REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas recounts scenes from Aleppo amid escalating clashes between the Syrian army and SDF forces.
I arrived in Aleppo early Wednesday morning after receiving reports of serious clashes between the Syrian army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). What I found was much worse than I expected.
The heavy artillery bombardment was constant and extreme. My team was attacked four times; A bullet hit our team.
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We quickly understood that this round of fighting would not be as easy to contain as the previous fighting last year.
The root of the conflict is the government’s demand that the SDF, which has tens of thousands of troops, be integrated into state institutions, according to an agreement reached between both sides last March. But there are numerous disputes over how that should happen, including the number of SDF troops that will join the army.
“Overwhelming feeling of despair”
The fighting has focused on densely populated areas of Aleppo, specifically the Ashrafieh and Sheikh Maqsoud districts. In total, these areas have about 400,000 inhabitants. Within 24 hours of the fighting breaking out, 160,000 people fled their homes. It was like an exodus.
On Thursday, as the fighting reached its peak, people struggled to make their way through the streets without getting caught in the crossfire. The children screamed and cried in panic. Families held hands and clothes so as not to lose sight of each other.
One elderly man said he had seen enough after almost 15 years of civil conflict: “May God take my soul so it can rest,” he said.
An elderly woman, who could barely walk, fell to the ground in the middle of the crowd and was trampled by several people. I saw her son burst into tears as he tried to pick her up from the ground.
The last time I saw scenes like this was in 2014, when ISIL (ISIS) attacked the Kurdish-majority city of Kobane in Syria. There was an overwhelming sense of despair, helplessness and the feeling that everything was ending.
Short-lived ceasefire
On Friday, the warring parties agreed to a ceasefire in the morning and SDF leaders agreed that their fighters would lay down their heavy weapons and leave the area. However, when buses arrived to pick them up, more clashes broke out. When the buses returned later, the same thing happened. Our sources told us this was due to divisions within the SDF, with more radical factions resisting calls to lay down their arms.
The tug-of-war ended when the Syrian government set a deadline of 6:00 p.m. (3:00 p.m. GMT) on Friday for remaining civilians to flee, after which it would restart military operations against SDF targets. Heavy fighting has since resumed in Sheikh Maqsoud.
The government, careful to avoid the perception of demographic engineering, has said that once it clears the area of SDF fighters, everyone will be able to return home. He has stressed that this is not a fight between Arabs and Kurds, but between government forces and a non-state force.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Aleppo find themselves between hope and fear. On the one hand, they hope that an agreement will finally be reached between the SDF and the Syrian army so that they can return to their homes. But, on the other hand, after 15 years of civil war, they fear that history will repeat itself.
