Nearing Defeat, Rebels Seek Talks on Fate of Aleppo WSJ Dec 7 16
Truce appeal still requires approval of Syria regime and its major ally Russia
Syrian residents fled violence in eastern rebel-held parts of Aleppo on Wednesday.PHOTO: GEORGE OURFALIAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Syrian rebels on Wednesday proposed a civilian evacuation and negotiations over the future of Aleppo, a stark admission the opposition is all but defeated in a divided city seen as a bellwether in the country’s nearly six-year war.
The Syrian regime and its main military ally Russia would need to agree to the rebel proposal, which called for a 5-day cease-fire. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry planned to raise the rebel proposal during a meeting Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to a Western diplomat and a Western adviser to the Syrian opposition.
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Syrian government forces have captured roughly a third of rebel-held territory in the city of Aleppo in recent weeks, putting the opposition in its weakest position yet. What does Aleppo's potential fall mean for the Syrian regime and its Russian allies, the opposition, and the U.S.? WSJ's Niki Blasina explains. Photo: Getty.
Syria’s foreign ministry said this week that any truce in Aleppo would need to guarantee the withdrawal of all rebels from the city. Withdrawing from Aleppo would cost the faltering opposition its last major urban center and push them toward becoming a primarily rural-based, guerrilla-style insurgency.
“If we leave, then the entire revolution dies,” said Ibrahim Hamo, a military commander in Aleppo with the rebel group Ahrar Syria.
The rebels’ crumbling grip in Aleppo comes as some advisers to President-elect Donald Trump believe the campaign to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has already been lost and that the U.S. should work with Russia to fight Islamic State militants instead.
The rebels have suffered a series of staggering losses in Aleppo over the past 10 days or so as Mr. Assad’s Russian-backed forces have captured neighborhoods the opposition had controlled since 2012. Rebel-held areas of Aleppo have shrunk to about a third of their former size, and hundreds of civilians have been killed in regime and Russian bombardment.
The Battle for Aleppo
Sources: Government and opposition media outlets; staff reports
The opposition proposed the cease-fire to evacuate civilians who want to leave besieged rebel-held neighborhoods, as well as hundreds of wounded. Western and Arab diplomats viewed the proposal as signaling that the fight for Aleppo is nearing an end.
“The only other alternative to this proposal is that there is a last stand and thousands more civilians are massacred by Russia and regime bombardment,” said the Western adviser to the Syrian opposition.
There were nearly 300,000 in opposition-controlled neighborhoods before the latest onslaught began in mid-November. The recent fighting displaced tens of thousands of civilians, including more than 30,000 who fled to regime-held neighborhoods in the western side of Aleppo.
On Wednesday, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and the U.S. issued a joint statement condemning the violence. “Only a political settlement can bring peace for people in Syria,” they said.
Rebels who just days earlier were vowing to fight on were largely resigned and demoralized on Wednesday.
“The situation is like nothing but the Day of Judgement. There are always four or five warplanes above us in the sky and the mortars falls like rain,” said Hassan Sawas, a fighter in Aleppo’s Old City, where the regime made crucial gains in recent days.
“Entire families are under the rubble. The dead civilians are in the streets. No one picks them up and buries them anymore.”
Under the rebel proposal, civilians evacuated from eastern Aleppo would be allowed to go to opposition-held areas in the north of the province.
If fighters were to eventually withdraw from the city in a deal with the regime, they would likely go to the same area and join a continuing Turkish-backed offensive against Islamic State militants, according to the Western adviser to the opposition.
That would represent a shift of those rebels’ primary focus away from trying to overthrow Mr. Assad.
Losing Aleppo could also undermine what international military and political support the rebels still have, which includes some U.S. military aid as well as assistance from Gulf Arab states, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Mohammed Alloush, a member of the opposition’s main negotiating body, said the U.S. has already applied indirect pressure on the rebels to cede to Russia’s demands by reducing military aid it once supplied.
“This sends the message: ‘We cannot help you,’” he said.
Being forced out of their last major urban stronghold could also lead to a crisis of legitimacy, said Emile Hokayem, a Syria analyst at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Syrian government troops patrolled a newly captured neighborhood in eastern Aleppo on Wednesday. PHOTO: GEORGE OURFALIAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
“The rebels’ greatest claim to legitimacy was that they were in Aleppo, they were in Homs, they were in Damascus. Well, they lost all that,” he said. Now they risk being “dismissed as a bunch of angry peasants that can’t do anything for the cities.”
In recent months, rebels and civilians in numerous towns around Damascus, the capital, and in one neighborhood in the central city of Homs have also agreed to surrender and withdraw. The majority were sent to the northwest province of Idlib, the only province predominantly under rebel control, which has been pummeled in recent days by the regime and Russia, killing more than 120 people.
“If their regional and international partners were serious about helping them, Aleppo would have been the place to do it,” Mr. Hokayem.
Russia’s intervention on the side of the regime, which began last year, has dictated the trajectory of the conflict.
Though Russia has said it began launching airstrikes inside Syria to combat terror groups such as Islamic State, the majority of its attacks have targeted moderate rebel factions, many of them backed by the U.S. The Obama administration has condemned such attacks, yet it has made clear it didn’t want to be drawn into what it called a “proxy war” with Russia.
“What Russia and the regime seek to do in Aleppo is actually accelerating the radicalization and transforming these acceptable opposition groups,” said Genevieve Casagrande, a Syria research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, based in Washington. “What Russia and the regime seek to do inside Aleppo city is to constrain U.S. options and to remove potential U.S. partners.”
—Carol E. Lee and Felicia Schwartz contributed to this article.
