The stories we aren't talking about: Aleppo.

[cali]

In Aleppo, 2 million people have no water supply, no electricity, little food and they're being bombarded to hell.



The water pumps in Aleppo, Syria, are no longer getting power, leaving 2 million people without running water — and at risk of coming under a full siege.

The United Nations is calling for an immediate halt to the fighting and at minimum a two-day weekly humanitarian cease-fire to allow for the city's water and electrical systems to be repaired. But there's another round of fighting ongoing in the strategically significant city.

Aleppo is divided in two: the rebel-held east and government-held west. But for civilians, it's "a city now united in its suffering," as U.N. officials put it.

A few days ago, rebels forces claimed significant gains. They said they broke a government siege on the east side and also cut off the main access road to the west side.

<snip>

In late July, Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, described attacks on four hospitals in eastern Aleppo in just one week.

<snip>

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/09/489296670/2-million-residents-of-war-ravaged-aleppo-now-without-running-water


Doctors Describe Horrendous Conditions in Syria's Aleppo

http://www.voanews.com/content/doctors-describe-horrendous-conditions-syria-aleppo/3456265.html

Regime Bombings Interrupt Daily Life In Syrian City Of Aleppo

http://www.npr.org/2016/08/09/489361647/regime-bombings-interrupt-daily-life-in-syrian-city-of-aleppo

Putin Seeks Approval for Air Force’s Indefinite Syria Stay

Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked parliament to ratify the Russian air force’s indefinite stay in Syria almost a year after the official beginning of Russia’s military operations there.

The Russian Ministry of Defense struck a deal last August with the Syrian government to provide assistance to Damascus in battling militants in the country, using Syrian facilities rent-free and without worry of compensation for damages. Putin’s push for airstrikes were approved by parliament on the last day of September and the first official Russian airstrikes fell before dusk.

Now Putin has submitted the agreement for parliamentary ratification, state news agency Itar-Tass reported. Putin’s decision to seek parliamentary approval for the exact terms of Russia’s intervention are unclear, but the lower house of parliament’s deputy speaker said it was bound to be approved.

<snip>


read:http://www.newsweek.com/putin-asks-parliament-ratify-air-forces-indefinite-syria-stay-488864

And no, this isn't about what the U.S. should do. It's about how awful it is. It's about the Iraq War destabilization of the Middle East.
It's about how hopeless the whole ghastly mess in Syria is; how apparently there is no navigable avenue to save these people.

And damned straight we need to increase the number of Syrian refugees we allow into the U.S.

[Ilsa]

1. It's a humanitarian crisis, and

I don't understand where the US is any more with regards to Syria because of all of the different players.

[cali]

5. Who does? I don't believe the U.S. government knows where it is regarding Syria.

[Javaman]

20. the U.S. gov knows...

this is a grudge match between putin and the U.S. in a proxy war to control the middle east.

no one on either side cares who dies in this screwed up war of attrition, as long as the last one standing is on their side.

this won't end until one or both parties say enough, but, alas, that won't happen because the U.S. will not allow the Russians a strong hold in the middle east in an obvious fashion.

the cold war just got warmed up again

[geek tragedy]

7. bomb and avoid appears to be the strategy nt

[SheriffBob]

2. over there

it is safer to be a soldier than a civilian.

[geek tragedy]

3. Syria is the worst case scenario for a civil war.

And that's saying something.

people want to think there's something we can do. there isn't

[cali]

4. It's so difficult to grapple with that. But I agree. There isn't.

[geek tragedy]

6. there's only one solution, and no one is talking about it--partition

The Allawites (and government) will never consent to being governed by the Sunni majority, and the Sunni majority and rebels will never consent to letting Assad re-establish his dictatorship over the entire country.

And neither would be incorrect on taking that maximalist position.

Syria the nation state has to be destroyed in order for its people to be saved.

[cali]

8. But how? That seems to be unlikely to happen without an even more enormous toll.

[geek tragedy]

9. cease fire, followed by a bit of haggling over who controls what territory

Largely, though, the partition would enforce the current status quo in terms of territory.

Instead, though, we get the Russians enabling Assad to claim lifelong rule over the entire country and the Gulf states enabling the rebels to wage jihad until there's a genocide of the Allawites.

Makes one appreciate how well the Libyans have things ...

[cali]

12. A cease fire seems like a fantasy- at least now and over the past year or so.

And Putin's intervention is horrific.

But the Libyans do not have it good- not by any reasonable measure. And U.S. actions there over the last month or so are making things worse, not better. And we do not have the support for our military actions in Libya from the PM.



How Not to Plan for ‘The Day After’ In Libya

In its anti-ISIS bombing campaign in Libya, the United States seems destined to once again sacrifice long-term stability for short-term gain.


On August 1, the Obama administration announced a series of airstrikes against Islamic State positions in the Libyan city of Sirte, in coordination with a ground assault by Libya’s internationally recognized, Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). The new mission marks a significant escalation: while the United States has carried out targeted air strikes against ISIS leaders and training camps in Libya over the past year, it has now picked a side in the country’s civil war—the GNA.

The GNA’s attempt to dislodge ISIS from Sirte will present the UN-supported unity government with a critical test. The stakes are equally high for ISIS: If it secures a strong foothold in Libya, militants could use it as a springboard for further attacks in Europe, compensating for its territorial losses in Syria and Iraq. Libya’s wider stability is also a pressing issue, because hundreds of thousands of refugees have traveled from Libya to Europe, with thousands drowning along the way.


