The barrel bomb is a primitive, almost medieval, weapon. Pack any large metal container, an oil drum or even an old water heating tank, with high explosive, shrapnel, stones – the recipe varies – and drop it from a helicopter on to a residential street, where its impact is multiplied by the walls and roofs its blast brings crashing down.
It has become the instrument of choice for Syrian forces trying to retake rebel areas, particularly the eastern half of Aleppo. The bombs kill a lot of people, including some rebel fighters but also many civilians, and cause large numbers to flee, into the countryside, across international borders, or into government territory. One estimate suggests that between 5,000 and 6,000 barrel bombs have been dropped during the war, killing at least 20,000 people. There is no defence, except to bring down the helicopters with ground-to-air missiles, which the Syrian rebels do not have, a fact they bitterly resent and blame on their lukewarm western and Arab supporters.
Barrel bombs are not designed to be discriminate. It would be quite impossible to use them in such a way as to target only armed fighters. The main effect is to clear urban areas of people clinging to their homes and lives, preparatory to retaking territory and driving civilians either into the limbo of refugee camps over the borders or into places in Syria where they can be easily controlled. Perfect for a government that has been gradually gaining the upper hand in its battle with insurgents, but the price paid is, even by the standards of the Syrian conflict, quite horrifying. And it could get worse. Aid agencies in Turkey fear that if government forces in Aleppo reach the point where they can cut the main road from that city to the Turkish border, up to a million Aleppo people could pour into Turkey, utterly overwhelming the already stretched and overcrowded facilities for refugees there.
Bombs and shells are not the only ways in which the Damascus government is ratcheting up the pressure on the rebels and on the civilians who live, most of them not by any conscious choice, in rebel areas. During much of the war, food supplies and services such as water, some electricity, medical clinics and the occasional school somehow limped along. This is no longer the case in places such as Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee area in Damascus, which used to be home to 250,000 Palestinians. There are 18,000 left, a mixture of Palestinians and Syrians, and, according to a report in the Observer on Sunday, they are on the point of starvation, with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency saying it cannot get its food parcels through. The situation may be equally dire in central Homs.
Syria, the report suggests, has become a country where, if you want to eat, you may soon have no choice but to rally to the government side. With developments such as these, President Bashar al-Assad seems increasingly confident that he is on the way to winning the war. There are schemes to reconcile and rehabilitate people who are no longer always described as terrorists. Preparations have even begun for a presidential election in the summer. It can hardly fail to be a travesty, partly because the manipulation of elections is an old art in Ba'athist Syria and partly because millions of displaced people will be unable to register to vote, but it would be a demonstration of the government's capacity to create a facade of normality.
The countries helping the rebels need to reconsider their options. They could shift the military balance by giving the rebels more weapons or by using western air power. They could go on to try to revive the so far barren diplomatic process. Or they can accept that the Syrian government is going to achieve some kind of victory, even if that victory is likely to be superficial, with much of the population alienated and rebel groups determined to bide their time and fight again on another day. The default choice, far from palatable, is to continue to give the rebels enough aid to stave off defeat but not enough to prevail.
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