Parallels between invasion of Ukraine and horrors of Aleppo

BEIRUT (AP) — When Afraa Hashem thinks about what his life was like during the siege of Aleppo, he remembers how creative people were.

By the end of 2016, Syrian government forces had completely isolated the eastern part of the city, in rebellious hands, where 270,000 people lived. Months of bombing Russian planes destroyed the city. Food was scarce and Hashem's family, like so many others, survived on one meal a day.

One day, his eldest son, Wisam, 11, asked him: “Mommy, can we eat fish?”

Actually, none of her three children liked fish, but when you have almost nothing, you miss even the things you don't like, the woman said.

In an effort not to despair, Hashem fried some old bread, found some coriander, garlic and Aleppo's famous red peppers and told them it was tilapia. Everyone pretended to eat tilapia. The boys even said it tasted like tilapia.

“I wasn't the only one. All women in Aleppo did these things to feed their children,” said Hashem.

She and other survivors of the siege of Aleppo recalled Tuesday the 11th anniversary of the revolution that gave way to a civil war. The anniversary takes on a special dimension this year, in which they see with horror how Ukrainians go through the same thing they went through: shelling, brutal siege and the abandonment of their homes.

In Syria, Russia helped Bashar Assad's government with a ruthless strategy. One by one, they besieged cities and neighborhoods controlled by the rebels, bombing and starving people until they could no longer resist. The siege of Aleppo was one of the most brutal.

Aleppo was the most populous city in Syria, famous for its cuisine and its ancient old city.

When the war began, its eastern districts battled with government forces for years, driven by revolutionary fervor. But nearly six months of siege turned the area into ruins, with its population dead or scattered.

In Ukraine, the port of Mariupol has been experiencing a similar experience for two weeks and tens of thousands of people are looking for food and shelter from the Russian bombings. The fear is that Russian President Vladimir Putin will use tactics such as those used in Aleppo throughout Ukraine.

Now in London with her husband and children, Hashem said she stood in solidarity with Ukraine from the first day of the Russian invasion.

“A lot of people ask me if it bothers me that the world is more in solidarity with Ukraine than it did with Syria. I'm telling you that doesn't interest me. What worries me is that they are also victims,” said the woman.

In a sector of Syria that is not yet controlled by the government, another Aleppo survivor, Abdulkafi Alhamdo, also feels a connection to Ukraine.

He lives in the provincial of Idlib, in the hands of the opposition, and works as a professor of literature in neighbouring Turk-controlled Azaz.

In the classroom, “I always associate Big Brother from George Orwell's novel '1984' with Putin, both in Syria and now in Ukraine,” he said.

Alhamdo printed two Ukrainian flags that he had flamed alongside the flags of the Syrian revolution during a protest in Idlig on the occasion of the anniversary of the war. When the conflict began in 2011, Hashem was the principal of a school and an activist of the rebel cause. He encouraged hopes for change in Syria as he saw the progress of the opposition, including the seizure of eastern Aleppo. Hashem worked with a local council that ran the city and helped organize protest demonstrations.

Over the years, Russian and Syrian government planes intensified their bombing of eastern Aleppo. Hashem set up his school in a basement and its dark classrooms acted as classrooms and shelters. He started a theater there, writing plays that were staged by his students.

The situation worsened and life was even more altered. In the morning it passed by a hill that separated the eastern sector from the part controlled by the government. It was as impassable as the Berlin Wall, according to him. If anyone got too close, there were snipers shooting at him.

But she liked to hear the cars and any noise on the other side that reminded her of the friends and family who stayed there.

“I always wondered, what will life be like in that other universe?” , he said.

His universe turned into hell when the siege began in July 2016.

The eastern part of Aleppo was isolated and almost no supplies arrived at all. The bombing by the government and the Russians killed everything, including hospitals and schools. Explosions were constantly being heard.

Hashem's apartment was bombed several times and she had to move on numerous occasions.

As there was no cooking gas, families used any piece of wood they could find, including furniture. Prices went up. There were almost no fruits or vegetables. It was impossible to get flour, so Hashem and other families cooked bread by grinding white beans.

The winters were fierce and the children of Hesham missed saleb, a sweet drink, which is drunk hot on cold days. It is prepared from orchid tubers, impossible to find under siege.

Hesham improvised again. He used the little flour he kept and cooked it in boiling water with sugar, passing it off as saleb.

At the end of December 2016, he agreed to leave Aleppo, along with tens of thousands of people, as part of an agreement to evacuate residents. He went first to the north-western part of Syria, in the hands of the opposition, and then to Turkey.

On his first night in an apartment in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, he saw a laundry machine work for the first time in years and cried.

Hesham took his children to a mall and to the “promised land”, as described by the food court. “We ate a lot of things we dreamed of: pizza, burgers, chicken strips, fish and fries. All that.”

A Syrian government soldier lives today in his home in Aleppo, according to family members who remain there. The government confiscated many properties.

Iman Khaled Aboud, a 40-year-old widow who took asylum in England, says she left Aleppo during the same evacuation, on a cold and foggy December day, a climate similar to what is now in Ukraine.

He says he saw Russian soldiers for the first time when the buses used in the evacuation passed through the various checkpoints, after months of Russian bombing. Her husband and son were killed in a Russian bombing raid, she says. She and her family had to move 15 times because of the attacks.

Aboud says she hopes Ukrainians won't have to go through what she went through. In any case, “I would recommend that you store food.”