Liberated or conquered?
Strange that mainstream western media is overflowing with news of Aleppo being “occupied” by “pro-Assad forces” whereas the city was pretty much a normal part of a normal state till the civil war erupted and anti-government rebels took over in ’12, which of course prompted a long fight which, ultimately, the Syrian government seems to have won. Not so strange if you’ve been following the war since the beginning. It was the west (along with the GCC, EU, Turkey, etc), after all, that funded and armed the mythical peaceful opposition that supposedly fought the government alongside ISIS, al Qaeda, etc, and nobody found anything wrong with the ‘model’ that had worked so nicely in Libya only recently.
Syrian government forces, assisted by Iran and Hezbollah, had been making steady gains since mid ’13, cutting off supply lines from the Lebanese border and securing the road that led north to Aleppo. But the war was largely stalemated. Till, of course, the Russian footprint (more like air-print, though they also have special ‘Spetsnaz’ forces on the ground). And that, inevitably, turned it into a classic global, super-power, proxy chess game that has epitomised the Middle East, though in very different ways, since the ‘mandate’ years.
Sadly, again, nobody is drawing the right lessons from Aleppo. Most likely it will be the turning point, from where Assad and company slowly but surely wipe clean the rest of the country. But nobody showering social media with the dead and suffering is pointing out how these are the fruits of that shameless superpower power play, always greased by riyal-politik and petrodollars, that hides its greed for oil and power behind rhetoric of freedom, good vs evil, etc. Most people have just stopped buying this nonsense. And that, in large part, explains Donald Trump’s shock victory in the US. Pakistan, neck deep in its own existential war, should understand these dynamics only too well. Unfortunately, it does not have much of a functioning foreign ministry, and the ruling elite do not understand the Middle East beyond wealthy sheikhs and houbara hunting licenses. Little surprise then that we fail to understand, much less take a clear position on, the defining moment of the defining conflict of our times.
