Aleppo Part iii: The City of Aleppo

Once considered the crown jewel of Syria, Aleppo has been the hardest hit and suffered the heaviest violence over the last five years. For a war that started in July of 2012, and cost the country more than 300,000 lives, it’s an all too constant reminder that the city has become a battleground for the Western section controlled by the Syrian Army and Eastern section patrolled by the Jihadi terrorists.

• Syria’s largest city, and the third largest in the region behind Constantinople and Cairo
• Located at the Northeastern tip of Syria
• First settled in 5000 BC
• Consistently inhabited since 4000 BC due to it’s proximity between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq
• First city council established in 1868
• Population of about 2.3 million, roughly the same size as Toronto, Ontario
• UNESCO World Heritage site in 1986, Aleppo citadel (seen in the photo above), was built over three centuries from the 10th century and damaged in July 2015 by heavy air raid blasts

ALEPPO PART II: PROPAGANDA

Since 2012, it has proven to be too dangerous for Western journalists or foreign correspondents to report directly from Syria. Most now file their reports from nearly 300 km away, in Beirut, Lebanon. Or roughly the distance from Ottawa, Ontario to Drummondville, Quebec. How could we possibly expect accurate news given such a distance?

In their place, through either self interest or naivety, “local activists” unable to escape jihadi control have taken over. These sources operate under the complete control of al-Qaeda sponsored news groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham.

Below is a list of some of the most questionable propaganda tools:
• Omran Daqneesh, the Aleppo boy
– if his injuries were so bad that he required an ambulance, why were media allowed to take photos of him before he received treatment?
– his image has resurfaced in numerous other photos/videos in several different situations, including in one where he’s about to become beheaded
– from most reports, it appears to be Trauma makeup
• White Helmet staged mannequin challenge rescue videos
– illustrates how easily it would be to stage other rescues
• Seven year old Syrian girl, Bana Alabed who has a verified twitter account
– in an area as badly hit as Eastern Aleppo, how was she able to maintain a twitter account, when many of the city’s remaining residents are without power?
– why would a mother (who is apparently helping her run this account) choose to remain in Aleppo where food and water is scarce?
– how did she become verified on twitter so quickly?
– why is her mother dressed as a jihadist fighter in some of the photos on her original twitter account?
– why was her account registered in the UK?

Part 3 will feature a profile on the city of Aleppo for late Wednesday night.

Aleppo Part I: The White Helmets

I’ve put together this 3 part fact sheet on various topics related to the city of Aleppo. It is the worst hit and largest city in Syria, and according to Wikipedia is the site of “major military confrontation between the Syrian opposition (including Free Syrian Army, and Sunni fighters, including Levant Front) in partial cooperation with the Army of Conquest, which includes within it Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly al-Qaida‘s Syrian branch,^[88] against the Syrian Armed Forces of the Syrian Government, supported by Hezbollah and Shiite militias and Russia,^[65][89] and against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units.”

Part 1 will focus on the White Helmets, as they’re known within the media, or the Syrian Civil Defence, their official title.

• Founded in 2013 (by a British ex-military officer, James Le Mesurier, more than one year after the ongoing Battle of Aleppo began in 2012)
• In Eastern Aleppo and Idlib (a city South of Aleppo), the hardest hit areas, their presence is minimal
• Major funding is being provided by USAID, to the tune of more than $23 million
• Total funding since 2012 is estimated at $100 million by the US/UK and other influential countries
• As of 5 days ago, 95% of the area has been liberated by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA)
• They purport to be neutral, yet some carry guns and reports have stated that some are posing for photos standing over dead Syrian soldier’s bodies
• Their videos contain children identified in multiple video sources used primarily as propaganda

Monday will feature Part 2: Propaganda