ON MONDAY, Vladimir Putin and
Donald Trump spoke by phone about Syria and agreed on “the need to work
together in the struggle against the No. 1 common enemy — international
terrorism and extremism,” according to a Kremlin statement. Hours
later, Russia and its Syrian allies launched a massive new bombing campaign against
eastern Aleppo and other rebel-held territories. Just a coincidence? Not
likely, given what we know about Mr. Putin.
There are no Islamic State forces in
Aleppo, though Mr. Trump does not appear to be aware of that fact. There are an
estimated 250,000 civilians who, according to the United Nations, received the last available food rations last week. There
are also rebel forces that until now have been trained and supplied by the
United States and its allies, as well as groups linked to al-Qaeda. Surrounded
by Syrian, Iranian and Shiite militia forces since July, all face the same
brutal ultimatum President Bashar al-Assad has delivered to other rebel-held
areas: Surrender, or die through bombing or starvation.
Mr. Putin’s evident aim is to
support the Assad regime in a campaign to overrun the city, and perhaps other
rebel-held areas, during the 2½ months of the U.S. presidential transition. If
so, the result will likely be the worst humanitarian catastrophe yet in a war
that has already seen more than 400,000 people killed by
bombing, chemical weapons, torture and other depravities. Yet neither the
outgoing nor the incoming U.S. president appears willing to do anything to
prevent this calamity.
President Obama was asked about
Aleppo at his news conference Monday by a journalist who pointed out that the
United States had intervened to prevent a similar assault on the Libyan city of
Benghazi. “We don’t have that option easily available to us,” said Mr. Obama, who recently set aside several such
options, such as grounding the Syrian air force. He added that the
administration would continue to press for “humanitarian safe spaces and
cease-fires” before conceding, “I recognize that that has not worked.” While
the honesty was welcome, Mr. Obama’s apparent willingness to watch fecklessly
as hundreds of thousands of people are starved and bombed during his final
weeks in office is morally abject. It will deepen the ineradicable stain Syria
will leave on his legacy.
Mr. Trump, for his part, has all but
given Mr. Putin the green light for atrocities. While we don’t know the
specifics of what was said in his conversation with the Russian ruler, the
president-elect in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday repeated that
“Syria is fighting ISIS and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally
aligned with Syria.”
Again, the Syrian regime is not
fighting the Islamic State in Aleppo. It is bombing and besieging its own
citizens, with Russian and Iranian help. In refusing to allow aid deliveries
and in targeting hospitals, it is willfully committing crimes against humanity.
“I don’t think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in
east Aleppo,” said Jan Egeland, the head of a U.N.-backed humanitarian task
force. Tragically, he is wrong. The Assad regime and Mr. Putin want it. Mr.
Obama is unwilling to prevent it. And Mr. Trump is, at best, indifferent.
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