Tuesday, December 13, 2016

The New Yorker

The Battle for Aleppo, 
Syria's Stalingrad, Ends
By Robin Wright 
 Aleppo has been part of human history for some five thousand years. Abraham is said to have grazed his sheep on its slopes and donated their milk to the local poor. Alexander the Great founded a Hellenic settlement there. The city is cited in the Book of Samuel and Psalm 60, and for centuries its residents reflected the three great Abrahamic faiths. It was at one end of the ancient Silk Road, and a major metropolis in the many empires that conquered and ruled the region. Its medieval Citadel, pivotal during the Crusades, is one of the world’s oldest and largest castles. More recently, Shakespeare referred to Aleppo in both “Macbeth” and “Othello.”

The Battle of Aleppo, which since 2012 has pitted the despotic government of President Bashar al-Assad against an array of disorganized opposition rebels, now appears to be over. A deal to allow the safe passage of the last opposition fighters, their families, and any civilians who want to leave—an end to the agony—was brokered Tuesday by Russia and Turkey. “All militants, together with members of their family and the injured, currently are going through agreed corridors in directions that they have chosen themselves voluntarily,” Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told the U.N. Security Council.


Much of the famed city, the largest in Syria, has already been destroyed. The Old City has been gutted. The destruction has been compared to that at Stalingrad and in the Warsaw Ghetto. In a crescendo of cruel air strikes, which have escalated since the summer, eastern Aleppo fell this week to the government forces holding the city’s western half.
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