Når en krig eskalerer forvandler den stedet til noe mennesker andre steder ikke har noen mulighet til å forestille seg. Slik er dagens Syria, og derfor er engasjementet for Syria labert. Det som skjer der er hinsides.

C.J. Chivers fra The New York Times er i Aleppo. Se videoen av skolen hvor elevene slår i filler pultene for å ha noe å fyre med; http://bcove.me/6stcwlhj
Det er kaldt og rått i Syria om vinteren. Hele kvartaler er bombet ut av sine hus og familier lever på gaten. De mangler alt. De vet ikke hvor de skal få mat fra. Chivers forteller at opprørerne heller ikke er populære over alt. Prisen for å bli kvitt Assad begynner å bli veldig høy.

I mens vokser mistenksomheten. Sekteriske kriger har en forferdelig virkning på samholdet mellom mennesker. Mistenksomheten vendes også mot utlendinger. I det Chivers passerer gjør en mann en bevegelse over strupen. Mengden, hvorav mange unge, roper: Den frie syriske hær er tyver, vi vil ha en islamsk stat. Islamistene frembyr troen på at alle ofrene skal være verdt prisen, og at det ikke finnes noen vei tilbake.

foto: Tyler Hicks
Det er de mest fanatiske som overlever. Dette skjer med en av de eldste byene i Midtøsten:

As temperatures drop and the weakened government’s artillery thunders on, Aleppo is administered by no one and slipping into disaster. Front-line neighborhoods are rubble. Most of the city’s districts have had no electricity and little water for weeks. All of Aleppo suffers from shortages of oil, food, medicine, doctors and gas.

Diseases are spreading. Parks and courtyards are being defoliated for firewood, turning streets once lined with trees into avenues bordered by stumps. Months’ worth of trash is piled high, often beside bread lines where hundreds of people wait for a meager stack of loaves.

One of the Middle East’s beautiful and historic cities is being forced by scarcity and violence into a bitter new shape. Overlaying it all is a mix of fatigue and distrust, the sentiments of a population divided in multiple ways.

Aleppo’s citizens scavenge and seethe. And along with the sectarian passions of civil war, some residents express yearnings for starkly opposite visions of the future: either for a return of the relative stability of the Assad government or for the promises of Islamic rule.

..

Syrias befolkning er et lappeteppe. I en borgerkrig er det klanlojalitetene som slår inn. Man stoler bare på sine egne.

And the city’s population showed signs of ambivalence. Sentiments mixed and roiled along urban demographic and social lines — between Arabs and Kurds, loyalists and revolutionaries, secular citizens and Islamists, young and old — all aggravated by the sense that many of the rebels were from rural areas, and did not share Aleppo’s cosmopolitan fabric.

I tillegg kommer motsetningen mellom urbanitter og landsbyfolk: opprørerne er ofte fra landet og forstår ikke mentaliteten i en storby som Alepp.

From the outset, Aleppo’s population, its loyalties split, was stuck between forces. Disorganized rebel groups had started a battle they had little prospect to win swiftly. The army fought back in part with a collective-punishment model. Foreign fighters began to trickle in, stalking the front and talking of jihad.

And the city’s population showed signs of ambivalence. Sentiments mixed and roiled along urban demographic and social lines — between Arabs and Kurds, loyalists and revolutionaries, secular citizens and Islamists, young and old — all aggravated by the sense that many of the rebels were from rural areas, and did not share Aleppo’s cosmopolitan fabric.

Hva skjer når krigen kommer til en storby?

Aleppo’s residents face a collapsed economy, broken infrastructure, no services and no clear sense of when the fighting will end.

Prices have soared. Necessities today cost 3 to 12 times what they did in July.

A tank of cooking gas, worth $5 before the war, now costs about $60. A liter of diesel, 50 cents not long ago, sells today for $3. Residents often pay for 10 pieces of bread what they used to pay for 30, 40 or 50. Sometimes, though, there is no bread at all.

Devalueringen av det syriske pundet gjør at prisene stiger enda mer. Folk er uten arbeid, uten inntekt, husløse, det går på eksistensen løs.

Aleppo’s residents face a collapsed economy, broken infrastructure, no services and no clear sense of when the fighting will end.

Prices have soared. Necessities today cost 3 to 12 times what they did in July.

A tank of cooking gas, worth $5 before the war, now costs about $60. A liter of diesel, 50 cents not long ago, sells today for $3. Residents often pay for 10 pieces of bread what they used to pay for 30, 40 or 50. Sometimes, though, there is no bread at all.

Det sier seg selv at utenlandske jihadister med høy kampmoral og mye penger, er et fristende tilbud for down-and-out syrere.

Krigen rammer kritiske punkt, som melforsyningen. Dermed blir kampen om basismaten et lotterispill. Her ligger grunnen til at folk ropte slagord mot Den frie syriske hær. Den har ikke greid meldistribusjonen og skrudde opp prisene.

In late November, Aleppo’s flour supply was abruptly cut when rebels captured much of the city’s grain storage. What might have been a victory instead became a source of popular rage.

Bakeries shut down while the Free Syrian Army struggled to organize flour delivery and sales, leading to public demonstrations. Then, when the rebels did begin distribution, they increased the price of flour — by as much as 20 percent, residents said.

Sykehus

The shortages extend past food to hospital beds. In all the rebel-held territory, medical service is scarce, a shortage that deepened in November when the air force destroyed Dar al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in rebel-held ground. With the hospital closed, Dr. Bakerly said, “there are 20 hospital beds for all of east Aleppo,” an area with as many as a million residents.

Doctors now work from a partly hidden network of clinics and small hospitals, from which they treat about 40 people each day for wounds from the shelling. (The number of patients has declined since the hospital was destroyed, doctors said; many people arrange to move the wounded north, to makeshift trauma centers in the countryside and then across the border to Turkey.)