How one Aleppo neighborhood continues to defy siege of Syria’s Assad

Special How one Aleppo neighborhood continues to defy siege of Syria’s Assad
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Updated 31 January 2023
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How one Aleppo neighborhood continues to defy siege of Syria’s Assad

How one Aleppo neighborhood continues to defy siege of Syria’s Assad
  • Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maksoud has been in the news since a five-story residential building collapsed there on Jan. 22
  • Syrian army’s Fourth Division has blocked vital deliveries of food, fuel and medicine to the enclave since March 2022

ALEPPO, Syria: At 2:30 a.m. on January 22, Sheikh Maksoud, a Kurdish-majority neighborhood in Syria’s Aleppo, was struck by tragedy. A five-story residential building collapsed, burying dozens of residents under a mountain of rubble.

After round-the-clock rescue efforts, 16 bodies were recovered and two survivors were brought to the neighborhood’s hospital for treatment. According to state media, the structure’s foundations had been weakened by water leakage.

For residents of Sheikh Maksoud, this is just the latest in a litany of disasters as the neighborhood struggles to survive under a crushing siege imposed by opposition and regime groups alike.

Over the past decade, Aleppo has been transformed from a once-thriving trade, travel and cultural hub into a battleground, leaving much of the city in ruins.

Slowly, as the frontline moved elsewhere, Syria’s second-biggest city began to rebuild. However, Sheikh Maksoud, an autonomous enclave on the northwestern edge of the city, continues to fight for its life.




A family of internally displaced persons cooks a meal in Serdem Camp in Shahba, located between Afrin and Aleppo. AN Photo by Ali Ali

With half of the 2-square-kilometer neighborhood left destroyed after years of fighting between opposition groups and the neighborhood’s self-defense militias, the people of Sheikh Maksoud have done their best to continue living life as normal.

Over the past year, one force has been particularly brutal in depriving the neighborhood’s residents of everything from medicine to fuel and even food — the regime’s Iran-backed Fourth Division.

With winter biting, residents are struggling to cope.

“We’ve been burning trash because there is no fuel. It gave me a chest infection. I’ve been to the hospital twice this week,” said one resident of Sheikh Maksoud when Arab News visited the neighborhood in December.

Merai Sibli, a member of the General Council of Sheikh Maksoud and Ashrafiyah, said fuel had not reached the neighborhood for more than 50 days, with residents often receiving an hour or less of electricity per day as their private generators run empty.

“We can’t get fuel. Children and the elderly can’t cope with the cold,” said Sibli. “They don’t even allow medicine to pass here. What is allowed to pass is very expensive. Six months ago, they cut off our flour, and all bakeries were closed for nearly 20 days.”

According to Sibli, the Fourth Division demands up to SYP2.5 million (more than $380) for every fuel truck which enters the neighborhood — a heavy price, considering the average monthly salary in Syria is just SYP150,000 (approximately $23).

“Soon our workshops and tailors will shut down because they are without electricity, and in the end, all of our youth will be out of work and forced to sit at home in the dark.”

The Fourth Division has roots going back to the 1980s, when Hafez Assad’s brother Rifaat fled the country and his paramilitary group, Defense Companies, dissolved into several militia groups.

The Fourth Division would eventually form out of these groups, and was later used to crush uprisings in Deraa, Baniyas, Idlib and Homs from the outset of the Syrian crisis. A Human Rights Watch Report from 2011 documents the Fourth Division’s participation in several abuses, including arbitrary detentions and the killing of protesters.

The de facto commander of the division is Maher Assad, the younger brother of Syria’s President Bashar Assad. According to an investigation by the Lebanese Al-Modon newspaper, the Fourth Division has been enjoying Iranian support — material, financial and advisory — since the start of Iran’s intervention in the Syrian civil war.

FASTFACTS

• Sheikh Maksoud is under the control of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

• Many buildings in Aleppo were destroyed or damaged during Syria’s 11-year conflict.

