We cannot look away from the Syrian Stalingrad

The all-out assault on the rebel enclave of eastern Aleppo has officially begun. Waves of Russian missiles and warplanes launched from the Mediterranean and Assad regime airbases have begun an unrelenting bombardment of eastern Aleppo.

 

The joint Assad-Russian strategy is clear: If the citizens and rebel forces in eastern Aleppo do not submit to the Assad regime’s dictate, then they will be pummeled into submission or entirely annihilated. These are the new “Grozny rules” that govern the strategic objectives of the Moscow-enabled leadership in Damascus.

 

When Russian forces surrounded Grozny in the late 1990s with multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery, the goal was simple: Total annihilation. Indeed, thousands of ethnic Russians residing in Grozny perished under the total warfare waged by the Russian military. Similarly, in Aleppo the Assad regime has demonstrated that it does not care how high the body count of Syrian citizens rises. It is a strategy that has served the regime well in other parts of the country. In the city of Homs and in the Damascus countryside, the Assad regime has waged the type of “scorched earth” tactics that has proved to be unprecedented in scope in the modern era.

 

Faced with an ultimatum of either retreating or facing total annihilation of the remaining civilian populace, rebel forces in those areas withdrew. The neighborhoods in Homs and Damascus resembled the rubble wasteland of destroyed cities in World War II. In that regard, throughout Syria, 2016 has seen the horror of 1942 play out over and over again. The Assad regime has attempted to create a semblance of normalcy in those areas it re-captured by inviting international journalists on state-sponsored tours.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Kremlin also recently broadcast on social media (directly at the US government) pictures of the “new” Grozny: With brand new stadiums, shopping centers, parks, and thriving urban development. There was an underlying message: “Yes, we got away with war crimes but no one stood in our way.”

 

Assad is betting — as did Moscow once — that the narrative of his crimes and destruction will one day shift toward acceptance of the facts on the ground. Give it enough time, and one could readily imagine a regime-sponsored tour of new shopping centers (and community swimming pools even!) built over the mass graves of what were once homes of victims of the regime’s onslaught.

 

But the media isn’t to blame for whitewashing Assad regime’s crimes. That is because the destruction of Aleppo and Syria as a whole is really a product of the “new normal” set by an international order ushered in by the Obama administration and its failed foreign policy. This “new normal” effectively cedes American global leadership and offers perverse incentive for modern-day madmen to destroy cities and their inhabitants en masse while the world stands by in collective paralysis.

 

Many in the foreign-policy elite in Washington would argue that the destruction of Aleppo, while regrettable, is beyond the ability of the US and its allies to prevent. The pundits along with Obama White House officials will tell you that the chemical weapons “deal” signed with the Russians in 2013 to rid Assad of his chemical weapons was a “success.” Similarly, they argue that the focus must remain on the fight against Daesh.

 

Yet just this week, the US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, pilloried the Assad regime for continuing to maintain and deploy chemical weapons against civilians. As for Daesh, while it loses ground in northern and eastern Syria, it maintains a potent recruiting tool by claiming that the anti-Daesh coalition is in cahoots with the Assad regime.

 

At this very moment, the great battle for Aleppo — Syria’s Stalingrad — is being waged. Turning the other way will not restore peace and stability in Syria in the long term. A regime victory will not offer a solution for the fight against Daesh. If “Grozny rules” are allowed to dictate the outcome in Syria, only further chaos and global instability will ensue — despite the best efforts of Syrian and Russian government propaganda campaigns to convince us otherwise.

 

• Oubai Shahbandar is a former Department of Defense senior adviser and currently a strategic communications consultant specializing in Middle Eastern and Gulf Affairs.