The Wall Street Journal
May 2 2014
Aleppo Diary: Stories from the Front Lines
ALEPPO, Syria–In late March, I arrived in Aleppo as the battle between
rebels and regime forces for control of the city was in its 21st
month, one of the longest and bloodiest campaigns of Syria’s civil
war. The evening flight from Damascus aboard a small Russian-made,
low-winged Yakovlev Yak-40 was uneventful, though many of the
passengers’ bags, including mine, were left behind because the plane
couldn’t carry all the weight. The real challenge was to get from
Aleppo International Airport to the regime-held west side of the city.
The airport highway, a six-mile drive, wasn’t an option because it cut
through the city’s rebel-held east. The only choice was a treacherous
detour that skirted past battle zones. Bus passengers and a truck
driver on that route had been wounded in mortar and sniper attacks
just hours before, I was warned. So the driver turned off all lights
and followed the faint tail light of the vehicle ahead of us, bringing
me safely to a hotel on the west side about an hour later.
Aleppo is a city physically partitioned and a symbol of what Syria’s
civil war has become: a stalemate in which noncombatants pay the
heaviest price. Since rebels began their assault here in July 2012,
thousands of civilians have been killed or maimed, and hundreds of
thousands have fled.
Pro-regime forces since last fall recaptured territory on the eastern
and southern flanks of the city, allowing the regime to reopen supply
lines to the central city of Homs and onward to Damascus.
The regime has stepped up aerial bombardment on the rebel-held east
side since the start of the year. The United Nations, human rights
groups and activists say those attacks have targeted residential
areas, often with helicopters dropping crude but very destructive
barrel bombs made from large drums packed with explosives and metal
shards. Regime officials have said they are only bombing “terrorists,”
as they call the rebels. Many average Aleppans say they have suffered
at the hands of both pro-regime and rebel forces, and they see little
difference between the two sides.
I spent 10 days reporting on conditions in Aleppo from the
regime-controlled side–I couldn’t make it to the east because the only
direct crossing, at the central neighborhood called Bustan al Qasr,
was subject to frequent sniper fire. Throughout my time in the city, I
was constantly reminded of the terrible physical dangers and
dislocation its people must endure on a daily basis. From my hotel
window, I could see and hear military jets and helicopters dropping
bombs on the east side of the city almost every morning. On the west
side, where I was, the talk was of the “hell’s cannons,” improvised
rockets with canisters of gas attached to their tips, being lobbed by
rebels on regime-controlled neighborhoods. I also saw the aftermath of
such attacks.
A hell’s cannon, on far right with blue gas canister attached, on
display with other ordnance near a checkpoint for regime forces in
Aleppo’s Bab Al Faraj area. Residents of the city’s west side say
their neighborhoods have been targeted by the improvised rockets. Sam
Dagher/The Wall Street Journal
Among the first people I met in Aleppo was Mohammad al-Akkad, the
52-year-old governor of the province. He is a senior member of the
ruling Baath Party and a member of the local security committee.
Portraits, busts and plaques of President Bashar al-Assad and his late
father Hafez, who ruled Syria before him, adorn the corners of his
office in city hall, an 18-story tower near one of the front lines.
Images of President Bashar al-Assad adorn the office of Aleppo’s
governor, Mohammad al-Akkad, seated left. A senior member of the
ruling Baath Party, Mr. Akkad said he had been willing to make deals
with rebel factions to acquire essential goods for the city’s
residents. Sam Dagher/The Wall Street Journal
But if he is the regime’s public face in the city, he is also willing
to make deals with various rebel factions to acquire essential goods
if doing so means meeting the basic needs of its residents in a time
of war. Before the regime opened the supply line to Damascus, he told
me, he managed to procure 1,000 canisters of propane gas, used in
Syria for cooking. To bring the rest of the canisters into the city’s
west, he had to give the rebels half.
“I collaborated with the devils to secure cooking gas, fuel and flour
for the people,” said Mr. Akkad. “My preoccupation is the civilians
who have nothing to do with the war. I have relatives living in areas
under the control of gunmen,” he said, referring to the rebels.
Twice during the interview, he was interrupted by calls from the
director of a power station located in the rebel-controlled
countryside east of the city. Mr. Akkad said the director told him
that rebels based at the facility were taking some equipment out. It
was a violation of “an agreement we signed with them to spare the
power station on the premise it’s for all Syrians,” he explained to
me.
“Call the [military] commander in the area and tell him to bomb them,”
Mr. Akkad told the director.
After the interview, he drove me in a black SUV through the west side.
He had allowed street vendors to set up shop in residential sections
of the city. It was against the rules, he said, but many of these
people were factory and business owners who had lost everything during
the war.
We passed through one such area called Nile Street, where everything
imaginable was for sale. Then I asked him to take me as close as
possible to a front line, and we soon found ourselves in Khalidya,
which faces the rebel-held neighborhood of Bani Zaid. Mr. Akkad
congratulated a vendor for having opened a new kabob restaurant in the
area. A few yards from the restaurant, I could see the front line: a
heap of earth and debris dividing both sides. Suddenly, there was a
loud explosion. People shouted that the area was being hit with
mortars from Bani Zaid.
As we were leaving, Mr. Akkad spotted a man with a carton of fresh
eggs. Where had he gotten them? he asked the man. They were from
Al-Bab, the man said, a town east of Aleppo under the control of one
of the most extreme rebel factions.
“Amazing, very resourceful,” Mr. Akkad said. “May God protect you.”
