Hope returns to eastern Aleppo – which Assad forces all but extinguished

Published

2 months ago

December 21, 2024

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Syrian and Russian forces unleashed all they could on eastern Aleppo. For four years they battled to bring Syria’s second city under Bashar al Assad’s full control.

By December 2016 when the regime finally ceased fire after a devastating siege and bombardment, civilian life there was all but extinguished.

Dr Obeid Diab wants to show us what it looks like when a barrel bomb hits.

We bump into him on the street, coming, as he often does, to check on what’s left of his apartment.

At 84 years old and smartly dressed in a long, dark overcoat, he cuts an incongruous figure against the desolate, ruined shards of destroyed buildings and the cascades of rubble.

“A barrel bomb fell here,” he says, gesturing to the wasteland. “We weren’t here thank god. We were out visiting friends.”

‘We buried children with our bare hands’

Barrel bombs are pretty much what they sound like – barrel-shaped cylinders filled with explosives, shrapnel, chemicals, whatever is to hand, dropped from a plane or helicopter.

The regime would improvise. Indiscriminate damage, minimum cost. Assad denied their use, but it was ubiquitous in Syria.

This one killed Dr Diab’s nine-year-old niece. He said he had to bury her and other children in the neighbourhood with his bare hands.

“They would hit indiscriminately. The jets would fly over and the bombs would drop. Whether or not the wind blows it here or there, you don’t know. Is there a specific target in mind? No, I don’t think so. They just hit and go.”

The horrors didn’t end when the bombardment stopped, though he stopped working as a paediatrician for fear the regime would come after doctors who had been working in the east.

They came for him anyway, because he refused to act as an informer, he says. He was imprisoned for 50 days, a man in his 80s, then kept under house arrest.

“The prison was so dirty and so crowded. We would have to sleep on our sides, stacked up next to one another in a tiny room. And the lice and the scabies… I can’t even begin to describe it,” he says.

“I remember once seeing a friend and saying I wanted to be in the same room as him. And the officer says, ‘you want to be in the same room as him? He’s going to be locked up forever. Is that what you want?’ Detainees were just numbers to them.”

We climb the stairs towards what’s left of his apartment, past sacks of chickpeas and boxes of rice from the World Food Programme gathering dust. A pair of slippers are placed neatly beside a large carpet with UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) written on it.

The rest is faded elegance, a hint of old Aleppo. Dr Diab has been trying to repair what he can in the back room which was most heavily damaged.

Sometimes he still sleeps in his bed though the flat is too dangerous to live in full-time. “Who in their right mind would leave their home behind?” he says.

Fears of ISIS – but hope HTS will bring stability

Everyone we meet has a story, each as horrifying as the last. Ali on the street outside is wearing a woollen beret knitted in the colours of the revolutionary flag.

He is younger, of fighting age. He looks haunted, as do the gaggle of children around him who’ve been playing in the rubble. He is their uncle.

He says he stayed in his home on that street in eastern Aleppo all the way through the siege in 2016 and for as long as he could after that, when regime militias were in control of the area.

“We didn’t dare even walk down that road. If we did, they’d rob us, they’d take our belongings. They’d stop you, take your money and accuse you of being armed.”

He was then jailed for three years, first at the air force intelligence base in Aleppo and then with military intelligence in Damascus. When he was released they made him serve in the army. Now he is finally home.

I ask him if he thinks the fighting will stop and if he fears a resurgence of Islamic State (IS), which the US says is gathering itself for a resurgence in Syria’s north east.

“We really hope that more stability comes and that Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) has authority over all of Syria, especially over those guys. We don’t want more problems.”

Bombed-out streets bustling again

The commerce that made Aleppo one of the world’s great historic trading cities is trickling back to the east.

Major roads are as lively and chaotic as they are in western Aleppo, bustling with traffic and stalls and people hawking all manner of goods.

But look up and the shopkeepers have wedged their awnings and their shawarma grills into broken, bombed-out buildings. Rubble and rubbish line the streets. For some reason, the beggars we see are all women.

This war claimed women and children too, but it was predominantly men who fought across the myriad of factions or who were lost to the regime’s dungeons. Perhaps that is why.

Noah, who runs a perfume shop, says business has been slow since HTS took over.

The exchange rate has seen massive fluctuations. People have been focusing on basic needs, on food and water.

The Kurdish districts in northern Aleppo are still dangerous, sniper fire from Kurdish militia who feel themselves surrounded and besieged has killed around 100 people over the past two weeks.

“It’s not super stable, people are still quite worried especially when it’s dark at night,” Noah says. “People go home as soon as the sun sets.”

But there is hope. Outside Aleppo’s historic citadel, where HTS posed two weeks ago when they took the city before marching south on the capital, children wave the revolutionary flag and marvel at a camel and pony brought out for the tourists.

