Aleppans stretched to limit in war for Syrian city
By Hamza Hendawi, AP, Oct 23, 2012
ALEPPO, Syria (AP)—The rumble of engines in the sky immediately set the Aleppo neighborhood below on edge. Men peeked from shops anxiously at the Syrian warplane circling slowly overhead. Housewives emerged on balconies to gauge whether they were about to be hit. But the kids hanging out on the street were unfazed. One kept dribbling his basketball.
Finally, the jet struck. Engines revving louder, it dove and unleashed a burst of heavy machine-gunfire into a nearby part of the city. It soared back up under a hail of rebel anti-aircraft fire, then swooped back down for a second strafing run.
With death lurking around every corner, the survival instincts of Aleppo’s population are being stretched to the limit every day as the battle between Syria’s rebels and the regime of President Bashar Assad for the country’s largest city stretches through its fourth destructive month. Residents in the rebel-held neighborhoods suffering the war’s brunt tell tales of lives filled with fear over the war in their streets, along with an ingenuity and resilience in trying to keep their shattered families going.
And while residents of the rebel-held areas express their hatred of Assad’s regime and their dream of seeing him go, they also voice their worries over the rebels and the destruction that their offensive has brought to their city. Graffiti on the shutter of a closed store declares the population’s sense of resignation: “God, you are all we’ve got.”
Since the rebels launched their assault in July to drive government forces from Aleppo, the two sides have fought to a stalemate. Each holds about half the city of 3 million people and neither is able to deal the other a decisive blow. While government-held areas have seen some fighting from occasional rebel forays, the opposition districts are hit daily by artillery, mortars, sniper fire and airstrikes. Hundreds of civilians have been randomly killed by shells or mortars while waiting in bread lines, shopping for food or in their homes.
Rebels drive the dusty streets at breakneck speed, ferrying the wounded to a field hospital. Thoroughfares packed with cars one moment abruptly empty out—a sign that up ahead a sniper is active.
Men methodically scavenge in the city’s heaps of garbage, many of which smolder from unsuccessful attempts to completely burn them. Entire city blocks are eerily deserted, the mounds of debris from the apartment buildings a testimony to bombardments that drove residents to flee. Grim-faced families piling up belongings onto a pickup truck or a taxi to ferry them to a new home and a new life away from danger are a common sight.
Signs around the city advertise basements for rent, where many families crowd for relative safety.
Bab el-Sheaar Square, located near one of the city’s many front lines, shows the destruction to the once vibrant life that distinguished Aleppo, Syria’s capital of commerce.
Oblivious to the rattle of machine-gun fire and the whistle of mortar rounds landing only 100 or 200 meters away, a 12-year-old boy bicycled across the square, heading home from a visit to his cousins just as the shelling picked up. “I am not afraid,” the boy, Younis, declared. “I only fear God.”
Another boy, 14-year-old Ahmed, pushed his cart selling sahlab, a hot, milky drink with nuts. With few people in the square, he wasn’t finding many customers.
The owner of a household goods store near the square was looking to salvage his business.
“I am renting a new store in an area under government control,” he declared as he cleaned his shelves of blenders, juice makers and water boilers that an employee loaded onto a car. “No one likes to see this destruction, but no one wants the regime to stay either.”
Corrugated-iron store shutters litter the square, blasted off in the fighting. Electrical cables dangle from damaged buildings. Air conditioners hang off their hinges, waiting to take a fatal plunge to the street below. Bullet-riddled shop signs paint a picture of what was once available: “Al-Zein frozen goods. All types of Arabic ice cream” and “Al-Moayed’s cheeses and milk. Natural flavors, perfect quality and nutritional value.”
A poster torn to the ground advertises South Korean mobile phones that come in pink and sky blue, proclaiming, “Add a spark to your life. Your first love.”
Standing in the relative safety beneath the large overpass running through the square, a group of men discussed the war’s impact on their city, from the frequent and lengthy power and water cuts to the steep rise in the price of basic goods like bread, fuel and sugar.
As the men denounced Assad’s regime, 46-year-old agricultural engineer Abdul-Jalil, listened quietly. Then he followed an AP reporter into a side street.
“If you have time, I want to tell you my version of what is going on,” he said in a conspiratorial tone.
“I don’t support the regime, but I am crying rivers of blood for my country,” he began. He described what he called the unruliness of the rebels. The fighters damage people’s homes by knocking down walls to make passages they can move through without exposing themselves to snipers. They steal electrical cables and furniture.
He said rebels had forced him from his home to use as a base—and that they had done the same to others. He now lives elsewhere with his in-laws.
One of his sons is an army soldier based in Damascus, and Ali had to spend a small fortune by the family’s standards—3,500 liras, or about $50 at black market rates—to fly him home to Aleppo to see his family, he said. Coming by road would have risked being abducted or worse at rebel checkpoints.
“I have not had a single day of work since July,” he lamented. His family lives off the debts he collects from farmers he supplied with irrigation pipes on credit.
“What we have now is destruction and theft. Maybe, it is divine punishment for not observing the teachings of our faith,” said Abdul-Jalil, a Muslim.
