By Yousef Halabi
(Zaman Al Wasl)- December 22, 2016 was not a normal day for the people of Aleppo. It was a day associated with an infamous human tragedy that will never be forgotten.
The al-Assad regime, with Russian and Iranian support, displaced thousands of civilians from their homes in the eastern neighborhoods pushing them towards the western countryside to regain control over the largest city in northern Syria after the destruction of most of the vital and public facilities in these neighborhoods.
This day one year ago, Aleppo had a date with a holocaust that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of unarmed civilians. This period is marked by the end of an important and unconventional stage in the Syrian revolution. It was the end of the presence of opposition factions in Aleppo’s eastern and several western neighborhoods where this presence had lasted for around four years of the revolution.
Those days broke the heart of everyone from Aleppo, and this heartbreak and sadness will not be forgotten easily in the coming days. Those days were a shock for all, and the memory of events will not leave civilians and fighters in areas controlled by the Syrian resistance.
Zaman al-Wasl communicated with some of the witnesses of the catastrophic fall of Aleppo at the hands of the al-Assad regime. We spoke to them about the last few hours before the opposition neighborhoods fell and the painful moments they experienced last year.
“The last days in Aleppo were very painful for us, especially after we learned that we would have to leave Aleppo city, the city where we grew up in, were raised and studied in. Our hearts had mixed feelings which I cannot describe, were they extreme joy that we would leave the siege and death by bombardment or sadness that we will leave our city as displaced people. Tears were trapped in the eyes at the sight of civilians bidding each other goodbye, “said Abdul Karim al-Halabi, a media activist.
Al-Halabi said to Zaman Al-Wasl, “I saw that the city was crying over us that we were leaving it despite the siege, the hunger and the shelling with all weapons, and how much I wish I would stay, but we left as everyone let us down. And the hardest moments were when we boarded the buses that took us out of Aleppo. These are the hardest moments for a human being to leave his home, and leave years of his life and be forced to leave.”
“We always yearn for our homes, for our destroyed neighborhood, for the old streets and alleyways of old Aleppo. I long for my friends who were martyred in front of me and buried in Aleppo, and we no longer see them even as they are in the ground,” he added.
Mujahid Abu al-Joud, a photographer from the media center of Aleppo, was also in Aleppo in the last days before the displacement from Aleppo.
“The last days I lived in Aleppo were very difficult. Difficult because I was conscious that these were the last [days] and for what al-Assad’s rockets did to the bodies of civilians inside the city and the silence of the international community about what happened to us,” Abu al-Joud told Zaman al-Wasl.
“I tried to take out as many memories as possible with me because I do not know when I will return. As a photographer I tried to document everything I could see from the streets and neighborhoods where I grew up. Unfortunately I was not able to take any material memories with me from Aleppo, except for my own camera, pictures and video clips that I filmed in Aleppo.”
Regarding the moments of when he was displaced towards the western countryside, Abu al-Joud said, “We left the city safe and well and the remaining residents who were alive left with me. This is the greatest profit that remained after Aleppo. However, this profit was achieved at the cost of separation and distance from home, and this was our most precious possession. The equation unfortunately was very difficult, either death on your land or stay alive outside it.”
In the last days leading up to the fall of Aleppo, the al-Assad regime launched a brutal military campaign using various internationally banned weapons such as thermobaric weapons, cluster bombs and explosive barrels. The use of these weapons increased the daily number of martyrs and wounded placing a massive burden on the rescue and civil defense teams.
Ibrahim al-Hajj, was a member of the civil defense in Aleppo and recounts the painful events of the last days in Aleppo. Al-Hage explained how the rescue teams suffered greatly to recover the victims due to the extent of the bombardment.
“The last ten days were the most difficult for us as a civil defense team in Aleppo because of the heavy shelling the city witnessed. We were no longer able to help everyone with the al-Assad regime moving into new areas. We had to retreat. 75 bodies were trapped under the rubble and we could not get them out,” al-Hage said.
Al-Hage continued, “In the last few hours, we were moving around without vehicles due to the lack of fuel, and we are moving the bodies of martyrs and the wounded by hand. In addition there was only one running hospital and it was no longer receiving all cases due to the unprecedented increase in the number of wounded due to bombing with cluster bombs.”
Regarding his displacement from Aleppo, al-Hage said, “I was detained by Shiite militias loyal to the al-Assad regime as we left Aleppo for four hours. They confiscated my personal belongings including an archive of the Syrian revolution I had gathered over five years.”
“We hope that one day we will return to our city of Aleppo, after a year of displacement. Aleppo will not forget the sacrifice of its people. And we wrote on its walls before leaving ‘We are coming back Aleppo’,” he said.
For the displaced, it has been a year of pain and tears. Will they return soon with the fall of the al-Assad regime, or will it become a deferred dream determined by the interests of states and international understandings?!
Zaman Al Wasl
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