Aleppo has witnessed brutal chapters before through its long history. Hopefully the next will be less sadistic than the last.

“We were living in a grave before. It was like a rebirth.” Dr Diab told me. “Now we can smell the fresh air. It’s an indescribable feeling.”

World

Meet the soldiers hunting down senior Assad regime leaders who terrorised Syria

Published

1 hour ago

February 13, 2025

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Meet the soldiers hunting down senior Assad regime leaders who terrorised Syria

By the standards of other cities I have been in or visited shortly after a revolution, Damascus seems on the face of it relatively calm.

More often than not, I’d expect masked gunmen to be deployed on every corner, patrolling the streets in groups, or whizzing around on battered trucks, with heavy machine guns at the ready and rocket-propelled grenades strapped to roofs or on the backs of fighters.

But that isn’t the case in Damascus.

There are checkpoints in and out of the city but generally speaking, the militia groups that supported Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which led the takeover of Syria, are keeping a low profile.

Indeed, many have now become part of the newly formed General Security force, and they’re all dressed in matching black uniforms and fatigues.

I’m often asked what Damascus is like now that Bashar al Assad’s regime is gone.

First, I have to admit that apart from a couple of brief visits to Damascus before 2011, once the uprising began, I was either in the west or north of the country with the demonstrators and later the rebel forces – far from the capital.

I was also among a small group of journalists on a wanted list by the regime, so travel to government-controlled areas was a non-starter.

So for me, my visits to Damascus are part discovery, and part depressing confirmation of what I had expected to see, especially the vast suburban areas reduced to rubble by Assad’s security forces with the aid of the Russian military.

My impression is of a city looking to the future but still suffering from its recent bloody history.

Its people are trying to move on, but many remain in the midst of the ruins, and rebuilding remains a distant hope.

Listen: Inside the fall of Assad

‘Syrians have every right to see justice served’

From the Umayyad Square in Damascus, we jumped onto the back of a pick-up truck full of General Security soldiers and sped away through busy traffic and towards a road leading to a hilltop that overlooks the city.

We passed the sprawling presidential palace, built by the Assads, but now under the management of the self-proclaimed “Salvation Government”.

We were meeting the man in charge of security here in the capital, Abdulrahman Dabbagh, a youthful cousin of the country’s new president Ahmed al Sharaa.

He told me that to move forward, Syria must also hunt down the senior leaders of the Syrian regime who terrorised the entire population.

“Syrians have every right to see justice served for those who caused them harm during the reign of this now-defunct regime,” Mr Dabbagh said.

“By nature, every human finds comfort in witnessing accountability, justice, and the rightful reclaiming of what was taken.”

I asked him if it is difficult tracking down those responsible.

“There are assessments, research, and round-the-clock work being done to locate these criminals,” he explained.

“It’s not always about taking direct action against every person we identify, though, we wait for official orders to arrest certain figures.”

‘The torture was endless’

Barely a family in this country was untouched by the regime and its relentless programme of detentions and torture in jails.

Bariya, 63, was detained for 100 days. Her crime? She was accused of cooking food for demonstrators and spying on regime checkpoints in the city of Homs.

Inside her prison, she says torture was the norm, and the memories of the cries of the men still haunt her.

“It would begin as soon as the sun went down. The torture was endless. My husband was not spared – I recognised his cries. They tormented him,” she told me.

“One of the inmates called out to him, shouting that his family was here, the warders heard her, came straight for him, they dragged him away and beat him in the corridor.”

“They tortured him relentlessly, with no regard for his age – he was born in 1955,” she sobbed.

A legacy of pain and death

Bariya is still so afraid of the Assad regime, she won’t show her face or allow us to use her last name.

She was arrested at the height of the anti-Assad protests, along with multiple members of her family. Seven of them died in detention: her husband, one of her sons, two of her brothers, her nephew, a cousin, and the son of her brother-in-law.

To this day she has no idea what happened.

The legacy of the Assad tyranny is pain and death, and this ancient country’s recent history is still raw for so many.

Consigning it to the history books is going to take some time.

World

Ukraine war: European countries back Kyiv as Trump says peace negotiations with Russia to start ‘immediately’

Published

1 hour ago

February 13, 2025

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Ukraine war: European countries back Kyiv as Trump says peace negotiations with Russia to start 'immediately'

Ukraine must be put in a “position of strength”, European countries including Britain, France and Germany have said as Donald Trump prepares to open peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin.

The US president said an agreement had been reached about starting talks after he made phone calls to the Russian leader and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

European countries also including Poland, Italy, and Spain issued a joint statement saying they would work with the United States on Ukraine’s future.

“We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies,” they said.

“Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength.