• Aleppo is Syria’s second largest city and was its commercial center before its destruction.

Early on in the conflict, the Syrian military was overwhelmed by defections and internal conflict, an effect from which the Fourth Division was not spared. As with many other units in the Syrian army, the Fourth Division was forced to rely on Iranian militias to bolster its strength.

The Fourth Division’s siege is not limited to Sheikh Maksoud. It extends to the city’s northern countryside, in the Shahba region, between Afrin and Aleppo. Shahba includes the town of Tel Rifaat (with a population of approximately 18,500, of which 15,700 are internally displaced persons, or IDPs) and five camps, which are all home to thousands of IDPs from the Afrin region.

At some regime checkpoints in Shahba, photos of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are displayed next to photos of Bashar and Hafez Assad.

“No one is joining the Syrian military anymore. Their soldiers are all Iranian mercenaries. When those mercenaries come here, their aim is to take everything and share it with the state,” Muhammad Hanan, the co-chair of the Tel Rifaat district, told Arab News.

Hanan explained that the Iranian militia presence in the Shahba region serves mainly to protect the Shiite majority towns of Nubl and Zahraa, between Tel Rifaat and Aleppo. 

From 2013 to 2016, the region was controlled by opposition groups, which were ousted by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units, or YPG. At that time, Syrian state military presence was mainly limited to small towns and villages in the area.




The Iran-backed Fourth Division’s siege is not limited to Sheikh Maksoud but extends to the Shahba area. AN Photo by Ali Ali

However, after the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018, government forces — and consequently, Iranian mercenaries — began to grow in number on the pretext of protecting the region from Turkish-backed opposition groups.

“In the end, they are not defending anything. Until now, the Syrian state takes every opportunity to weaken us and take over all of Shahba,” Hanan said.

Hanan and other local officials told Arab News that regime checkpoints block vital aid from the UN and other NGOs from reaching the region.

“The regime’s Fourth Division has closed the roads. If you want to bring something from outside, like fuel or propane, you have to give them a cut,” Dr. Azad Resho, administrator of Avrin Hospital in Shahba, told Arab News.

“It’s the same with the medicine. It has to come from the regime side. When international health organizations give aid to Syria, because the Syrian regime has status, all aid has to come through the regime.

“There are also international forces here, like Russia and Iran. It is all a political game. Even if the regime were to give aid, it must be in the interests of these forces. Because of this, we have become the victims of politics.”

Hassan, an administrator in the Shahba branch of the Kurdish Red Crescent, told Arab News: “The situation is terrible. There is no medicine at all. We just deal with emergency cases. We have no dermatologists, no nephrologists, and we have no equipment such as MRI machines.

“For patients with these needs, we have to send them to Aleppo. That has its own problems; the regime often prevents these people from entering (the city).”




A file photo from January 2017 shows Syrians walking past a poster of President Bashar Assad in Aleppo’s Saadallah Al-Jabiri Square. AFP

Under the suffocating embargo of Sheikh Maksoud and the Shahba region, however, there is one commodity that the Fourth Division appears happy to allow into these areas — drugs.

Last year, a New York Times investigation discovered that the Fourth Division was responsible for the production and distribution of Captagon pills and crystal meth across Syria, with the division moving the drugs to border crossings and port cities.

“Just recently, we confiscated and burned 124 kg of hashish. These 124 kg were brought in by the Syrian regime — by the Fourth Division, Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups. They attempted to bring it in containers of oil,” Qehreman, an official in the Internal Security Forces of Sheikh Maksoud, told Arab News.

“They want to bring some things in, especially narcotic pills, with their members, and spread them among the people.”

Sibli said that despite the siege, “our people are very resilient.”

“Does the regime want us to lose and return us to the year 2007? They insist we must all be under one flag, one language and one leader.

“Because we in Sheikh Maksoud want coexistence and brotherhood of the peoples, the regime doesn’t accept us. But of course, people who have found their freedom will never return to the regime’s embrace.”


