With scores of unofficial Russian contract fighters aided with Russian military hardware Russian war planes bombing, it’s clearly, the Russians who won war in Aleppo. Though the Russian leadership relentlessly been rejecting the demand promoted by Western powers and their Arab allies — that Bashar Al-Assad should not be allowed to be a participant in the Syria settlement, but with the ticking clock it’s proving out to be the other way round.
Let’s face facts. First, given first hand evidence following ground realities, it’s not the Syrian President Assad but it’s the Russians who are winning a proxy war in Syria. Second, the wider perception that – ‘If Aleppo falls into the government it will be the end of the war’ is nothing more than pure illusion. And third, with temperatures falling quick the humanitarian situation there is getting more than just catastrophic. It has manifestly become a country to shame the entire international community for their repeated failures to overthrow a dictator while establishing peace.
It’s rather baffling to witness as President Assad, blessed by the Russians, adamantly keeps betting on his military solution while the West repeatedly fails to come to a political one. With every passing day, it’s none but the innocent people of Syria who keeps paying the price with their lives and properties. Most humanitarian corridors to send them aid are blocked for years, and yet the dictator ruling them is increasingly becoming more despotic.
Sitting on the fence, if the Russian backed Syrian government, however, win the ongoing war — can it guarantee to ink a permanent truce with the opposition? Would the anti-Assad resistance end at once? May appear victorious, but can the Russians solve all the age long internal conflicts and dissent which have torn apart Syria in many pieces?
Yet, they are dreaming of doing it by barking up the wrong tree, by adding more death and destruction for serving ‘a very Russian purpose’.
Most importantly, would the humanitarian crisis in that country end and Assad plays the Russian game? Assad’s isolation from the people is widening.
Following Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Egypt, the ‘Syrian Spring’ has recurrently turned into another despondent failure of the UN and the Western World. Even sadder, they are repeatedly failing to stop the unending annihilation of the masses there. And the latest Aleppo situation is adding more insult to that injury as the advancing Russian military machine keeps winning more grounds on behalf of a complete authoritarian Assad regime.
The dirty politics surrounding Syria often questions whether we are living in a civilised world or not as world powers have so far paid lip service to the need for the UN while continuing to operate in their own interests. Russia’s intrusion into the Syrian conflict on behalf of Bashar Al Assad is a clear example of how rhetoric at the UN is often at odds with actions on the grounds.
Assad has no love for the country, no pride for it and sold himself and Syria to Russia only in the hope of saving himself by clinging to position. The Western powers proved less dependable allies, than Russia proved to Assad.
Even as a poodle of Russia, President Assad will not live peacefully or die normally.
