The Modern Destruction of Ancient Aleppo
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 19 Dec 2016
Vithal Rajan – TRANSCEND Media Service
17 Dec 2016 – If the English poet, John William Burgon, called Petra ‘half as old as time,’ Aleppo is a lot older. One of the world’s earliest cities, it ended the bronze age by discovering iron ore. A centre of Christianity almost two-thousand years ago, Aleppo sent evangelists as far afield as the western shores of India. Commerce was the life-blood of the city, and almost till the Suez Canal was built, it was the entrepôt that supplied the riches of the Orient to Europe. It was not by chance reference that Shakespeare made Othello say in his dying speech that it was in Aleppo that he killed a Turk who traduced Venice. For by then, the English had established the Levant Company of London in Aleppo, long before the East India Company, to trade in Chinese silks and Malabar spices.
The roots of the present tragedy shrouding Aleppo can be found in that early period, when rich Christian merchants settled in the western part of Aleppo. However, at that time, even the poorer Muslims in the eastern districts benefited from the thriving trade. The city held pride of place in the Ottoman Empire, even ahead of Cairo and Damascus. However, western imperial powers had long coveted the riches of the Middle-East, and after victory in the First World War, they dismembered the Ottoman Empire, the French taking control over Lebanon and Syria, while Britain held Egypt and Iraq. In the inter-war years the French manipulated furiously to create discord between Aleppo in northern Syria and Damascus in the South, and achieved some success, but at the end of World War Two both France and Britain were too exhausted to interfere much in the Middle East.
De-colonisation and the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt brought a new sense of Arab pride and identity, and an attempt was made to join in a national union both Syria and Egypt, the two key components of the defunct Ottoman Empire. However, the preceding colonial rule of the West had created enough discord in the region for that union to last long. The pan-Arab forces of Nasser lost out, and the Ba’athist forces of local nationalism gained control over Damascus. Hafez al-Assad, though from a poor rural family, rose to be Syria’s strongman. Power shifted to Damascus, whose merchants were favoured over those of Aleppo. In the meantime, a resurgent Turkey under Kemal Attaturk Pasha seized control over all of eastern Anatolia, cutting off Aleppo’s trade with the Mediterranean. The eastern route had already been closed by British control over Iraq. Aleppo which had been a centre of trade since the dawn of civilization, and a centre of culture for two-thousand years, sank into impoverished disgruntled provincialism.
The Great Game of divide and rule, of setting off one tribe or ethnic group against another, played in the nineteenth century by Russia and Britain to further their own imperial interests, was now re-started with a vengeance by the ascendant imperial power of the United States of America. In 1952, the CIA destroyed Dr. Mossadeq’s attempt to safeguard Iranian oil from the rapacious West, and re-installed the Shah. Under Eisenhower and Kennedy, America bankrolled and armed Pakistan as a check on India, which was wrongly perceived as a stooge of Russia. The CIA under Ronald Reagan created the fundamentalist Taliban to thwart Russian-induced modernization of Afghanistan. America, in its openly declared national interest, armed and supported the reactionary Saudi royal family, which it could control with ease, as it had the dictators of South America for a hundred years and more. The Bushes, father and son, rubbished Iraq and Afghanistan. It was clear that the American interest was to sequester the Middle East and its energy resources as an American dominion.
Obama followed his predecessors by leading a destructive assault on Libya. Gaddafi had made the cardinal mistake of distancing himself from the corrupt Arab clients of America. His loneliness led to his destruction at imperial hands, even as the Burmese Emperor had been destroyed a century ago by imperial Britain. The tactic was the well-proven one of instigating ambitious and unscrupulous ethnic leaders, with full support from Qatar, which served as America’s launching pad.
With Libya down, America’s baleful eye could be turned on Syria, now led by Basher al-Assad, the son of the first dictator, Hafez. If Syria fell, the American ring could be closed round the Middle East and a grave threat posed to Iran, which had Sunni Pakistan, America’s unruly client to the east.
The tinderbox was the eastern districts of Aleppo with its impoverished Muslim population. Rebel groups could be formed there to protest against the domination of Damascus. Civil war was ignited in Syria with every expectation of swift success. American forces stood between the Syrian government and its potential Shia allies in Iran. Further, by turning a blind eye towards the funding of ignorant fundamentalists by the pusillanimous Saudi regime, America expected Syria to be over-run in short order by the forces of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq [ISIS], to be rescued later by magnanimous American forces.
