Syrian city leveled; people eat dogs to survive

Francesca Borri | Special for USA TODAY

ALEPPO, Syria — The Syrian military's dropping of "barrel explosives" on neighborhoods of Aleppo is the latest assault on rebels opposed to dictator Bashar Assad that is reducing this once thriving city to ruin and forcing some to turn to dog meat for food.

Assad's air forces have been dumping barrels packed with explosives on areas where rebels refuse to give up, the fourth day in a row of airstrikes on one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and a former economic hub of Syria.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one of the bombs exploded near the Ahmad al-Qassar school and another landed by a student dormitory. The group says more than 100 people have died in the bombardment, including children.

The attacks come ahead of a U.S.-backed international peace conference scheduled for late January in Switzerland. But whether this city, settled as far back as 5,000 years ago, will survive is in doubt, say people who have remained throughout a nearly three-year civil war.

A rare firsthand glimpse of Aleppo showed streets filled with concrete chunks, shattered glass, husks of cars, twisted metal, lined with buildings sliced in half by missiles. In a sign of some normalcy, a cat is curled up on asleep a chair asleep in a barber shop.

But it's dead, as is the shop. Small glass bottles still line shelves, one smells of jasmine when unscrewed.

Barefoot children in tattered clothes pick through the rubble between bombings. Many are disfigured with skin scores from Leishmaniasis, a disease caused by a parasite from sand fly bites. There is treatment for it, but not here.

Their mothers, also barefoot and bony and suffering from diseases like typhus, walk with bowls in hand seeking water or bread from the nearby mosque or other charities.

"The only option is begging for help in a mosque," says Abu Mohammed, a charity worker.

When all is quiet, hawkers come out to peddle teapots, TVs, phones, light switches — activity that is far from where Aleppo has seen itself.

Seated at the crossroads of two major trade routes from India and Iraq, Aleppo has always been Syria's most developed commercial and industrial city. The largest covered souq, or market, in the world is here at about 8 miles long in total.

Industry was big, dominated by textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electronics and even alcohol. More than half of all workers in the country's manufacturing sector worked here. Aleppo was the hub of Syria's precious metals industry, producing nearly half of all manufactured gold in the country.

Today, very little is being produced. Half of its 2 million people have vanished to escape the violence which not only comes from Assad but from the competing militias and Muslim jihadists who are fighting Assad's military and sometimes each other.

Although rarely expressly Islamist in the past, Aleppo is now filled with foreign men who impose harsh Islamic law on neighborhoods and provinces they control. The bodies of those who have crossed them can be seen floating in the Aleppo River.

The foreigners live in abandoned homes and steal from shops and warehouses to survive. Others sell copper and various materials stripped from apartment buildings and factories to buy food.

Abu Mohammed used to like to wear a hoodie printed with the name of the rock band Metallica when he was working for a Western charitable group in the spring. Since then, he's grown a beard because he works for a charity linked to al-Qaeda.

"We have no choice," he said.

Last month, he said, al-Qaeda fighters who belong to the Sunni sect of Islam burst into al-Zarzous hospital in Aleppo and beheaded a patient who had been whispering the names of Shia clerics while under anesthesia. Later they realized it had been a mistake, and that man was actually a Sunni rebel fighting on their side.

"We haven't lost only the revolution, we've lost Syria," said a prominent local activist who asked that his name not be used out of fear for his life from jihadists.

Ahrar al-Sham, whose members had been jailed for years in Syria, were the first jihadists to arrive here and fight. Then came Jabhat al-Nusra, a U.S.-designated terror group with allegiance to al-Qaeda that has members from Arab nations. Also here is ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaeda group that sent its killers to the hospital.

Liwa al-Tawhid, once the largest rebel group in the city, was crushed by Syria's military as it was trying to push out competing rebel groups.

All want to overthrow Assad but not for the same reasons. Native Syrian rebels want the regime deposed and democratic reforms installed. The foreign fighters seek to create a Sunni jihadist regime with Islamic law and a base for further attacks in the Arab world.

Assad has taken advantage of the infighting, as in the case of the now debilitated Liwa al-Tawhid.

Getting here and chronicling the conditions is dangerous. Around 30 journalists have disappeared in Aleppo since the war started in 2011, say journalism groups. Red Cross workers have been kidnapped by fighters on all sides for aiding wounded fighters on the other side.

The radical Islamists here have come from Afghanistan, Chechnya and Libya as well as London and even Marseille, France. The most widely spoken language among the foreign fighters is English, not Arabic.

The Islamists always decline interview requests and demand that journalists say they are not opposed to democracy. One fighter who said he was from Saudi Arabia referred journalists to his group's Facebook page for answers.

In these areas, women must cover their faces in black niqabs, or veils, which was never mandatory before the war.The jihadists have established an Islamic court system to replace the secular ones that once prevailed and enforce their versions of Muslim law.

While some here say the courts maintain some order, they judges are accused of going too far. This past summer a 14-year-old boy was executed for misusing the name of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, according to AFP and other media.

When people are asked why they stay, most say they don't have the money to get out. A taxi ride to the nearby Turkish border is $150, an immense amount of money for people scavenging for a living in what is now a barter economy.

United Nations relief funds, channeled through the Damascus government, don't reach Aleppo. And relief workers have been prevented by Syrian forces from delivering medical and food aid to the city.

In October, the city's imams gave Aleppo's hungry citizens permission to eat dogs, which is normally deemed haram, or sinful.

The latest air assault has overwhelmed Aleppo's medical facilities, the international aid group Doctors Without Borders warned. It said hospitals are running out of drugs and medical supplies.

"Repeated attacks often lead to chaos and make it more difficult to treat the wounded, thereby increasing the number of fatalities," said Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, the group's coordinator in Syria.

He blamed all sides for making life intolerable, pleading that they all comply with international humanitarian law.