War has its own logic. The devastating, ongoing siege taking place in Syria’s eastern Ghouta is just the latest reminder that with the collapse of the Islamic State, the old rules have gone out of the window, The Guardian editorializes.
“The powerful are too invested to back out now, or pay heed to the Syrians destroyed by their ambitions. Eastern Ghouta, once the breadbasket of Damascus, is choked with dust and starving. The overlapping wars have stolen the lives of at least half a million Syrians and displaced half the population, forcing six million to flee abroad to a precarious life in which their suffering is met at best with an inadequate response and at worst with an utter lack of concern or hostility,” The Guardian writes.
“Even as eastern Ghouta suffered, two more developments highlighted the multiplying strands of this catastrophe and the fact that there is no end in sight. On Tuesday Turkish forces fired on a convoy of pro-regime forces entering the north-western Afrin region to support Kurdish fighters fending off Ankara’s offensive there. Meanwhile, Moscow has acknowledged that ‘several dozen’ of its nationals and citizens of other former Soviet states were killed by a US-led coalition strike in Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria, two weeks ago, having previously dismissed reports of mercenaries’ deaths as ‘classic disinformation.’ It is realizing – as the US did in Iraq – that crushing the opposition is not the same as winning, still less being able to effect an exit.
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“The powerful are too invested to back out now, or pay heed to the Syrians destroyed by their ambitions. Eastern Ghouta, once the breadbasket of Damascus, is choked with dust and starving. The overlapping wars have stolen the lives of at least half a million Syrians and displaced half the population, forcing six million to flee abroad to a precarious life in which their suffering is met at best with an inadequate response and at worst with an utter lack of concern or hostility,” The Guardian writes.
“Even as eastern Ghouta suffered, two more developments highlighted the multiplying strands of this catastrophe and the fact that there is no end in sight. On Tuesday Turkish forces fired on a convoy of pro-regime forces entering the north-western Afrin region to support Kurdish fighters fending off Ankara’s offensive there. Meanwhile, Moscow has acknowledged that ‘several dozen’ of its nationals and citizens of other former Soviet states were killed by a US-led coalition strike in Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria, two weeks ago, having previously dismissed reports of mercenaries’ deaths as ‘classic disinformation.’ It is realizing – as the US did in Iraq – that crushing the opposition is not the same as winning, still less being able to effect an exit.
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