The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London

The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London
Updated 06 December 2023
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The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London

The Gaza Strip: Tiny, cramped and as densely populated as London
  • Gaza has a population density of about 14,000 people per square mile (5,500 per square kilometer)

GAZA: The war between Israel and Hamas has seen fierce Israeli bombardment that has flattened broad swaths of the Gaza Strip. Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
And all that is happening in a tiny, densely populated coastal enclave.
Gaza is tucked among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. The strip is 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by some 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide. It has 2.3 million people living in an area of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), according to the CIA Factbook.
That’s about the same land size as Detroit, a city that has a population of 620,000, according to the US Census Bureau. It’s about twice the size of Washington and 3½ times the size of Paris.
Gaza has a population density of about 14,000 people per square mile (5,500 per square kilometer). That’s about the same as London, a city brimming with high-rise buildings, but also many parks. Gaza has few open spaces, especially in its cities, due to lack of planning and urban sprawl.
Gaza’s density is even tighter in its urban cores like Gaza City or Khan Younis, where tens of thousands are packed into cramped neighborhoods and where density rates become more comparable to certain cities in highly populated Asia.
An Israeli-Egyptian blockade, imposed after the Hamas militant group seized power in 2007, has greatly restricted movement in and out of Gaza, adding to the sense of overcrowding.
 

 


’Living dead’: Tunisian villages suffer drought, climate change

’Living dead’: Tunisian villages suffer drought, climate change
Updated 06 December 2023
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’Living dead’: Tunisian villages suffer drought, climate change

’Living dead’: Tunisian villages suffer drought, climate change
  • About 300,000 of Tunisia’s 12 million people have no drinking water in their homes, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights

OULED OMAR, Tunisia: Tunisian villager Ounissa Mazhoud ties two empty jerry cans to a donkey and cautiously descends a stony hill toward the last local source of water.
The North African country, in its fourth year of drought, is grappling with its worst water scarcity in years.
Mazhoud — like other women in the remote village of Ouled Omar, 180 kilometers (110 miles) southwest of the capital Tunis — wakes up every morning with one thing on her mind: finding water.
“We are the living dead ... forgotten by everyone,” said Mazhoud, 57, whose region was once one of Tunisia’s most fertile, known for its wheat fields and Aleppo pines.
“We have no roads, no water, no aid, no decent housing, and we own nothing,” she said, adding that the closest source of water is a river about an hour’s arduous walk away.
Providing water for their families, she said, means that “our backs, heads and knees hurt, because we labor from dawn to dusk.”

The World Bank predicts that by 2030 the Middle East and North Africa region will fall below the “absolute water scarcity” threshold of 500 cubic meters yearly per person.
Tunisia, already the 33rd most water-stressed country according to the World Resources Institute, has dropped to 450 cubic meters per inhabitant.
Its dams — the primary source for drinking water and irrigating crops — are filled at just 22 percent capacity, despite brief showers recently, according to official figures.
Some 20 dams have already gone out of service, mostly in the most arid south.
Last spring, Tunisian authorities introduced water rationing to limit household use even in major cities.
But in remote villages, where water scarcity impacts crucial farming and livestock, the issue takes on even greater weight.
Ounissa’s 65-year-old husband, Mahmoud Mazhoud, said their village has become unable to support livestock, forcing him to sell half of his cow herd so he could afford to keep the rest alive.
Ouled Omar is home to 22 families who share the only remaining spring.
They say it yields only about 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water per day in total, but that it is undrinkable.