“A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security.”

It is the US president’s first big step towards diplomacy over a conflict which he promised to end within 24 hours of being inaugurated.

“We both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Mr Trump posted on Truth Social following discussions with Russia’s president.

He said the pair would “work together, very closely” towards winding down the conflict and “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

A Kremlin spokesperson said Mr Putin and Mr Trump had agreed to meet, with the Russian president inviting the US leader to visit Moscow.

Ukraine latest: Trump’s plan to end war

“President Putin, for his part, mentioned the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict and agreed with Trump that a long-term settlement can be achieved through peaceful negotiations,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president wrote on X that he had a “meaningful conversation” by phone with Mr Trump to discuss “opportunities to achieve peace” and the preparation of a document governing security and economic cooperation.

“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace,” he said.

Mr Trump added that his phone conversation with Mr Zelenskyy “went very well”, suggesting that “he [Mr Zelenskyy], like President Putin, wants to make PEACE”.

On social media, the US president said: “It is time to stop this ridiculous war, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”

Trump’s bombshell phone call

Dominic Waghorn

International affairs editor

@DominicWaghorn

Some of the fundamental principles underlying Western security and prosperity were today abandoned or weakened by the Trump administration.

After 80 years of underwriting security in Europe, America told Europeans they can’t take that for granted anymore.

The principle that aggression cannot be rewarded has been central to the post-war world order.

Today the US told Ukrainians, that Russians will be able to keep some of the land they have taken by force.

A principle of US policy for the last three years has been the West would not negotiate unless Ukraine was involved.

Trump seemed to undermine that commitment today. Read more from Dominic here.

On Wednesday, the US defence secretary delivered a blunt statement on the new US administration’s approach to the nearly three-year-old war.

Speaking at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Pete Hegseth said a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was unrealistic and the US did not see NATO membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he said.

Separately, the US and Russia agreed to a prisoner swap. America freed a Russian cybercrime boss in return for Moscow’s release of schoolteacher Marc Fogel, a US official said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile at a White House news conference on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she was “not aware of” Mr Trump putting any preconditions on his meeting with Mr Putin.

Mr Trump said the peace negotiations will be led by secretary of state Marco Rubio, director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, national security advisor Michael Waltz, and ambassador Steve Witkoff.

World

Ukraine war: Donald Trump says peace negotiations with Russia to start ‘immediately’

Published

10 hours ago

February 12, 2025

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Ukraine war: Donald Trump says peace negotiations with Russia to start 'immediately'

Donald Trump says there has been agreement to begin negotiations about ending the war in Ukraine, after holding phone calls with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

It is the US president’s first big step towards diplomacy over a conflict which he promised to end within 24 hours of being inaugurated.

“We both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine,” Mr Trump posted on Truth Social following discussions with Russia’s president.

He said the pair would “work together, very closely” towards winding down the conflict and “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

A Kremlin spokesperson said Mr Putin and Mr Trump had agreed to meet, with the Russian president inviting the US leader to visit Moscow.

Ukraine latest: Trump’s plan to end war

“No one wants peace more than Ukraine. Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace,” he said.

Mr Trump added that his phone conversation with Mr Zelenskyy “went very well”, suggesting that “he [Mr Zelenskyy], like President Putin, wants to make PEACE”.

On social media, the US president said: “It is time to stop this ridiculous War, where there has been massive, and totally unnecessary, DEATH and DESTRUCTION. God bless the people of Russia and Ukraine!”

Trump’s bombshell phone call

Dominic Waghorn

International affairs editor

@DominicWaghorn

Trump’s bombshell phone call leaves questions unanswered.

He says there have been NATO efforts all day to stop the damage to unity done by defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who said it’s unrealistic that Ukraine will get all of its land back in a peace deal or join NATO.

That impression of unity is crumbling.

Trump’s call with Putin is a break from three years of firm determination by NATO members to be united behind the principle of not talking about Ukraine without Ukraine.

The president’s announcement that Russian and US teams will start negotiations does not make clear whether they are bilateral talks or involve Kyiv.

Donald Trump seems to have made commitments in that phone call with Putin that the Russians expect him to hold himself to – what are those commitments?

On Wednesday, the US defence secretary delivered a blunt statement on the new US administration’s approach to the nearly three-year-old war.

“Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” he said.

Separately the US and Russia agreed to a prisoner swap. America freed a Russian cybercrime boss in return for Moscow’s release of schoolteacher Marc Fogel, a US official said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile at a White House news conference on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she was “not aware of” Mr Trump putting any preconditions on his meeting with Mr Putin.

Mr Trump said the peace negotiations will be led by secretary of state Marco Rubio, director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, national security advisor Michael Waltz, and ambassador Steve Witkoff.