By now, we’ve surely all seen the picture. If you haven’t, scroll up a couple of inches on it’ll look you dead in the face. Sometime last week, the picture surfaced and was instantly crowned the new face of the war in Syria. The subject of the picture, 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, was injured during a bombing raid on his hometown of Aleppo, Syria. His older brother Ali, who was injured in the same attacks, has since died. For Omran, Aleppo has been under attack for most of his life. And now finally, with the release of his tragic picture, we don’t have an excuse not to be talking about Omran and the 2.3 million other people struggling to maintain existence in Aleppo. So what exactly is going on there?
First, a little bit of history. With a population of around 2.3 million people, Aleppo is the largest city in Syria. It is also one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with records of habitation all the way back to at least 3000 BC. Aleppo was a major trade hub at one end of the Silk Road, but has struggled with the decline in land-based trading since the opening of the Suez Canal. In 2006, Aleppo was named the Islamic Capital of Culture and had many successful restoration projects completed on the historic buildings and monuments in the ancient city. Since then, things in Aleppo have gone through a drastic change.
When the Syrian Civil War reached Aleppo in 2012, it marked the beginning of the end for a cultural and historical hub of the Middle East. With the Russian-backed Assad forces of the Syrian Government controlling western Aleppo and the rebel forces controlling eastern Aleppo, it has been obvious from the start that there is little regard held for the life, culture and history of the city. As long as the battle ends in victory, neither side seems to care about what it will take to get there.
Much of the battle from 2012-2015 involved brutal tactics that rarely resulted in the exchange of territory. The years deadly back and forth in which thousands were killed and millions were displaced. But, the beginning of 2016 seemed to be a new horizon for the Assad forces. By June, most rebel forces were contained in small pockets of Aleppo, and in late-July the Syrian Government declared they had severed every rebel supply route into their remaining territory.
Assad’s forces, with substantial assistance from Russian air strikes, have made immense progress pushing ISIS forces out of the area. The Russian air campaign against ISIS was so successful that President Vladimir has since pulled a majority of his air forces out of the area. Following the above Syrian declaration, President Putin also ordered a large-scale humanitarian operation outside Aleppo as well as the creation of food and water corridors in hopes of providing some relief to the remaining citizens. These humanitarian efforts were a failure however, due to the rebels’ unwillingness to cooperate and allow citizens out of their territory.
Just a few weeks ago, in early August, the Syrian rebels broke free of the Government siege and began an all-out offensive, likely a last ditch effort in the fight against Assad. The siege break opened the door for a resumption of the bombing on Aleppo, and battle has essentially rebooted on both sides.
The new branch of this battle has given up the tragic, and soon-to-be iconic image of Omran Daqneesh. It’s given us a terrible face to the battle we are so displaced from. And most importantly, Omran has given a mainstream platform through which we can finally embark on a substantial national discussion about Syria.
