There are only three sensible ways to save Aleppo’s people. One is the voluntary departure of the jihadis who, in the words of UN envoy Staffan de Mistura, are holding civilians hostage. One could go further and say they are keeping eastern Aleppo’s civilians as human shields. Why, for example, have most people not left already, given the intensity of Russian bombing: is it that the jihadis are blocking people’s escape? Syria is also mired in a propaganda war, and in the heart-rending images that the rebels put out on social media about life and death in Aleppo, the seamier side of the armed groups’ control is suppressed.
Hundreds of civilians recently left the besieged Damascus suburb of Daraya after the rebels gave in, with no reprisals from Assad forces. Gunmen were even allowed to keep their weapons and were taken by buses to rebel-held areas in the north.
The second option is for Syrian government forces to retake the whole city, just as Iraqi forces retook jihadi-held Ramadi and Falluja in recent months. Iraqi barrel bombs and US airstrikes had left three-quarters of those cities in ruins, but civilians got the chance to rebuild their lives.
The concept of an Assad victory will stick in the throats of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have lost so much in the fight against him. But if the secular multicultural tolerance of pre-war Syria is to be restored, it is better to deny victory to the Sunni extremists who pose the main opposition to Assad, whether it is Islamic State, the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra or similar groups.
The third option is a ceasefire. Last month’s Russian-US agreement provided for the superpowers to separate the al-Nusra fighters from those Syrian Islamists prepared to negotiate with Assad’s representatives in Geneva for a coalition government.
The ceasefire never took hold because the Islamists refused to split. Al-Nusra understandably did not want to be isolated and left vulnerable to a joint US-Russian air campaign. So they used their dominance among the Aleppo fighters to press the other groups to stick with them. For their part, the non-Nusra fighters feared an alliance between the Americans, the Russians and Assad’s army.
