John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, for sharing time. He referred to the intention to wipe Aleppo off the map, a point I will take up in my contribution because, as many people know, Aleppo is an ancient city. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. In that regard, the tragedy taking place in Aleppo is even more poignant.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien outlined some of the statistics with regard to the conflict but they worth repeating. Before the brutal war in Syria the population was approximately 22 million, but the picture is very different now after four years of that brutal civil war. Twelve million people have been forced from their homes: that is more than half the population. Since March 2011, more than 250,000 Syrians have been killed, and more than 1 million have been injured. A total of 4.8 million Syrians have been forced to leave their country and 6.5 million are internally displaced, making Syria the largest displacement crisis globally. This year, an estimated 13.5 million people, including 6 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance. Of those, 5.47 million are estimated to be in difficult to reach areas, including close to 600,000 people in 18 besieged areas. According to current figures, 11.5 million Syrians require health care, 13.5 million need protection support, 12.1 million require water and sanitation, and 5.7 million children need education support, including 2.7 million who are out of school in Syria and across the wider region. Approximately 2.48 million people are food insecure, while more than 1.5 million need shelter and household goods. That is a litany of appalling statistics.

Our own aid agency, Trócaire, has said that the reality in Aleppo is relentless bombing, dwindling supplies, including medical supplies and doctors and nurses, starvation and fear. Besiegement is not a necessary consequence of conflict, but in this case it is a deliberate policy to exhaust every coping mechanism. The Syrian Government, with Russian support, is using this brutal siege to force the surrender of fighters in eastern Aleppo by any means necessary.

The siege of Aleppo has caused an international outcry, with a number of countries and groups accusing both Syria and Russia of war crimes in connection with attacks on medical facilities and aid convoys. Syrian President Assad spoke in the past week of the need to clean Aleppo. In July this year, The Guardianof London, in an editorial article, stated:

The Syrian government and its Russian allies are resorting to a tactic of siege and starvation that has been used before in Syria, but they are now doing it on a much larger scale, and openly. Their announcement of “humanitarian corridors”, [which Deputy O'Brien spoke about] for civilians and rebels who would want to flee the area must be exposed as a cynical ruse. It is no surprise that Aleppo’s population is not rushing towards these exit corridors, which have not in any case materialised on the ground. The Assad regime’s promises are incredible. The Syrian government has demonstrated time and again how little it cares for international humanitarian law. Its machine of repression makes no distinction whatsoever between armed combatants and civilians.

In these last months, the people of Aleppo are being subjected to what, by any fair definition, must be described as a war crime. Some days ago, my party leader stated:

Civilians are not being killed accidentally because of a conflict - they are being deliberately and repeatedly targeted. This death and destruction is no accident. It is the primary strategy of the Syrian Government and the Russian military.

Posted on the AI Jazeera website some time ago were images of Aleppo taken in July 2010, and again in December 2014. In the words of a recent headline in The Irish Times, this historical city is about to disappear.

Kheder Khaddour, a senior researcher at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, stated:

Aleppo is not a goal in itself, but territorial gains are limited to the aim of fragmenting the opposition forces before any political settlement is reached. The regime and its allies know that it would be impossible to defeat the armed oppositions and reclaim all the Syrian territory. They have opted for a strategy which isolates rebel-held areas from one another. By consigning the opposition to “islands" - isolated pockets of rebel-held territory surrounded by regime-held territory - the regime makes opposition forces vulnerable to repression and siege and dependent on regime allies to access further humanitarian supplies.

Clearly, Aleppo has no strategic significance of itself, but it has been targeted for splintering and division for political purposes by the ruling regime and its allies.

The question we must ask in this House is whether we will say to Russia in particular that the barbarism it is facilitating is unacceptable. The Syrian war has become one of the worst modern day humanitarian crises. Everyone here is appalled by the conflict in Syria, and in particular in Aleppo. Realistically, what can we do? To date, only 500 refugees have been admitted to this State under the resettlement programme and under relocation, and to date we have taken just one unaccompanied minor from Syria. The slow pace is unacceptable, and the Government must step up and do more. We must honour our commitment and ensure that we provide the safest haven for those fleeing the ravages of this almighty war and conflict.

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