Libya has a particular resonance for Obama. After NATO acted as the air arm of the Libyan rebels in 2011 as part of an international campaign to topple Muammar Qaddafi, the coalition and Washington took their eye off Libya. Subsequently, the country collapsed into anarchy as rival militias dueled for power, turning the country into a “shit show,” as Obama put it privately. The original sin in Libya, Obama now admits, was short-term thinking. In April, he said his administration’s worst mistake was its failure to plan for “the day after” the Libya intervention. Last week in a press conference, he reiterated “that all of us . . . were not sufficiently attentive to what had to happen the day after, and the day after, and the day after that in order to ensure that there were strong structures in place to assure basic security and peace inside of Libya.”

Based on the conduct of the Libya operation so far, however, the sin of short-termism is still very much evident. Indeed, the Obama Doctrine has encouraged an improvisational view of war based on putting out fires rather than pursuing a coherent long-term strategy. As a result, there’s no guarantee that the new mission will produce more enduring results than the previous campaign in 2011


<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/-libya-isis-obama-doctrine-nato/495002/

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/no-need-foreign-troops-libyan-soil-libya-pm-says-370003921

[geek tragedy]

14. was being ironic when talking about how well the Libyans have things

Libya/Syria is a good example of the adage that things could always be worse.

[cali]

15. ah, my apologies for missing that. duh for me.

[geek tragedy]

16. no prob nt

[Vattel]

19. I am still utterly amazed that, a few short years after the lesson of Iraq,

an administration could not have adequately planned for "the day after." I mean, seriously.

[Ilsa]

10. I'm not sure I agree about partitioning.

When I think of India and Pakistan, it seems like it creates an opportunity for one side to be more radical and more dangerous, with nothing to keep it in check.

But yeah, it has to be considered.

I just don't get how people who lived and worked next to each other for decades can allow their religions to destroy everything they've built, their homes, families, etc.

[geek tragedy]

11. because Leviathan is dead nt

[Blanks]

13. Our own civil war...

Was fought brother against brother. Somehow people get passionate about an ideology and their ability to think and reason are compromised.

I'm intrigued at how people can perform such atrocities toward their fellow human beings, but with just the right amount of prodding folks can be convinced to do all kinds of really ugly things.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. I don't think partition would help; the divisions aren't really regional

Sunnis follow nearly all occupations, belong to all social groups and nearly every political party, and live in all parts of the country. There are only two governorates in which they are not a majority: Al-Suwayda, where Druzes predominate, and Latakia, where Alawis are a majority. In Al Hasakah, Sunnis form a majority, but most of them are Kurds rather than Arabs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Syria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latakia_Governorate - population of 1 million, pre-war. It's a very small area to say "that's for the Alawis".

[geek tragedy]

18. a redrawn map with physical boundaries really is the only option though.

there are geographically small states--Kosovo, Montenegro, West Bank.

What other options are there?

Assad's not going to surrender power. And he's not strong enough to control the entire country by force. Elections are a non-starter. So is an international occupation force.

People will probably have to sort themselves out by migrating to the appropriate side of the line, which is a ghastly scenario, but there are no non-ghastly scenarios, only the least horrible.

Syria as a nation state is over, and for the international community success isn't an option--it's a matter of which form of failure to embrace.

Of course, then the real fun starts with the non-Allawite territory being controlled either by Kurds or by a Daesh caliphate.

Biggest mess in human history?

[Igel]

21. Syria was stable until there were protests.

The protests could have been put down at the cost of thousands of lives. It would have been messy. Those lives were precious. As a result, more than 100,000 lives were lost. Welcome to unintended consequences of short-sighted thinking.

At the time, all we saw was what was on tv. A bunch of educated urban moderates protesting for civil rights. They were like us, we thought, and wanted democracy. Nobody paid attention to most of the country or its citizens. We saw what we liked seeing. Assad, bad; protesters speaking truth to power, good. Arab Springiness boinging all over the place.

We supported the protests. When fighting broke out, we gave legitimacy to the anti-Assad fighters and still say that Assad is not the "real", legitimate ruler of the country. We embargoed Assad to the extent possible. Assad was bad, but had been no less bad years before. Had he consented to change very early on, perhaps things could have been averted. Perhaps. But a weak government wouldn't have been able to handle the Salafists.

When Assad focused on the west of the country, the east was allowed to go to pieces. This was the area where tribal distinctions mattered and where Iraqi Salafi fighters hid when necessary from fighting in Iraq and which provided additional, non-Iraqi Salafist fighters during the war.

Assad had no problem encouraging jihadists from Syria to go to Iraq in the late '00s. Why? Because it got rid of his problem, which existed even before 2003. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/08/iraq-al-qaida . They had their own branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Jund al-Sham fought in the late 2000s against Syria. Aleppo even produced a nice theoretician of Salafist jihadism years before 2001. Assad kept a lid on it. Iraq's war didn't help, but notice that the destabilization happened not in 2005, not in 2008, not in 2010, but in 2011. The immediate cause of the civil war is to be found close to that time.

The cause of the mess in Syria can be attributed to all sorts of things. The embargo; opposition to and support for the opposition to Assad. An influx of jihadis from around the Muslim world. Instability in Iraq after the American withdrawal. The Iraq war. Salafist thought. Islamic thought, of which Salafism is a variation on a long-standing theme. Homegrown demographics.

Go short, and you get support for the Arab Springiness. Go long, and you get Salafism and demographics.