Ramzi Sebtaoui, a stockbreeder in his thirties, brings water to his family every day by driving to the closest source, some 20 kilometers away in the city of Maktar.
“Two or three years ago, the situation was much better, with many natural sources of water that we could use for livestock,” he said.
“Today, due to climate change and other factors, almost all sources have dried up, and the roads are destroyed.”
Last week, Ouled Omar residents traveled almost 50 kilometers to the city of Siliana to protest outside governorate offices, demanding a paved road and access to clean water.
“They don’t have a source of drinking water, not even taps,” Houda Mazhoud, a researcher who has been advocating for Ouled Omar’s access to clean water for years, told AFP.
“As a result, they use a natural source. But with climate change, it’s starting to disappear.”

The only road that leads to the village is decrepit and hasn’t been paved in decades, and residents say this only deepens their sense of isolation.
Some villagers have felt pushed to move to urban areas or abroad.
About 300,000 of Tunisia’s 12 million people have no drinking water in their homes, according to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.
Ounissa’s cousin, Djamila Mazhoud, 60, said her son and two daughters had all left in search of better lives.
“We educated our children so that when we grow old, they take care of us, but they couldn’t,” she said.
“People are either unemployed or eaten by the fish in the sea,” she added, using a common phrase for migrants who attempt the dangerous sea voyages for Europe.
Entire families have already left the village, said Djamila.
“Their houses remain empty,” she said, explaining that elderly people feel they have no choice but to follow their sons and daughters.
“Can an 80-year-old go to the river to get water?“

 


Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty

Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty
Updated 06 December 2023
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Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty

Detained Iran protesters raped, sexually assaulted: Amnesty

PARIS: Members of the Iranian security forces raped and used other forms of sexual violence against women and men detained in the crackdown on nationwide protests that erupted from September 2022, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
Amnesty said in a report it had documented 45 such cases of rape, gang rape or sexual violence against protesters. With cases in more than half of Iran’s provinces, it expressed fear these documented violations appeared part of a “wider pattern.”
“Our research exposes how intelligence and security agents in Iran used rape and other sexual violence to torture, punish and inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on protesters, including children as young as 12,” Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said.
The London-based organization said it had shared its findings with the Iranian authorities on November 24 “but has thus far received no response.”
The protests began in Iran in September 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22. Her family says she was killed by a blow to the head but this has always been disputed by the Iranian authorities.
After rattling Iran’s clerical leadership, the movement lost momentum by the end of that year in the face of a fierce crackdown that left hundreds dead, according to rights activists, and thousands arrested, according to the United Nations.
Amnesty said 16 of the 45 cases documented in the report were of rape, including six women, seven men, a 14-year-old girl, and two boys aged 16 and 17.
Six of them — four women and two men — were gang raped by up to 10 male agents, it said.
It said the sexual assaults were carried out by members of the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij force, agents of the intelligence ministry, as well as police officers.
The rapes on women and men were carried out with “wooden and metal batons, glass bottles, hosepipes, and/or agents’ sexual organs and fingers,” it said.
As well as the 16 rape victims, Amnesty said it documented the cases of 29 victims of other forms of sexual violence such as the beating of breasts and genitals, enforced nudity, and inserting needles or applying ice to men’s testicles.
It said it collected the testimony through interviews with the victims and other witnesses, conducted remotely via secure communications platforms.
“The harrowing testimonies we collected point to a wider pattern in the use of sexual violence as a key weapon in the Iranian authorities’ armory of repression of the protests and suppression of dissent to cling to power at all costs,” said Callamard.
One woman, named only as Maryam, who was arrested and held for two months after removing her headscarf in a protest, told Amnesty she was raped by two agents during an interrogation.
“He (the interrogator) called two others to come in and told them ‘It’s time’. They started ripping my clothes. I was screaming and begging them to stop.
“They violently raped me in my vagina with their sexual organs and raped me anally with a drink bottle. Even animals don’t do these things,” she was quoted by the group as saying.
A man named as Farzad told Amnesty that plain clothes agents gang raped him and another male protester, Shahed, while they were inside a vehicle.
“They pulled down my trousers and raped me. I couldn’t scream out. I was really being ripped apart... I was throwing up a lot, and was bleeding from my rectum when I went to the toilet,” said Farzad who was released without charge a few days later.
Amnesty said most victims did not file complaints against the assault for fear of further consequences, and those who did tell prosecutors were ignored.
“With no prospects for justice domestically, the international community has a duty to stand with the survivors and pursue justice,” said Callamard.


