[Disarmo] Mosul, Aleppo e ben pagata soldataglia blue eyes

[Jure Ellero LT <glry at ngi.it>]

Scrive un commentatore sul sito de Il Fatto:

"E mentre la stampa si dedica a Mosul, niente più si sa di Aleppo, dove 
la Russia ha esteso fino al 4 novembre la sospensione dei raid aerei su 
Aleppo Est (cioè la parte della città in mano ai ribelli e ai loro 
alleati terroristi), mentre rallenta l'offensiva terrorista-ribelle su 
Aleppo Ovest. Cose di cui non si parla perché il terrorista è cattivo a 
Mosul, ma buono ad Aleppo.
Infatti il terrorista cattivo usa i civili come scudi umani a Mosul, 
mentre quello buono... in realtà fa lo stesso ad Aleppo
Lo riporta l'Independent che cita il racconto delle poche decine di 
civili riuscite a lasciare Aleppo Est. Civili che raccontano come gli 
jihaddisti usino tutti i mezzi disponibili per scoraggiare i civili ad 
andarsene (arresto, assassinio di chi prova a scappare e dei loro 
parenti e amci, distruzione di proprietà), come vi sia una forte 
presenza di stranieri tra i ribelli e come, paradossalmente, i (finti) 
moderati siano anche peggio dei terroristi di Al Nusra nei confronti dei 
civili"


Qui sotto l'articolo citato, dall'Independent

Jure Ellero

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DA ALEPPO

'We were living a real tragedy in east Aleppo': One family's journey 
across the city amid the bloodshed

Family describes civilains being shot by militia as they seek to escape 
medical shortages, starvation, and the barrage of air strikes from overhead

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/thousands-of-civilian-families-forced-by-militias-to-remain-in-eastern-aleppo-a7389346.html


Khaled Kaddoura and his wife Samira are both 50 - they married when they 
were only 15 - and they are a tough, forthright couple who decided just 
over a week ago to abandon their besieged home in eastern Aleppo. They 
and their son Almuatazbilah, a boy of eight with long, uncombed hair, 
were among only 48 men, women and children in weeks to make it to the 
Syrian army lines surrounding the east of Syria's largest city with its 
tens of thousands of civilians and its collection of militias, most of 
them Islamists, who refuse to surrender.
Both husband and wife have dark, almost haunted eyes, and they tell a 
frightful story which is often at odds with the East Aleppo narrative of 
heroic 'rebel' defenders and civilians fearful of a regime massacre. 
Samira al-Jarrah - in Syria, wives keep their maiden names - says she 
prays for her country every night, but neither she nor her husband 
mention Bachar al-Assad.
They agree that the bombing and shelling of eastern Aleppo was 
terrifying but they also say that the Jabhat al-Nusra - the thousands of 
al-Qaeda followers who have twice changed their name in a vain attempt 
to shake off the West's claim that they are 'terrorists' - are the least 
offensive, perhaps even the kinder, of the armed groups which still hold 
their sector of the city. This family are no Syrian government patsies.

But slowly and with great deliberation, Khaled Kadoura describes how 
hundreds of east Aleppo militiamen prevented at rifle-point thousands of 
civilians from fleeing their enclave over the past two weeks, how they 
shot dead six people, including a pregnant woman, and of how, after 
Samira and Khaled had reached the west of the city with their son, the 
Islamist Ahrar al-Sham arrested Khaled's 27-year old brother Hamzi and 
sentenced him to execution. The news, he says, was broadcast on the 
opposition 'Aleppo Today' television and he is now desperately 
telephoning eastern Aleppo to see if the sentence has been carried out.
"Even my friends were arrested after we left," he says. "The militias 
came to our house after we crossed, they stole from our shop and smashed 
our home to warn other people not to do the same thing we did. They had 
told me that if we left east Aleppo, the government would execute us, 
but when we came here they didn't." He is staying now with relatives in 
the west, a man who might once have been called middle class - he still 
has his deeds to his lands and broken property in eastern Aleppo - but 
who now sits in a grey robe and black woolen hat, his wife dressed all 
in black. They need to register now with the UN for food.
This is their story, as they tell it, and readers must judge for 
themselves how much it reflects the lives of others in eastern Aleppo. 
As we journalists like to say, there can be no 'independent 
confirmation' of this family's account - because western journalists 
dare enter eastern Aleppo today for fear of decapitation by its defenders.

"We were living a real tragedy in east Aleppo," Khaled Kadoura says. "We 
were short of everything, especially food and fuel. I had a shop that 
rented out chairs and tables for weddings. Of course, there was no 
business. We couldn't find any medical aids or medicine since the 
beginning of the war. We were deprived even of learning and education. 
The Ahrar al-Sham [Islamist] group and other groups made their bases in 
the schools."
Eight-year old Almuatazbilah is listening to his father and when I ask 
him about his education, he tells me he can neither read nor write. It's 
clear that poverty and hunger as much as fear drove the Kadouras to 
leave eastern Aleppo. "We were under pressure," Khaled Kadoura says. "At 
the beginning of the war, one kilo of sugar cost 10 Syrian pounds, now 
it costs 3,000 for a kilo. Gas cylinders were 200 pounds. Now they are 
150,000 pounds. Fuel shortages began five months ago. I have diabetes 
and there was no more medicine for me. My son was often sick. There were 
only Turkish medicines in the hospitals. I have properties there - my 
house, my car, we used to be a rich family - but I could leave all this. 
There was so much shelling and bombing in our neighbourhood."
Samira interrupts her husband. "When there was no bread, I managed to 
bake from wheat we got from the UN. I made 'burgol'. But otherwise we 
had to starve, even during the festival of 'Eid'." She says they felt 
free before the war, which began in Aleppo in 2012, a year after the 
rest of Syria began to collapse into open insurrection. In 2011, Khaled 
Kadoura made the 'Haj' pilgrimage to Mecca. It must have seemed strange 
for Khaled to pick up a still-working telephone - the militias had taken 
away thousands of mobile phones in eastern Aleppo for 'security' reasons 
- and call a member of the Syrian government's 'reconciliation' 
committee, a man he called 'Abu Hassan', when he heard that the regime 
was to open eight passageways across the front lines for civilians and 
even armed men to leave eastern Aleppo. He didn't want to be shot by the 
Syrian army.