On the northwestern side of Aleppo, a heap of earth and debris divides
the neighborhood of Khalidya, which is under regime control, from
adjacent rebel-held Bani Zaid. Sam Dagher/The Wall Street Journal
Aleppo abounds with stories of loss and separation, of resilience,
resourcefulness and compromise in the madness of war. The people I met
who were living or working near the front lines were of varying
backgrounds, but it seemed they held in common the determination to
try to go on with their lives in the midst of the mayhem.
Before the war, David Aslanian, a 60-year-old engineer, owned an
industrial laundry business and sprawling car parts and repair
facility. His sons-in-law, Hagop and Sevak, ran family-owned plastics
and molds factories in Arqoub, an industrial zone on the northern side
of the city.
The three men lost everything when their businesses and factories were
either destroyed or looted during the fighting, Mr. Aslanian said.
Although regime forces regained control of Arqoub, the area still sits
on one of the front lines, and few people have ventured back. For now,
they make their living in the predominantly Armenian neighborhood of
Azizya, at a sidewalk kabob stand that has become very popular for its
grilled beef liver marinated in pomegranate molasses, where people can
eat in if they choose.
David Aslanian, at left, sits at his kabob stand in Aleppo’s
predominantly Armenian neighborhood of Azizya. Before the war, the
60-year-old engineer owned laundry and car-parts businesses. Sam
Dagher/The Wall Street Journal
A few tables and chairs are set against the backdrop of a tropical
paradise painted on the wall by an artist friend. An old van painted
in the same motifs is used to store refreshments and drinks. Mr.
Aslanian said it is a refuge for him and his friends and former
business partners and associates.
The war has deeply divided and polarized many Syrians of different
backgrounds. The Christian minority in the country tends to support
Mr. Assad, who like the regime’s other most powerful figures hails
from the Shiite-linked Alawite minority. Nearly all rebels fighting
his regime are Sunni Muslims.
Mr. Aslanian, an Armenian Christian, and others told me they were
trying to transcend these differences and salvage what’s left of this
city’s social fabric.
When I spoke with him on a breezy, cool afternoon, he was sitting with
his friend Abdul-Hamid Msadi, a Sunni Muslim Arab.
“Here or there, it’s civilians who are being crushed,” Mr. Aslanian
said, referring to both sides of the city. “We come here and sit with
our dear friends. We commiserate, laugh, cry a lot and then go home
and sleep.”
Ghassan Subaie, a 37-year-old Sunni, lives rent free with his wife and
two children aged six and nine at a residence for Greek Catholic nuns
in Jdaideh, a predominantly Christian area adjacent to the old quarter
of Aleppo and on a front line. The nuns have moved out to a relatively
safer part of the city.
Mr. Subaie was displaced from a neighborhood on the east side and lost
his leather goods workshop on Hatab Square in Jdaideh.
“I have known the Greek Catholic priests for 25 years and they put me
up at the residence when I told them that I have no money and need a
place to live,” said Mr. Subaie.
Like many Aleppans, Mr. Subaie sees no end in sight for the war and is
desperate to leave. He has tried several times to reach Sweden, where
many Syrians have gotten asylum. The last attempt was in May of last
year when he travelled to the Turkish port city of Izmir. There, he
said, smugglers promised to take him to Greece for $4,000. He arrived
at the rendezvous site at midnight with his family. The boat, which
can carry only 20 people, had 45 aboard already, he said.
“I said to myself ‘we are going to drown for sure and my wife and
children can’t swim’ so we went back,” he said.
Ghassan Subaie, a 37-year-old Sunni, lives with his family at a
residence for Greek Catholic nuns. Like many here, he sees no end to
the war and is desperate to leave. Sam Dagher/The Wall Street Journal
To keep busy and make some income, he rented a space near Jdaideh and
set up a workshop making handbags. “Before I used to make 1,000 pieces
a day for export to all Arab countries; now it’s 50 a day just for the
local market,” he said.
He apologized for the sight of young boys at the workshop helping
stitch handbags. “Normally this should not happen, but what to do?
Most kids are out of school,” he said.
Indeed, everywhere in Aleppo these days, young children can be seen
working on the streets and in markets and shops. Many say they have
been displaced by the war and have become breadwinners for their
families.
Some of the displaced can be found in schools like Suleiman Khater
elementary, which sits on the front line in Salahuddin, a
working-class neighborhood on the southwestern side of the city. It
was one of the first areas captured by rebels when they launched their
offensive. Since then, the regime has retaken a small section of it.
Everything here is a reminder of war. Checkpoints prevent vehicles
from entering the area for fear of car bombs. Several storefronts have
been converted into military outposts. Mounds of earth, rusting
barrels and large plastic sheets separate rebels from regime forces.
Principal Sobhi Abdul-Aziz told me that more than half of his nearly
1,300 students had been displaced from the rebel-held east.
The walls of his school are sprayed with bullet holes. Nearby are
residential buildings with entire floors collapsed due to shelling and
bombardment.
Bullet holes riddle the walls of the Suleiman Khater elementary school
in Salahuddin, a working-class neighborhood in southwestern Aleppo.
“We are trying to make kids forget guns,” says the school’s principal,
Sobhi Abdul-Aziz. Sam Dagher/The Wall Street Journal
Syria’s daily flag raising and national anthem ceremony is still
mandatory at all schools in regime-held parts of the country, but Mr.
Abdul-Aziz said he skips the ritual in order not to antagonize rebels
hunkered down a few yards away. He also limits the time children spend
in the courtyard, fearing they may be caught in the crossfire.
“We are trying to make kids forget guns,” the 55-year-old said. “Our
goal is to try to save an entire generation from being completely
lost.”
From: A. Papazian
http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2014/05/02/aleppo-diary-stories-from-the-front-lines/