This plan did not quite work out. If it had, it would also have achieved the long-term goal of the West of keeping Russia out of the Middle East. Russia under Putin was no longer enfeebled by the break-up of the Soviet Union, and Putin struck at the rebels in east Aleppo in support of Assad and Damascus. The richer Christian population in west Aleppo also threw in their lot with Damascus fearing the barbarian hordes of the ISIS, as did Hezbollah, which would have been left naked in Palestine without Syrian support. Meanwhile, the new Turkish President, Erdogan, has been trying to consolidate his rural support by being more ‘Islamic’ than the Attaturk faction, and has prolonged Aleppo’s agony by nominally supporting Aleppo’s rebels to maintain Turkish interest in the imbroglio. At last an evacuation of east Aleppo has been brokered by both Turkey and Russia, and the remnants of the hopeless population will be allowed to disappear into many European slums. Their governments are caught in the hypocrisy of their own liberal pretentions, and will police as harshly as possible the unwelcome refugees of their own creation. Bashar al-Assad is left to rule over the ashes of Syria, while Trump’s hawks foregather to plan out another destructive manoeuvre.
This tragic chapter in the history of the Middle East is one among many that stretch into the future. An end could possibly appear in sight with American exhaustion in maintaining global imperial domination. Perhaps, by the end of this century another generation may see Jew, Christian, and Muslim, and all the various ethnicities of the Middle East and the North African coast live in civic conviviality with the easy commercial intercourse they enjoyed during the years of the Ottoman Empire.
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Vithal Rajan, Ph.D. [L.S.E.], worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 19 Dec 2016.
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Thank you. A lot to follow and understand, but important and needs to be pondered.
An excellent article by Vithal Rajan.
I would like to expand on Rajan’s statement, “The tinderbox was the eastern districts of Aleppo with its impoverished Muslim population.”
The reason for the impoverishment of Syrians in the area was firstly because of the privatisation of state farms around the towns most associated with the rebellion in 2000: Raqqa, Aleppo, Homs, Hama and Deir ez Zor. See link below.
Whilst the intention was to distribute the land and between the original workers from the collective farms, many of whom were the indigenous tribal people, the small plots were unviable as independent farms.
Secondly, in 2004, the US instituted draconian sanctions on Syria’s state banks. The government was forced to allow private banks led by the Lebanese Blom bank group and the Banque Bemo Saudi Fransi (a Saudi/Lebanese conglomerate). Many small farmers were forced into debt, many lost their land and many younger sons had nothing to inherit.
As Rajan said, “Rebel groups could be formed there to protest against the domination of Damascus.”
So why did Syria change its socialist principles. I can’t help thinking that after the death of Hafez el Assad earlier in 2000; the Syrian government, faced with continuing sanctions, tried to placate the west and their most vocal critics on its borders.
And perhaps the values instilled in a British born, trained in Harvard, investment banker who worked for Deutsche bank and J.P Morgan and was the President’s wife, was an unwise choice to ‘play a major role in implementing governmental organisations involved with social and economic development throughout the country.’
A few years later, foreign NGOs were travelling through Syria trying to incite sectarian differences and opposition to the government particularly in Sunni and Christian communities. Together, there couldn’t have been a better plan to destabilise a country but even then, the so-called rebels could barely muster a few hundred for their ‘Day of Rage’ whilst millions came out in support of the government.
Privatisation in Syria: State Farms and the Case of the Euphrates Project – Myriam Ababsa
http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/2789/05_02.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
20 banks still operating in Syria with a notable increase in liquidity, profits and deposits
http://sana.sy/en/?p=54098
Well, well “fitz”. Taking your pro-Putin, pro-Assad propaganda here as well?
How is life in your fascist anti-semitic movement? You know – your “There is an international Hebrew conspiracy to enslave mankind” rants?
Did you think you could hide that?
https://fitzhenrymac.wordpress.com/you-cant-help-laughing/
Thank you for promoting my blog. I hope readers here will enjoy the humour.
Very very interesting developments in this comment section. Krogh is here to soil our sight with his pathological russophobia, ultra-americanism and obsessive judeocentricity.
Your comments give the impression of a multitude of cracks in your pot. You’re absolutely obsessed with Jews and Israel two points that appear ZERO in this incredibly enlightening, very excellent analysis provided here by Vithal Rahjjan. You’re an idiot obviously.
Kweshun/Deldano
“Very very interesting developments in this comment section. Krogh is here to soil our sight with his pathological russophobia, ultra-americanism and obsessive judeocentricity.”
LOL. If your reference point is “20 million bla blah 37 countries bla blah silk road blah blah jews-control-world-media blah blah the-central-banks-are-privately-owned blah blah”, then everything else problably looks like “pathological russophobia, ultra-americanism and obsessive judeocentricity”.
no. not everything. but if it feels like shit, smells like shit, quacks like shit, and looks like shit, then it probably is shit. And I am talking about you here.
To the author of this article: Wow! What an exquisite read. The beauty of the language and the historical scope! The depth of thought, the hints at what to look into for a better understanding of the region and of early globalization: Thank you! This absolutely satisfied my chronic sapiophilia… for today. Please do write more!
more
“no. not everything. but if it feels like shit, smells like shit, quacks like shit, and looks like shit, then it probably is shit. And I am talking about you here.”
Why of course you are! That is obviously the way you react to people that hold opinions that diverge from yours.