Rebel-Held Eastern Aleppo Under Siege, Tens of Thousands At Risk for Starvation

The last few weeks have been hard for the city of Aleppo, harder than they have been since the start of the war roughly five years ago. While its residents have become accustomed to the daily bombings, power cuts, and the lack of public services, the situation is about to become even more dire.

In the past week, the Syrian military, with the support of the Russian Air Force, has made advances in Northern Aleppo City, attempting to seize and control a strategic road called “Castillo Road.” Having already captured farmland to the north of this road, called Mallah Farms, the Syrian military is now within 100s of meters of the actual road itself. One might be wondering, “Why is the road so imperative?”

Take a look at this map below.

The large stretch of road from the al-Layramoun district all the way to the “Youth Housing Complex” is essentially Castillo Road. The Syrian military has been attempting to capture Khalideyeh and Layramoun in the South and Castillo to the North to effectively “squeeze” and control the entire road leading to Eastern Aleppo City. If they are able to do this, there will be no way for supplies to reach the Eastern section of Aleppo. As you can see from the map below, Eastern Aleppo City will become an isolated pocket of resistance thus making it virtually impossible to move supplies into or out of the city. It is said that over 300,000 residents still reside in this section of the city which means 1/3 of a million people will be at great risk for starvation, sickness, and more.

Besides the usual lengthy-worded statements from world leaders, there hasn’t been shown much concern for potentially one of the largest human rights catastrophes of this century. There have been talks of possible humanitarian airdrops into besieged areas, but this is highly impractical because of multiple factors.

For one, it is highly unlikely that the Syrian military and the Russian Air Force would agree to such drops. They would view this as an attempt by outside powers to undermine their progress against the rebel forces.

There are a few options they could impose to prevent airdrops from occurring. The Russian Air Force could implement a unilateral no-fly zone over this territory, thus effectively discouraging any planes from dropping supplies out of fear of military action. The likelihood of this happening, however, is low as Russia would most likely want to avoid being responsible for refusing to allow besieged civilians the necessary supplies to survive. In the event that thousands starve to death, Russia would not benefit from being the party chiefly responsible for allowing their deaths to occur.

In addition, should the United States take part in these airdrops, the Russians are highly unlikely to escalate the conflict by shooting down an American plane.

Another scenario that could pan out is the Russians actually cutting a deal with the international community and participating in the airdrops themselves. In this scenario, it would give them the ability to control the flow of supplies into the rebel-held territories and monitor what is being transferred. Similar to the way that Bashar al-Assad ‘allowed‘ supplies into rebel-held areas across Syria, Russia could simply fly the flights themselves, but modify the contents of the humanitarian aid packages. That way they would technically be allowing supplies to the besieged areas, but at the same time, they would be limiting the effectiveness of the supplies by omitting certain items from the drops.

A third scenario that could take place is the Russians simply allowing unfettered access and humanitarian airdrops to besieged rebel areas. The chances that this particular outcome will happen is  extremely low, simply for the fact that the Russians would lose much more than they would gain in allowing the rebel areas to be resupplied. The international community has also not shown much of an appetite for this type of involvement either, as it would further complicate the situation greatly.

Realistically, given the lack of intervention through the course of the war by the international community, it is unlikely that even the potential for 300,000 civilians to starve will be enough to warrant action. It is expected that the Syrian military will continue to make slow, steady advances in the city effectively cutting off Eastern Aleppo from the rebel stronghold of Idlib in the West. There does not appear to be any positive outcome to this situation and we will most likely witness one of the greatest disasters of our time unless something major were to happen in the meantime. Events like this remind us how unforgiving and brutal life here on Earth can be. The people of Syria and Aleppo know this reality far too well.

Featured Image via Wikimedia