Thursday, August 11, 2016

The siege of Allepo has existed for four years. The Russians want to end it.

There is a conflict between the battle for Allepo and humantarian efforts. The military is concerned that a 48 hour cease fire will allow Daesh too much time to reconstitute for the next round of assault ending the seige.

The Russian jets have destroyed the training grounds for Daesh. The assault has goals and it is to end the stronghold in Allepo. The Russians need to place soldiers within the humanitarian caravan to provide insight to the military to allow humanitarian aid. It would be dangerous to place Assad forces among the NGOs. They would become targets. Maybe UN peacekeepers might be better. I would think if the majority of the targets were taken down, the NGOs could proceed within those areas if they were secured with ground forces.

May 10, 2016
...Back in Paris and London (click here) this week to discuss Syria with his European counterparts, Kerry has a hard time inspiring confidence in US diplomacy to find a solution to the country’s six-year-old civil war – a confrontation in which 400,000 have perished so far and created one of the greatest humanitarian crises since the end of the second world war.
The fate of Syria is held hostage by criminal warlords and a ruthless regime with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Rival neighbouring states supply the resources, the weapons, and much of the impetus that fuels the conflict and prolongs it. Scores of radical armed factions are more committed to battling each other than Bashar al-Assad, leading to the fragmentation of the opposition and the spreading of chaos on the battlefields....

The assault is ending a stalemate that has existed for too long. There is little to no diplomatic in roads that are succeeding.

August 11, 2016

...The offensive sought (click here) to break a siege by pro-government forces, who encircled the east in July with the support of Russian aircraft.
Earlier some of the last doctors in the rebel-held east of the city appealed to US President Barack Obama to come to the aid of the 250,000 civilians there.
They said that in the past month there had been 42 attacks on medical facilities in Syria, 15 of them on hospitals where they work.
On Monday, the UN said countless civilians had been killed or injured in Aleppo in recent weeks and hospitals and clinics had continued to be targeted.
Moreover, attacks on civilian infrastructure had left more than two million people without electricity or access to the public water network for several days, it added.