Assad’s brutal hold on power

Reports of the unrelenting carnage in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta region continue to shock the world. The death toll of the Assad regime’s latest offensive in the area which began on February 18, has reached 1,002.This includes 215 children, as well as 145 women. 93 people perished last Wednesday alone. There have also been reports of chemical attacks perpetrated by government forces. The Syrian volunteer rescue group known as the White Helmets have said that the Assad regime has attacked Irbin with Chlorine gas, as well as phosphorous bombs and napalm.The Syrian government, however, continues to deny that it has ever used chemical weapons in this conflict.

While the Assad regime had been on the defensive back in the early days of the Syrian civil war, today things are different. The regime has regained more and more territory from opposition groups since Moscow jumped into the fray in 2015. Eastern Ghouta is one of the opposition’s last strongholds and it also has close proximity to Damascus, which makes the area highly significant strategically.It has been under siege since 2013. This means that an area with a population of 400,000 people hasn’t had access to a steady stream of food and medicine for five years. Taking this into account, UN refugee agency representative in Syria Sajjad Malik’s statement which said the area is “on the verge of a major disaster” seems like an understatement.

The inhumane military strategy of Syrian government has compounded the suffering of Eastern Ghouta’s citizens.Once all exit and entry points to the area are cut off, war planes swoop in, bombarding the trapped opposition fighters and civilians. Even underground shelters and mosques are not spared. Many civilians are forced to live underground for days on end, deprived of sunlight and in cramped, unhygienic conditions.Once the opposition fighters have had enough, they trade territory for routes to opposition occupied areas.

While it is true that Bashar-al-Assad and Putin have managed to regain much of the territory they had lost to inhumane terrorist groups like ISIS and Jabhat-al-Nusra, the price that the Syrian populace has had to pay is far too high. Assad would do well to remember all the people he has slaughtered to maintain his hold on power – because the Syrian people won’t.Even if this civil war reaches its end, the grievances it has left the Syrian populace with,are, likely to keep the country mired in violence for years.  *

Published in Daily Times, March 12^th 2018.