‘We
were living in security and peace. These areas are being targeted,
they want to force us to leave. Every Syrian is being targeted,’
one Syrian religious leader told a delegation of reporters who
visited Aleppo earlier this month.
by
Eva Bartlett
Part
2 - Returning to Aleppo
From
Damascus, the bus traveled along smooth, paved roads to Homs, where
we passed the entrance to Zahraa, a neighborhood plagued by terrorist
car and suicide bombs. Moving out of Homs, we continued eastward
along a narrow road for about an hour until we reached the
Ithriya-Khanasser road, and the last leg of the trip to Aleppo.
Though the
Ithriya-Khanasser road was flanked by the wreckage of buses and cars,
attacked mostly by Da’esh (an Arabic acronym for the extremist
group commonly referred to in the West as ISIS or ISIL) in recent
years, and although Da’esh continues to creep onto sections of the
road at night to lay mines, our travel there was without incident.
When I
reached the southeastern suburb of Ramouseh in July, it was by taxi.
The driver sped through the suburb, fearing Nusra Front snipers less
than a kilometer away. He floored it for at least 500 meters,
speeding through risky spots and weaving in and out of a valley in
perfect range of terrorist shellings, ultimately reaching an SAA
checkpoint before entering Greater Aleppo.
Castello
Road was only means of entering Aleppo in August. The road, which
runs into the northern part of the city, had recently been secured
but still threatened by terrorist shelling.
Ramouseh was
re-secured prior to our November visit, and again became the main
means of entering Aleppo. In November, we traveled by bus, escorted
by security, and the threat of snipers was weakened by SAA advances
in recent months. Above the sniper embankment of barrels and
sandbags, I had a clearer view toward Sheikh Saeed district — areas
which terrorist factions had long occupied and from which they sniped
and shelled Ramouseh.
One of our
first stops was the Aleppo Chamber of Industry, where MP Shehabi
outlined the systematic looting of Aleppo’s factories.
According to
Shehabi, of the 70,000 small to large enterprises and factories which
once thrived in Aleppo, only about half have survived that widespread
destruction and gutting of factories. Of the roughly 35,000
enterprises now operating in Aleppo, he estimated that only about
7,000 are factories and they’re operating at just 15 percent
capacity.
Shehabi said
the Chamber has photo and video evidence of burglaries in factories.
He continued:
“We
documented the transfer of our heavy equipment, production equipment,
like power generators, like textile machinery. These are heavy, not
something you can smuggle easily. These would be on the highway,
under the monitoring of Turkish police. Stolen production lines, how
can you allow stolen production lines to enter your country without
any paperwork?”
The Chamber,
along with other Syrian industry associations, filed a lawsuit
against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in European courts in
2013, seeking damages. That lawsuit and others launched by Syrian
authorities accuse Erdoğan of not just harboring terrorists, but
allowing and even enabling them to enter Syria to destroy or
disassemble factories and return to Turkey with stolen machinery and
hardware.
None of
these legal proceedings have been resolved, and Shehabi describes the
Chamber’s lawsuit as “stumbling.” Shehabi was among four of
Aleppo’s top businessmen to be hit with EU sanctions in 2011. These
sanctions, the MP said, represent a hurdle preventing a fair
resolution.
The Chamber
now operates out of a rented villa, as the historic building which
housed the Chamber of Industry in the Old City was destroyed on April
27, 2014, when explosives were denoted in an underground tunnel.
Shehabi said he had gone on Syrian national television, calling on
governments to impose a commercial boycott of Turkey, about two weeks
prior to the attack.
“They
didn’t bomb the building next to it, there was only one security
guard inside [no military personnel], and it’s not at the
frontline, so why bomb it?” he asked, noting his suspicion that
the Chamber had been deliberately targeted due to the legal action it
was taking against Erdoğan.
Source:
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