© Eva BartlettOverlooking the terrorist-occupied Bustan al-Qasr district of eastern Aleppo. Nov. 4, 2016
'We were living in security and peace. These areas are being targeted, they want to force us to leave. Every Syrian is being targeted,' one Syrian religious leader told a delegation of reporters who visited Aleppo earlier this month.
In early November, Fares Shehabi, a member of the Syrian parliament from Aleppo, organized a trip to Aleppo for 13 Western journalists, including myself, with security provided by forces in the Syrian Arab Army.
While I had traveled to Aleppo independently as recently as July and August, for many others in the delegation, it was their first visit to the city or their first visit since the war on Syria began in 2011.
On previous visits to Aleppo, I met with the Aleppo Medical Association and saw a maternity hospital hit twice by rocket and mortar attacks by militants under Jaysh al-Fatah (the Army of Conquest), a loose alliance of anti-government terrorist groups. I met with members of a branch of the
Syria Civil Defense and Christian and Muslim religious leaders. Just north of the city, I
visited Nubl and Zahraa, towns besieged for more than three years by the Free Syrian Army, the Nusra Front, and other affiliated terrorist factions before the Syrian Arab Army drove them out in February of this year. I saw the liberated region of Bani Zaid and the al-Layramoun industrial district. I interacted with civilians in public parks, streets, and markets.
Ahead of my trip earlier this month, I was interested to see what might have changed following the liberation of still more areas by the SAA. I also hoped to speak with civilians who had fled the terrorist-held areas of Aleppo's eastern districts since I had last visited, during which time eight humanitarian corridors had been established for civilians and members of terrorist factions willing to relinquish their arms or to accept safe passage to areas in Idlib and government-secured parts of western Aleppo.
However, on Nov. 4, no one fled terrorist-held areas of Aleppo.
Family members of civilians still there say their loved ones are being used as human shields by groups like the Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, or Nour al-Din al-Zenki — the so-called "moderate rebels" and "opposition forces" backed by the United States, NATO, Israel and Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Comment: It is hard enough to witness an event and be able to process correctly what one sees. It is even harder to separate out pre-conceived notions about what took place. It is even more difficult to understand and eliminate personal prejudice at an emotional level in order to suss out a particular kernel of truth. Compound these few aspects with information from a secondary source with bias, agenda and intent. The end result may truly be several generations away from reality.
What are the choices left to reporters and journalists trying to do their job? It is up to the journalists and then the news recipients to become so knowledgeable about the situation that they can filter out persuasions and suss out reality, add up the score and see what is and what doesn't fit. Trustworthy news sources are all we have to tell it like it is, no matter what it is.