BEIRUT – Syria’s government declared Thursday that it had seized full control of Aleppo after the last rebel fighters and civilians evacuated the key city as part of an agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey.
The Syrian military announced on state media that “security and stability” had been returned to Aleppo. The “terrorists” – a term used by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to describe nearly all of its opponents – had fully exited the city, the military said.
The end of an opposition presence in Aleppo – perhaps the most important battle in country’s raging civil war – represents a major blow to the rebellion to unseat Assad.
Last week, tens of thousands of pro-rebel residents of Aleppo began boarding buses to flee their war-ravaged eastern districts in the city as a part of the Russia-Turkey deal that effectively surrendered their areas to Assad’s forces.
Amid frigid winter weather, desperate men, women and children waited to be shuttled westward to the rebel-held Idlib province. The deal broke down multiple times as government-allied militiamen from Lebanon and Iran demanded similar evacuations from nearby Shiite villages besieged by rebel fighters.
For Syria’s opposition, Thursday’s events are nothing short of a catastrophe.
Back in 2012, rebel forces had triumphantly stormed the eastern districts of Aleppo and hoped to use the city as a staging ground for their eventual assault on the capital, Damascus.
Instead, the war dragged on, with nearly half a million killed and more than half the country displaced. And government allies, notably Iran and Russia, intervened on Assad’s behalf to gradually turn the tide of the conflict in the Syrian leader’s favor.
And in that time, residents of eastern Aleppo endured years of horrific bombardment from government and Russian warplanes that decimated hospitals, homes and entire families. Then the government encircled eastern Aleppo, depriving residents there of food and medicine, and all but ensuring that the rebellion there would be squashed.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Hugh Naylor
