

Troops on the ground will drag the conflict out and suppress the inevitable civil war, which will break out again when we leave (see Afghanistan/Iraq).

this is true but it will also prevent the killing form carrying on. through the backing of the UN those responsible should be brought to justice whilst maintaining peace and stability in the country.

Then we have to ask ourselves what we can do, either individually or collectively. Now, we can't put an end to the bloodshed, we can't stop the massacre.

yes we can...trouble is that the western governments are refusing to do so. maybe it has something to do with their initial involvement that started all of this in the first place. remember the rebels were backed, financially and militarily by the western governments in a plot to overthrow assad in just the same way they had managed to get rid of gadafi...when it went pear shaped because assad fought back the west lost control of its rebels who then went and joined up with ISIS who saw that weakened parts of iraq and syria were there for the taking. since then both the US, france, turkey, russia and the uk have taken it in turns to try and bomb the shit out of syria....to what end? there is no end for the people of syria...just more bloodshed, more death, more despair, more suffering and more abject humiliation as the world now watches on.

not having a pop at you fin25 because i think what you say stands well from an individual point of view. but i think as a whole collective we as a nation of people can make a difference by applying more pressure on this government to do more than it currently is.
this problem isnt just a western problem though...many of the middle eastern countries also have a role to play and if that means that public pressure forces this government to lean on middle eastern countries to do more then so be it.
after all some of those countries like saudi arabia are also responsible for what is going on in syria

Russia's involvement has meant Assad has emerged as the clear winner.

Which AFAICT is the least worst outcome.

I largely agree, Gonzy, the point I'm trying to make is that too many people sit around saying how terrible everything is and that our government should do something about it without getting off their backsides to either pressure the government or help in other ways. It seems that the default setting is now to blame the government without taking individual responsibility, a cop out, basically.

Daveosaurus Rex, [url= http://www.muslimsinneed.org/ ]Muslims in Need[/url] have been bloody amazing during this. They have the logistical links to really get aid moving around Syria and Lebanon (before they closed their borders). Without them, none of our local action groups would have had the reach or resources to get the aid where it needs to be.

I see you've picked two wonderfully biased quotes there THM, one a misrepresntation of his views and another the ravings of a gilted ex wife.

doesn't change the fact that the bloke was a ****ing dickhead tho tom

well feel free to help me out Tom, i asked twice but with no joy so far

admittedly my quotes did come from the guardian

thanks for your help in advance - looking forward to learning more.

Perhaps a Dictator needs to be in place to keep all the warring factions under control.

it is what it is.
pretty sickening cluster

no point in the internal finger pointing, the PM took the option to the HoC and the decision to stand back is what happened.

no arms, bombs or no-fly zones will 'certainly' improve what is happening

immediate disaster relief, even if just to patch over the mess and a UN led ceasefire

Thank you to whoever it was who posted the link to [url= http://onesolidummah.org/ ]One Solid Ummah[/url] on page 1.

You know, we can bicker on the internet all night about the history and politics of the region, but as well as that, could we get our wallets out and do something useful too? 🙂

Please buy an early Christmas present for the civilian survivors in Aleppo. They need food, water and medical supplies.

Perhaps a Dictator needs to be in place to keep all the warring factions under control.

Unfortunately that is the case all too often, Egypt for instance is back under the control of a dictator, and the west, this time in the form of the French, are selling them weapons such as Rafales and mistral assault ships.

The West, Russia and China are all too happy to sell weapons to these regimes.

I'm sure there's a Government file somewhere in the foreign office that simply says on the first page: Foreign Policy: See Economic policy.

Whilst obviously it's a tragedy that so many have been and will be killed, I for one would much rather have Assad in control. He did, until the wonderfully successful Arab Spring, which has had a catastrophic impact, in terms of the influence of islamist ideology, across the Arab world, preside over a stable and most importantly secular state. The so called rebels, certainly seem to be driven by a much more hardline Sunni element.

Thanks Tom - the alternative view was as interesting as I expected.

So now the rebels are leaving the city. So was Russian intervention right? Would it not of carried on for years to come otherwise? Iran, Saudis, Turkey, Gulf states would of kept on funding and arming their proxies to keep the fight going just as we are seeing in Yemen which is just as bleak a picture as Syria is right not and that tragedy is being undertaken by our ally using weapons we provided.