Israel not doing enough to allow fuel, aid into Gaza -US

An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
Updated 06 December 2023
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Israel not doing enough to allow fuel, aid into Gaza -US

An ambulance is stopped by Israeli army forces during a raid in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank December 5, 2023.
  • Israeli forces stormed southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, and hospitals struggled to cope with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded

WASHINGTON: Israel needs to do more to allow fuel and other aid into Gaza, the United States said on Tuesday as Israel’s offensive against Hamas in southern areas of the Palestinian enclave intensified.
“The level of assistance that’s getting in is not sufficient,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing. “It needs to go up, and we’ve made that clear to the government of Israel.”
On Monday, 100 humanitarian aid trucks and about 69,000 liters of fuel were delivered to Gaza from Egypt, the United Nations said, about the same as Sunday.
“This is well below the daily average of 170 trucks and 110,000 liters of fuel that had entered during the humanitarian pause that took place between 24 and 30 November,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Tuesday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his third trip to the Middle East since the Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, last week pressed the Israeli government to increase the flow of aid and to minimize civilian harm in its offensive against Hamas.
Israeli forces stormed southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis on Tuesday, and hospitals struggled to cope with scores of Palestinian dead and wounded.
In what appeared to be the biggest ground assault in Gaza since a truce with Hamas unraveled last week, Israel said its troops — who were backed by warplanes — had reached the heart of Khan Younis and were surrounding the city
A World Health Organization official in Gaza said on Tuesday the situation was deteriorating by the hour.

 

 


UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels
Updated 06 December 2023
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UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UN food agency stops deliveries to millions in Yemen areas controlled by Houthi rebels

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations food agency said Tuesday it is stopping food distribution in areas of war-torn Yemen controlled by the Houthi rebels, a move that will impact millions of people.
The World Food Program said the “pause” was driven by limited funding and the lack of agreement with the rebel authorities on downscaling the program to match the agency’s resources.
“This difficult decision, made in consultation with donors, comes after nearly a year of negotiations, during which no agreement was reached to reduce the number of people served from 9.5 million to 6.5 million,” WFP said in a statement.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said WFP has tried unsuccessfully “to establish a system that is safe and accountable for the aid going through” to the rebel-held areas.
The war in Yemen has raged for eight years between the Iran-backed Houthis and pro-government forces, backed by a coalition of Gulf Arab states. The Houthis swept down from the mountains in 2014, seized much of northern Yemen and the country’s capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government to flee into exile to Saudi Arabia. Since then, more than 150,000 people have been killed by the violence and 3 million have been displaced.
The WFP announcement came as the Houthis have unleashed attacks on ships in the Red Sea, imperiling traffic along one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes, critical to global trade. The Houthis support the Palestinian militant Hamas group and the attacks are linked to the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war.
WFP said food stocks in Houthi-controlled areas “are now almost completely depleted and resuming food assistance, even with an immediate agreement, could take up to as long as four months due to the disruption of the supply chain.”
The Rome-based UN agency said it will continue its other programs, such as nutrition and school feeding projects, to limit the impact of the pause in food distributions. In government-controlled areas of Yemen, WFP said general food distribution will continue “with a heightened focus on the most vulnerable families.”
“Similar prioritization is taking place in nearly half of WFP’s operations around the world as the agency navigates the challenging financial landscape that the entire humanitarian sector is facing,” the agency said.
At the end of October, WFP and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned that acute food insecurity is likely to deteriorate further in Yemen through April 2024. It called for urgent and scaled-up assistance to Yemen and 17 other “hunger hotspots” to protect livelihoods and increase access to food.