The Aleppo ProjectWhat Russians are told about Aleppo
Ilya Lozovsky, The Atlantic, Dec. 25: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/russia-media-putin-aleppo-syria-turkey-isis-karlov/511682/
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All posts from 2016
Cultural heritage scholars condemned colleagues’ participation in Damascus conference
by The Aleppo Project on December 23, 2016A group of Syrian and international cultural heritage scholars issued a statement condemning the participation of European and American colleagues in a conference hosted recently in Damascus by the Syrian Ministries of Culture and Tourism. The signatories of the statement criticised what they believed constituted support and participation in the “propaganda victory for the regime in Damascus” at a time when much of Aleppo’s historical heart is reduced to rubble and Palmyra is lost to ISIS again.
Below is the full text of the statement.
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IT IS NOT OVER YET
by The Aleppo Project on December 13, 2016Aleppo is likely to fall into government hands soon. Russian jets and Iranian fighters have crushed the hopes of many for a better life and greater freedom. Now the Syrian forces, skilled at little but the killing of unarmed civilians, are setting to work rounding up young men. Many will never be seen again. Meanwhile, ISIS has retaken Palmyra, showing how Assad and his allies have never been interested in fighting that enemy, only the threat of democracy and progress.
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I AM SALEM THE HUMAN — THIS MIGHT BE OUR LAST MESSAGE
by The Aleppo Project on December 6, 2016This morning two additional districts of eastern Aleppo fell. Other besieged districts were under continued bombing that is draining life out of those who have survived. Dentist Salem Abualnaser made what might be his last cry for the protection of civilians in those areas:
PARACHUTES: FOR AID, NOT BOMBS — JPADS ARE SAFE AND URGENTLY NEEDED FOR BESIEGED ALEPPO
by Abdulrahman and Amr Shayah on December 2, 2016Aleppo has been under siege for about a hundred days. Food stocks are running out. Price are up 20-fold. Medical and civil defence equipment destroyed by regime and Russian bombing cannot be replaced. The injured are sent home without even painkillers and the dead are carried to graveyards on food carts.
Parachutes have been used by the Russian and Syrian air forces to drop bombs, such as the parachute-retarded ODAB-500PM, on civilian areas of the besieged city. Parachutes could be used to send urgently needed food and medical aid instead.
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ALEPPO’S INJURED CRY, ABANDONED
by The Aleppo Project on November 29, 2016Khero Dawood, a local civil society activist who decided to stay in Aleppo when the siege was being completed, told an incident he witnessed that describes a lot of what those staying in eastern Aleppo are going through now. Translated below is a social media post by Khero that tells a story of depopulation, destruction, collapse of the health system, and a bitter sense of abandonment.
‘Yesterday at around 1.30 am, I was walking with two people in the streets of the Tareeq al-Bab district which have become empty of everything except destruction.We heard moaning, talking, and then screaming.
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Aleppo in Berlin
by AlHakam Shaar on October 27, 2016Five million Syrians — one quarter of whom are from Aleppo — have been forced to live abroad since 2011. To Aleppians like me, places from Amman to Oslo now have more of home than we are aware of. This never felt truer to me than when I was in Berlin last April to participate in an important conference about rebuilding Aleppo organized by the Association of the Friends of the Old City of Aleppo.
Getting from my Aleppian friend Hassan Oneizan’s place in Steglitz to the conference venue at the Association of German Architects in downtown Berlin involved one bus and two trains. As a newbie, I missed my first bus. Although the next one was coming in ten minutes, I couldn’t afford to be late. The fastest alternative was now to take a bus and a long taxi ride.
read moreTHE ALEPPO PROJECT FEATURED IN THE LAST ISSUE OF NEPSZABADSAG
by The Aleppo Project on October 24, 2016In what would be one of the final stories for Hungary’s largest daily newspaper Nepszabadsag, veteran journalist Gabor Miklos interviewed AlHakam Shaar and Armenak Tokmajyan, fellows at CEU’s Shattuck Center on Conflict Negotiation and Recovery at the School of Public Policy on the current and historical demographic make up of Aleppo and Assad’s strategy in targeting the city hosting 53,000 besieged families, who represent only one quarter of the original population – the rest having fled. The last month has seen intensified bombing of Aleppo by the Syrian regime and Russia, with 400 civilians dying in one week.
Due to copyright regulations, the article is available in the daily (10.8.2016. p. 25. Aszad nyeresre all (Melleklet – Hetvege)) print
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FOOTBALL: A SYRIAN ELEGY
by Armenak Tokmajyan on October 24, 2016Our descent was fast and sudden when it came to both war and football. The 2010-2011 season was called off in its entirety. Civil war leaves little untouched. You more or less have to take a side or you leave. Footballers did all those things, leaving diminished teams struggling with their third string players. Firas al-Khatib, one of the best players ever in Syria, declined to play for the national team again and left the country in 2012, first for Iraq, then China and now Kuwait. Players for al-Wathbah, the Homs club, were killed in a mortar attack outside their hotel in Damascus while getting ready for training.
When war blazed across the country in 2011, Syrian soccer was on the verge of its greatest triumph ever – a possible spot at the London Olympics.[i] At that level, it is youth teams that compete and Syria’s Under 23s looked promising. Among its best players was the goalkeeper, Abdelbasset Saroot, who played for the Homs team al-Karameh. In April 2011, he joined the demonstrations in Homs, prompting the government to accuse him of being a Salafi extremist and offering a two million Syrian pounds reward for his arrest. The National Sports Association issued a decree banning him from playing for life. In July 2011, a video appeared on Youtube of him standing before a Syrian national flag. “I am now wanted by the security agencies which are trying to arrest me. I declare with sound mind and of my own volition that we, the free people of Syria, will not back down until our own and only demand is met: the toppling of the regime. I hold the Syrian regime responsible for anything that happens to me.”
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Berlin, 1945; Grozny, 2000; Aleppo, 2016
by The Aleppo Project on October 19, 2016The destruction is so complete that it obliterates even a sense of time, writes New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman about a video of Aleppo. At a glance, the video shot from a drone could show Berlin in 1945 or Grozny, 2000. Mass death erases all distinctions. The place is the Mashhad district, or what remains of it after recent attacks by Syrian government forces and their Russian allies. Toppled rooftop satellite dishes, choked by plaster dust, resemble wilted flowers. Figures move through the pulverized rubble but are hard to make out.
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