Even a slaughterhouse is more humane.
IMAGINE GOING TO BED at night knowing that bombs will rain from the sky before sunrise.
Imagine having no access to running water or electricity, or no guarantee that when you leave your home you won’t be shot by a rooftop sniper.
Imagine living in a decimated apartment block where your neighbors have gone so long without eating they’ve resorted to cooking leaves plucked from trees.
Welcome to Aleppo, Syria — the epicenter of the world’s bloodiest and most complicated conflict.
For more than five years, government forces loyal to strongman Bashar Assad have battled an array of rebels and Islamist extremist groups across Syria.
What began as internal unrest has morphed into a full-blown and ongoing international clash — a proxy war entangling the U.S. and a half-dozen other nations, all with competing interests.
The result is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in decades. Since 2011, the conflict has claimed the lives of an estimated 500,000 people and displaced more than 10 million.
“Imagine a slaughterhouse,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Kimoon said last week, referring to Aleppo. “This is worse. Even a slaughterhouse is more humane.”
The UN chief spoke out days after an uneasy ceasefire once again exploded into violence.
Syrian government forces and their Russian allies launched a punishing assault on the rebel-held areas of Aleppo that stretched into Saturday.
Now the conflict – which also involves Britain, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Islamic State terror group – is showing no sign of letting up, experts told the Daily News.
“Everybody involved in the war is looking at a series of dilemmas in which none of the options look all that great,” said Stephen Biddle, a defense expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Wars of this kind are really, really ugly. They typically involve very high casualty rates, lots and lots of refugees and they drag on – sometimes for decades.”
The roots of the conflict can be traced to the remote southern city of Daraa, just a few miles from the Jordanian border.
It was here, in early March 2011, that at least 15 boys were arrested after spraypainting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. The arrests came at a heady time in Syria and across the Middle East.
The Arab Spring was in bloom — the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt had just been forced out — and people across the region were clamoring for democratic rule.
Demonstrators calling for the release of political prisoners took to the streets in Daraa – an unusual event in a country where acts of defiance against the government had always been met with force. The response was swift — and brutal. Security forces opened fire on a group of demonstrators, killing four and triggering larger protests across the country. Amid the growing unrest, Assad offered a rare olive branch, releasing dozens of political prisoners.
But the mostly-peaceful demonstrations continued, and government forces cracked down with gunfire, beatings, arrests. “There was some hope in the early days and weeks of the Syria uprising that Assad might acknowledge a need for change and reform, but they were false hopes,” said Andrew Parasiliti, director of the RAND Center for Global Risk & Security.
“Assad’s response to the widespread demonstrations was instead defiant, old school, violent.”
President Obama called on Assad to step down in Aug. 2011. The Syrian dictator, to almost no one’s surprise, ignored the demand.
By the summer of 2012, dozens of antiAssad rebel groups had agreed to form a loose coalition known as the Free Syrian Army. Assad denounced the opposition as terrorists backed by outside actors and bent on sowing chaos.
The overmatched rebels engaged in pitched battles with government troops in the densely-populated cities of Homs, Jisr al-Shughour and Aleppo.