The Cynical Horror of Assad and Aleppo

This is not civil war; this is state of war on civilians.

TOPSHOT - Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood on December 13, 2016, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters. Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. / AFP / STRINGER (Photo credit should read STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)
TOPSHOT - Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood on December 13, 2016, afterward regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters. Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time breastwork of east Aleppo in the face of advancing authorities troops, the Syrian Observatory for Homo Rights said. / AFP / STRINGER (Photo credit should read STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)

TOPSHOT - Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, get in in Aleppo'due south Fardos neighbourhood on Dec xiii, 2016, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters. Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. / AFP / STRINGER (Photograph credit should read STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)

I but returned from the Syrian-Lebanese border, a mere 150 miles from Aleppo, where unspeakable savagery is underway.

The Assad regime is committing horrific war crimes — from mass murder and industrial-style torture to forced starvation and barrel bombs, even the systematic rape of women, children, and men in detention centers. Thus far, 500,000 Syrians have been slaughtered, half-dozen million people displaced internally, and some other 5 meg forced to flee as refugees beyond the edge. This is the textbook definition of genocide.

Aided by the Russian ground forces and Iranian militias, the regime is slaughtering noncombatants on a scale rivaling the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides. This is a g-scale humanitarian catastrophe. Russian federation and Islamic republic of iran have funneled weapons, training, and funding to Syria's government. Their assist has ensured Assad's victory and the continuance of uncontested political ability, at any cost.

I just returned from the Syrian-Lebanese border, a mere 150 miles from Aleppo, where unspeakable savagery is underway.

The Assad regime is committing horrific war crimes — from mass murder and industrial-fashion torture to forced starvation and barrel bombs, even the systematic rape of women, children, and men in detention centers. Thus far, 500,000 Syrians take been slaughtered, half-dozen million people displaced internally, and another 5 million forced to abscond as refugees beyond the border. This is the textbook definition of genocide.

Aided past the Russian army and Iranian militias, the regime is slaughtering noncombatants on a scale rivaling the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides. This is a 1000-scale humanitarian catastrophe. Russia and Islamic republic of iran have funneled weapons, training, and funding to Syria's government. Their assistance has ensured Assad'south victory and the constancy of uncontested political power, at whatsoever toll.

While museums and libraries are still being built to remind united states of america of the horrors of the Holocaust, right now, before our very eyes, tens of thousands are existence burned alive by Assad'due south bombs.

Assad has surely earned the title of monster of the new century. He is a man who inherited the presidency from his father in 2000 along with his father'southward penchant for violence. The senior Assad even bragged nearly slaughtering 20,000 civilians in the city of Hama, leaving bodies burning on the ground for days. This was to instill terror and assure that Syrians never over again dared to claiming their ruler. But the pupil has outdone the master: Bashar has ruled with an iron fist, and his decadent, sectarian, mafia-style regime has exceeded even his male parent's savage brutality.

Despite social media and real-time documentation of ongoing offenses, Assad'south authorities has impudently committed gross war crimes against his people — cavalierly burning civilians live in the streets with incendiary bombs intended to inflict maximum terror. With these methods of state terrorism, Assad has bombed into oblivion a autonomous experiment that began peacefully in 2011, and that might have get a civil-society ray of hope in the Arab world.

It is paramount to remember that the Syrian uprising began as a peaceful movement, with hundreds of thousands of citizens taking to the streets seeking only social justice, political reform, and freedom and democratic representation — much similar their counterparts in Tunisia.

The Assad regime responded by unleashing its state security apparatus on anyone who dared claiming him. This transformed a peaceful uprising into a crunch and, shortly, a roughshod ceremonious war — one where civilians and pro-democracy activists were arrested, tortured, and murdered en masse. Meanwhile, a veritable rogue's gallery of jihadists were cynically released from country prisons onto the streets — swelling the ranks of al Qaeda and the Islamic Country. The notion was brutally unproblematic: bandage the regime as a partner in the state of war on terror and the but viable alternative against jihadists.

Let us remember that, in the early on days of the uprising, the first victim of the Syrian regime was a xiii-year-erstwhile boy named Hamza al-Khateeb, from the urban center of Daraa. Hamza had been detained and tortured by the police, and and then executed with three bullets. Images of this young boy's mutilated body circulated on the Internet, leading to mass demonstrations from Daraa to Aleppo. But these expressions of basic human being indignity at the roughshod torture, mutilation, and murder of an innocent kid were met by the vicious forcefulness of Assad's military machine. He thereupon unleashed an orgy of violence against the citizens of his own country that has now lasted more than 5 years.

Assad volition not stop until every single person or group who challenged him is annihilated. Despite the regime's success in quashing the resistance, armed services operations continue. With the assistance of Russian forces, he is seeking to obliterate the entire population of Aleppo.

Donald Trump'due south victory in the U.S. presidential election has only compounded matters. Assad now has given Russia free rein to burn down eastern Aleppo to the ground, in contravention of all international laws and norms. In response to crimes against humanity during the Bosnian and Rwandan Genocide, a U.Northward. resolution was passed titled "the responsibility to protect." Despite this, the international community has abrogated that responsibleness, and washed so willfully.

The complete failure to support or nurture Syria's democratic motion was tragic in and of itself. But the subsequent failure to have effective measures to end the civil war — or fifty-fifty compel Assad to adhere to the rules of war — represents moral collapse on a unlike lodge of magnitude.

Assad's victory will come dorsum to haunt the international community. Our generation looks back today and asks how the world could have allowed the horrors of the Nazis. In Syria, nosotros have found the respond, and history will gauge us harshly for it.

Photo credit: STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

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