photo credit: Aleppo Media Center - Facebook

By Scott Taylor

Last week, the war in Syria garnered international headlines as Russian-backed government troops finally recaptured the last rebel-held territory in the city of Aleppo.

The civil war that has gripped Syria since March 2011 was particularly brutal in this sprawling city, the largest urban centre in the country.

In recent weeks, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were able to contain and surround rebel forces in just a few of Aleppo’s eastern suburbs. Under the terms of a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey, the remaining rebels agreed to be withdrawn from the city and relocated within other Syrian territory that is still under rebel control.

Under seige

This final rebel collapse in Aleppo set off a wave of indignant condemnation by the western media, all of it aimed at Assad and his Russian ally, Vladimir Putin. One claim, levelled by none other than Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth, was that the siege of Aleppo constituted a war crime perpetrated by Putin and Assad. Roth’s rationale is that, by starving the besieged rebels, the Syrian government troops had denied humanitarian aid from being delivered to those unfortunate innocent civilians within those rebel-held areas.

By Roth’s logic, we need to revisit every siege staged throughout history and declare each and every one of them a war crime. There has never been a case where some benevolent commander allowed supplies through the siege lines in order to relieve the suffering and hunger of the civilians trapped inside.

One need only look at the news stream coming out of neighbouring Iraq to see the hypocrisy of Roth’s allegations. The U.S.-led coalition has boasted that they have completely surrounded the Daesh-held city of Mosul and that some Iraqi and Kurdish units have fought their way into the city’s eastern suburbs. There are an estimated one million residents left in Mosul and only some 5,000 of these are considered to be Daesh extremists. There is no way in hell that the U.S.-led besiegers are letting truckloads of food and fuel into Mosul to alleviate the suffering of the civilians.

When the Russians and Syrians do it, it’s a war crime. When the U.S.-led force — including Canadian special forces — employ a siege, it is a brilliant tactic.

The "moderate" rebels

There have been reports out of Aleppo that forces loyal to Assad have committed revenge killings as they entered rebel-held territory. The killing of what the Western media terms “moderate rebels” is then attributed directly to Putin and Assad as proof of their criminal policies.

I am not going to condone battlefield executions, but first off it must be pointed out that there is no such thing as a “moderate” rebel. The anti-Assad forces include some of the nastiest killers on the planet.

Not even counting the Daesh fighters, who were not present in Aleppo, the most effective fighting force in Syria is the al-Qaeda affiliate known as the al-Nusra Front. At the core of this unit are foreign jihadists, many of whom fought to oust Moammar Gadhafi from Libya in 2011.

Critics of Assad and Putin are quick to point out that many of those fighting for the embattled Syrian president are actually foreign Shiite Muslim volunteers waging a holy war against the majority Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels. These Iranian and Hezbollah fighters certainly helped Assad turn the tide in this war. However, if employing foreigners to fight your war is evil, then we must denounce all of those foreign fighters who chose to assist the Syrian rebels — aided and abetted by state sponsors such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

If foreigners should not insert themselves into these Middle Eastern conflicts, then what the hell are 200 Canadian special forces soldiers doing training Kurdish fighters to battle Daesh in Iraq?

In one media interview concerning the fall of Aleppo, I heard some sage commentary from a Syrian refugee who is currently residing in Toronto. His concerns were for his relatives who remained in Aleppo and the reporter expected him to condemn Assad for the siege and subsequent revenge killings. Instead, the Syrian refugee said, “All of those who took up guns in this conflict are to blame for the suffering.”

Instead of sending in agencies to assign guilt for specific war crimes in isolated incidents, we should begin with the premise that war itself is a crime.

By Scott Taylor

Back in July, when Canada announced it would be sending troops into Latvia, the tub-thumping Colonel Blimps popped their pacemakers. This was the stuff they have been longing for, a throwback to the good old Cold War days: A chance to square off once again with those nasty Russkies.

Since Canada withdrew from the international intervention in Afghanistan in the spring of 2014, the military has dropped out of the media spotlight. Many of the warmongers felt that the Canadian Armed Forces needed a high-profile mission to justify increased procurement budgets. The idea of deploying a contingent of Canadian soldiers along the Latvian–Russian border to contain the supposed naked aggression of President Vladimir Putin seemed like a godsend.

The rah-rah jingoistic pundits breathlessly wrote that Canadian soldiers were being deployed along NATO’s “northern flank” as if the alliance was already engaged in a full-scale war with Russia. It is true that when Ukraine devolved into a bloody civil war in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops into the Crimea to reinforce those already stationed there under an existing lease agreement.

Fearful the new pro-Western regime in Kiev might revoke the lease and thus deny Russia its longstanding major naval base in the Black Sea, Putin held a referendum in the Crimea. The majority of the ethnic-Russian population voted to secede and Putin formally annexed the territory.

This tiny territorial grab then became the cornerstone of NATO’s accusations that Putin is bent on nothing less than world domination. One problem with that theory is the fact that two other pro-Russian breakaway provinces — Donetsk and Luhansk — had also staged referendums on secession and voted overwhelmingly to leave Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Despite these results, Putin did not gobble up these provinces.

Instead, Russia is insisting that both warring Ukrainian factions adhere to the Minsk II ceasefire agreement, with an eventual course that Donetsk and Luhansk rejoin a Ukrainian federation. But, of course, that does not sound as frightening as depicting Putin in 2016 as the new Adolf Hitler in 1939, poised to conquer the free world.

The NATO plan will see a total of some 4,000 soldiers from four member states deployed into Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia on a rotational, non-permanent basis. Of that number, Canada is to commit a combat contingent of 450 soldiers to Latvia. These troops are to be rotated in and out of the Baltic on six-month or one-year tours, indefinitely. For those familiar with just how tiny Canada’s combat cupboard really is, this means that nearly one-third of our infantry capability will either be deployed, training for deployment, or just returned from Latvia at any given time.

If Canada does commit to a similar-sized mission in Mali, as they are expected to announce any day now, that will tie down two-thirds of Canada’s primary combat force, excluding the ongoing commitment to northern Iraq.

While the good news is that the Baltic region is not a “front” at all and there is no imminent danger of Russia starting a shooting war there anytime soon, the bad news is that after the initial two-day artificial euphoria of deploying face-to-face with the Russian juggernaut, our soldiers will become bored gormless.

You can only patrol the Russian border so many times and conduct rapid reaction drills to perfection before you realize that you are a hell of a long way from your home and family and, oh yeah, the Russians aren’t coming.

The good news for the Latvians is that this token contribution of a few hundred Canadian soldiers will create a mini-economic boom. The Canadian defence budget will absorb the cost of building or refurbishing all the necessary facilities to house a mini-battalion of soldiers. This will create construction and service jobs in the local economy, and I have it on good authority from a Latvian colleague that the women there are keen on the prospect of landing themselves a Canadian husband.

Regretfully for those Colonel Blimps who wish it were so, this just ain’t your father’s Cold War.