"On the day this started [20 October], the armed groups in east Aleppo 
surrounded the people who wanted to leave with a sort of 'security 
circle' to prevent them going out," Khaled says. "They even had weapons 
in their hands. They shot at some people - I was told six died - and 
they killed a pregnant woman. She was killed and there were others 
wounded. They accused the [Syrian] government of shelling the 
passageways. We waited till night to cross and we waited till after the 
Maghreb prayers when we knew that the armed men near the crossing point 
would have gone to rest. Later, they were all arrested and accused of 
taking bribes to allow us to cross. We had to be so careful because of 
mines."
Khaled and his family had discussed how to cross many times - they 
succeeded only at their second attempt and another family which tried to 
follow them on the same route were caught by the militias. "We used to 
say there are so many of us who want to go, why can't we force our way? 
We talked about how the Palestinians used knives against the Israelis. 
Why couldn't we do the same to get out?" It was a highly unusual 
parallel for an Arab Syrian family to draw in Aleppo, to compare the 
Palestinians' oppressors with "the men who are supposedly defending 
eastern Aleppo."

Over the months of the siege, Khaled Kadoura continued to attend his 
local Anas bin Malak mosque. "All the speeches were by an Imam who is 
the mufti of the [Islamist] Ahrar al-Sham movement - all his speeches 
were about the regime, about how they would kill us if we left and would 
force us to shave our beards. We favoured the Nusrah group [regarded by 
the regime as even more dangerous than Isis] because they left us alone 
and were respectful and kept away from the civilians. We talked a lot 
with Ahrar al-Sham. One time, I asked them why they kept us there and 
they replied that 'we are defending you from the regime which has 
treated you inhumanly'. When Fatah al-Islam came from Idlib, they told 
civilians to join them but very few did. We saw a lot of Saudi and Gulf 
and even Azerbaijani and Afghan and Chechen and Chinese fighters - I 
knew a lot of their nationalities because I had seen their countrymen on 
the Haj. The Chinese Uighurs brought their families with them to the 
suburb of Khan al-Asal. There were Europeans too, I saw their eyes were 
blue. The Isis came there two years ago from Raqqa. The talked to each 
other but were very friendly with us. They didn't need money and they 
didn't ask for any - they had money from their organisation."

Khaled Kadoura's spoke of local eastern Aleppo hospitals, however, in 
terms which most opponents of the Syrian regime and many western 
politicians (and journalists) might condemn. "Yes, the aircraft bombed 
the schools, the hospitals - but all these hospitals are also bases for 
militias and their weapons. The hospitals have some patients, but lots 
of rockets are on the top of hospitals where they use them to rocket the 
west of the city." Kadoura named three hospitals which he said were used 
for bases.
No-one can hear this without profound concern. Numerous Middle East 
dictatorships have used the 'human shield'/terrorists-in-hospitals 
excuse to slaughter civilians with impunity, and the Syrians have 
adopted the same expression. When I called a trusted friend who has 
visited Syria as an NGO, he said that his local NGO workers denied the 
use of hospitals by militias, "but we are not there to see for 
ourselves." Certainly, video footage from bombed hospitals shows no 
weapons in the wreckage, only wounded and dead patients. Clearly wounded 
militiamen may be treated in east Aleppo hospitals - just as I saw a 
badly wounded Syrian soldier brought into a west Aleppo hospital several 
days ago.

Khaled Kadoura says that when he asked the militias to re-open schools 
for the children, including his son, he was asked why he did not go and 
fight the regime. "I said: 'let us go'. They refused to answer. They 
said 'this is not your business - this is a military operation.'" 
Hopelessly unreliable estimates suggest that there are 250,000 civilians 
trapped in east Aleppo. Even Syrian military officers choose figures 
between 75,000 and 300,000. Khaled Kadoura suggested the latter, adding 
that the 7,300 families in his own suburb would all leave if they had 
the chance.
Now he lives with relatives, his wife is asking the UN to register them 
as refugees. When I spoke to Khaled Kadoura and his wife and son, the 
new opposition offensive had just started against western Aleppo and 
shells were bursting only half a mile away. But none paid the slightest 
attention. They had been through this before. "The government offered me 
an apartment but I said I would live with my sister and brother-in-law 
who are here and they should give accommodation to others," Khaled 
Kadoura said. "We live at the moment in a mixed area of west Aleppo and 
there are many Christians living there and they give us bread and food. 
They are very kind."


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