WHEN Russia dispatched its warplanes to prop up the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, Barack Obama warned Moscow that its Syrian adventure was doomed to fail. Russia will get “stuck in a quagmire and it won’t work”, Mr Obama confidently predicted in October 2015. Russia’s air force has since proven the American president profoundly wrong.
On November 28th pro-government forces backed by Russian bombers finally punched through rebel lines in the east of Aleppo. The breakthrough came two weeks after pro-regime forces launched an operation to recapture the rebels’ last big urban stronghold. With the regime now in control of at least a third of the city’s east, the fall of Aleppo looks almost certain.
For months the regime has sought to strangle the city’s rebel-held east into submission. A siege has slowly sapped the strength and morale of its defenders. As the blockade tightened, Russian and Syrian warplanes relentlessly bombed civilian infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools and bakeries in a bid to drain support for opposition fighters by making life unbearable for the east’s 250,000 or so remaining civilians. These tactics, which have forced...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2gPNHTS
EmoticonEmoticon