If by Russian intervention you mean bombing hospitals, schools, aid convoys then no, not right. Successful, but not right.

Fair comment, guess I am just wondering if liberating the city from siege could of been achieved at a lower humanitarian cost or was it always doomed to come at the cost it did

Thm your op+1
Other than that I predict a great deal of erudite speechifying from our leaders of all stripes and then some hand wringing. We are as complicit as many other countries in this proxy war through our relationship with Saudi Arabia. How many of our local councils, pension funds etc are invested in arms companies that supply SaudiArabia.

The Syrian government holds about 20% of the land area of the country much of which is a bombed-out and ungovernable wasteland and sooner or later Iran and Hezbollah will tire of sending their fighters to die in an unwinnable war. Maybe, six years ago, the Assad dynasty ought to have had a response to the demonstrations against their rule other that of sending the opposition's corpses home in body bags.

First, it's very debatable whether this is a liberation or not. Beyond that, a ceasefire and subsequent truce/peace deal would have been a far better way of ending the siege. The failure of all combatants in this conflict to realise that this war is unwinnable has been the cause of the greatest suffering. Killing people is never a good thing and can never be cast as such.
Secondly, Assad's forces now have free reign over the citizens of Aleppo (those who are still alive). There's already reports of hundreds of people disappearing and, if history is anything to go by, the citizens of a broken city are rarely well treated by tired soldiers, newly invigorated after a long siege.
There are no winners in this war, no heroes in their armies and little or no hope for the innocent lives at their mercy.

The civilians are just pawns in the global proxy war between the west and Russia. They want Syria, access to the Med, influence and resources, we want to halt Russia's influence.

So we arm the Rebels, Russians arm the government, civilians are just collateral.

This is how we conduct global politics and have done as far back as the beginning of history. No different to the West's intervention in Iran, our intervention in the Iraq/Iran war, the Suez crisis, Palestine, Gulf war, now us arming the Saudis so they can intervene in Yemen.

At the edges of Empires you get this friction. Keeps the government's nose clean, allows them to sell arms and the wars stay on foreign soil.

Well that was a thoroughly depressing episode of Newsnight. A dozen people all in agreement that this is terrible and no-one has either the will or ability to do much about it. 😥

I cannot remember but what are they fighting for? Western democracy?

Do you know what, chewkw, I can't be bothered.
Go score your points somewhere else.

Well that was a thoroughly depressing episode of Newsnight. A dozen people all in agreement that this is terrible and no-one has either the will or ability to do much about it.

Indeed @fin. Outstanding journalism. Stark reality.

There are many here against getting involeved in foreign wars but what we see in Syria are the consequences. The Russians and the Iranians are not so fussy

I'm not so sure us getting involved would have made much of a difference to the casualty numbers. I think the advisor guy in New York made a good point that, if we want leverage, a show of force may be necessary, as it was with Serbia, but even he accepted that no-one is likely to step up and do it.

Not much to add to what's already been posted but....unacceptable any poster should resort to points scoring on such a serious issue; western govs have no interest in a show of force - in part because they have such limited capability - and therefore allow Russia to take initiative; (relatively) indiscriminate arms sales come with consequences; anyone making an effort to help should be both applauded and supported; debate in commons was irrelevant - soundbite politics at best.
Regrettably the only strong leadership in this murderous affair has been shown by Assad and Putin - the wrong people showing leadership; where were - and are - our leaders....who represent parties which have successively shrunk our military such that we could not respond in a meaningful way even if the will was there.

Regardless of the final outcome there will be no winners. A country destroyed physically, culturally and socially. An unbelievable amount of dead. A country that will never be the same again. People that will never be the same again. For me there genuinely seems like no answer to anything. Can anyone really say who is good and who is bad. Seems to have trumped the Balkan conflict for absolute destruction and loss. The tweets from last night and the indiscriminate killing are some of the worst things I've seen in my lifetime.

The gulf between human achievement and brilliance and human horror and destruction is truly heartbreaking:(

Its going to get worse.

Soon we will have a full blown civil war in Iraq and Turkey.
Proper war between Saudi and Iran.
China is threatening lots of small players in its region, and is now alarmed at the new idiot in the White House. New cold war.

Not to mention the rest of the Arab states that are sort of in a civil war following the toppling of their respective dictators.

This, coupled with increasing food/water/climate issues will make things to come worse.