Many across world continue to digest what took place in Aleppo and the slaughter that was beamed across the world. Just a year and a half ago the al-Assad regime had lost most of the country. IHS Jane’s Information Group confirmed in August 2015 that the al-Assad regime controlled a mere 17% of Syrian territory, whilst the rebels had seized 83% of the country. The fall of Aleppo has reversed much of this and on closer examination the people of Syria were abandoned by everyone at their most critical hour.

America, the world’s superpower, left the peo­ple of Aleppo to fend for them­selves under the onslaught of the regime. The US has throughout the uprising con­demned what was tak­ing place, called for talks but did absolutely noth­ing prac­ti­cally as the peo­ple of Aleppo were being slaugh­tered. This strat­egy has been a con­stant posi­tion of the US through­out the upris­ing – con­demn, but do noth­ing. A US-vetted rebel com­man­der high­lighted: “We are very frus­trated. The United States refuses to pro­vide weapons we need, and yet it still thinks it can tell us what to do. They promise sup­port and then watch us drown. Amer­ica will have no influ­ence if our com­rades are forced [to retreat to] Idlib.” Embar­rassed by this, US offi­cials then said the Obama admin­is­tra­tion may lift a long-held ban by allow­ing Qatar and Saudi Ara­bia to arm rebels with man-portable mis­siles. This all came after the slaughter had taken place.

The regional nations who for long stated they sup­ported the rebel groups against the regime in Dam­as­cus aban­doned them at their most crit­i­cal moment. Turkey worked with and built up a number of groups in the Aleppo province. But as Aleppo was being encir­cled, Turkey’s response was lim­ited to shelling areas the YPG had cap­tured in north Syria. What weak­ened the rebel front in Aleppo immensely was Turkey’s mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion — known as Oper­a­tion Euphrates Shield. The oper­a­tion saw Turk­ish mil­i­tary offi­cials shift rebel groups from Aleppo to Afrin in North Syria. By mobil­is­ing Syr­ian rebels who orig­i­nally fought in Aleppo, such as the Noured­dine al-Zinki Brigade, this weak­ened the rebel­lion in Aleppo and thus facil­i­tated the advance of the al-Assad forces. Saudi Ara­bia and Qatar are now only inter­ested in UN efforts in Syria and refuse to arm rebel groups in Aleppo who they armed pre­vi­ously. Despite the regional nations pos­sess­ing the capa­bil­ity to deal a fatal blow to al-Assad, the peo­ple of Aleppo were been aban­doned by the regional nations.

The Muslim rulers abandoning the Ummah in Aleppo allowed Bashar al-Assad scorched earth strat­egy of siege war­fare to succeed. With help from Russ­ian airstrikes and Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary guards backed up with mili­tia fight­ers, the indiscriminate slaughter of Aleppo was allowed to take place. The siege resulted in the cut­ting off sup­plies, food, med­i­cine, fuel and weapons. Russ­ian airstrikes sent tens of thou­sands of civil­ians flee­ing tar­geted areas and destroyed entire neigh­bor­hoods. The pro-Assad forces indis­crim­i­nately used bar­rel bombs dropped from heli­copters, even using chem­i­cal weapons on some occa­sions, killing thou­sands of peo­ple and pur­pose­fully tar­get­ing civil­ians, includ­ing hos­pi­tals and schools. In Novem­ber 2016 all hos­pi­tals in east­ern Aleppo were out of action as a result. The indis­crim­i­nate slaugh­ter of the peo­ple of East Aleppo is how al-Assad has regained the city.

It has taken half a decade for Bashar al-Assad to achieve his most crucial victory. His victory in Aleppo was achieved through slaughtering the people and bombing the town to dust, is in reality is not a real victory. This is because it has exposed he cannot convince the people of his rule and even his use of war tactics took him so long. The rebels formed at most 10,000 troops and despite all the might of Russia and Iran it took so long for the forces of Al-Assad to gain victory, even in certain death many continued fighting against al-Assad forces. It remains to be seen if this is the beginning of the end, but what it shows is the people of Sham are like mountains and cannot be removed easily.

Adnan Khan