Aleppo heartbreak: a devoted doctor shames us

This article first appeared in September. I felt it was vital to put it up again in the thick of the hellish endgame with the so far encouraging news that Dr al Khatib is still alive and doing what he can, or was when he posted again on Change.org two days ago. And here's a link to The Huffington Post's helpful piece on how and where to give. For a shocking, nuanced report on the impossible dilemmas and compromises around the Aleppo nightmare, read Robert Fisk's article in The Independent online - just about the only thing I've read there recently to suggest that once fine broadsheet has anything left to offer. 

It should come as no surprise that an American politician, albeit one even dumber if possible than Trump, should yesterday have asked 'what's Aleppo'? The answer is, perhaps the most pressing catastrophe of many facing us at the moment. Dr Hamza al Khatib (pictured below) started up a Change.Org petition several weeks ago with a simple message: 'I am one of the very last doctors serving the remaining 300,000 citizens of eastern Aleppo. Atrocities are being committed every day. The Syrian regime and Russian aircraft are systematically targeting civilians and hospitals across the city. In the last week, I have written to both President Obama and Chancellor Merkel calling for their help'.  

I circulated the petition; some of my acquaintances wrote back to say, what on earth do you think Obama and Merkel can do? Setting aside the complexities of the issue, it seems to me absolutely essential that I post Dr al Khatib's latest message. Nothing has made me feel more desperate about the untenable situation, or clarified it so ruthlessly. Chlorine attacks? Still? I mourn for this city, so racy and wild when we visited in the 1990s. Those souks and monuments, all destroyed; but now we have to save as many civilians as possible. Thus our noble doctor:

September 08

Dear Friends,

I have been overwhelmed by your outpouring of support. It is heartening to see that so many people across the world have joined my call, and the call of my fellow physicians, to Obama and Merkel to do more to ensure the people of Aleppo are no longer subject to vicious bombings and brutal sieges.

But it is with a heavy heart that I now write to you, as a Syrian Government offensive, supported by Russian airstrikes, has left eastern Aleppo re-encircled and cut off from desperately needed medical and humanitarian aid.

It is hard to describe the anxiety of impending starvation. The knowledge that each meal will be smaller than the last, that each patient will have less anaesthesia than the one before him or her. It is like carrying a weight that grows heavier by the day, dragging you towards the ground.

This is the reality for the 300,000 civilians trapped in Eastern Aleppo - my family, friends and patients who now all face an uncertain fate. As we face a debilitating siege, relentless bombardment and now chemical weapons, our suffering is as much psychological as it is physical. As deadly as these chemical attacks are, their real impact is making our homes feel unlivable, as though even the air we breathe can take our lives from us.

Just this week government planes dropped canisters filled with chlorine, sending dozens to our hospitals, gasping for air. This is another in a series of chemical attacks by the Syrian government, who have shown no regard for Obama's 'red line' on the use of these internationally banned weapons. President Obama, too, seems insufficiently concerned about these violations.

As I rushed to treat the victims of this attack I was shocked to see children as young as 5 and 6 knowing how to hold the oxygen masks to their faces without the help of doctors or parents. What does it say when these attacks have become so routine that even children have learned to treat themselves amidst the chaos? What does it say about what this war is doing to our children when holding a gas mask to their faces comes as easy as holding a coloured pencil to paper? 

But I have made a pledge to remain by the people of this city and my commitment to that is unwavering, even in the face of relentless bombardment. Frustrated, angry and exhausted as I am, I have not lost hope. The heroic people of this city give me hope, as does the knowledge that across the world people like you are taking a stand for Aleppo. With your voice, you can assure that the people of this city do not suffer in silence. I'll be in touch with more updates from Aleppo as soon as I can, but in the meantime please share this campaign as widely as you can and help us let the world know what is happening to Aleppo.

Please sign the petition and tell everyone you know.

Update (23/9): after the targeted bombings of, inter alia, major aid convoys, Dr al Khatib has put up another post on change.org on the results of what Khofi Annan called 'new depths of depravity' from the Russians and the Syrian government.

Citizens of this mad, mad world

...unite! Give 'em hell, fellow Remoaners, Bremoaners, whatever the ghastly falsifying right-wing press which was largely responsible for getting us into this mess cares to call us today: it's our turn to be the gadflies now that the lunatic fringe of the Tory Party, having waged a war of attrition for years, has got what it wanted.

Of course the Conservative Party Conference was just an orgy of self-congratulation and puffery, destined to smash against the rock of reality this week. No way was Amber Rudd's 'policy' for getting companies to register their 'domiciled foreigners' going to pass muster in the outside world. But still they managed to alienate a whole raft of doctors and nurses without whom the NHS couldn't function* - and who have been helping it to function at least since I was a child - as well as 'loony lefty' human rights lawyers ('hands off our boys!'), the 48 per cent who voted Remain as a sneering metropolitan elite and, indeed, all those who had previously thought of themselves as citizens contributing in so many ways more than just the mere financial to a society that's still worth fighting for. I've already heard of the personal impact from Brexit's licence to hate - which this Conference will only have stoked - from my Polish friend Magda, as reported here. The current leadership must now be held to account for this.

As for Bray (= Brexit May), good luck all those people around the country whom she encouraged to 'take back control' at a local level when at around the same time the government overruled Lancashire Council's rejection of local fracking. Reports on the subject are helpfully rounded up here.

Like many of her colleagues, this woman with her 'Born Again' credentials no longer passes muster as a politician of conviction. Say what you will about Corbyn - like many, I left the Labour Party in consternation at his deliberately poor show during and after the referendum - but he seems consistent. Of course it sticks most in the craw of us liberals (not neoliberals, please) to be told by our unelected Prime Minister that we're actually 'citizens of nowhere'. I was reminded shortly after spluttering that the negation is even more offensive to those who've crossed half the world under impossible conditions now that there's no home for them in the country of their birth.

Alongside typically firm statements emerging from Sadiq Khan and Nicola Sturgeon - how I breathed more freely up in Edinburgh last Thursday - less familiar champions have emerged, too. LBC chat-hosts never used to be as articulate, in my experience, as a new hero of the day, James O'Brien. Having caught us all out by claiming to read out a couple of lines from Rudd's speech, only to tell us that they were from Mein Kampf Chapter Three, he was on top form pursuing Ashley, an amiable enough sounding electrician from Plymouth, on which EU law he didn't like. Couldn't name one, of course. And what didn't he like? Packs of immigrants wandering around the centre of Plymouth. But then packs of Englishmen were just as bad. Of course it was an unequal match; I'd like to see O'Brien's relentless logic versus the Three Blind Mice aka Brexiteers Johnson, Davis and Fox. But nailing the total lack of facts behind the average entirely delusional Outer's vote to leave is just as useful. Not on YouTube yet, but here it is on LBC in the meantime.

In the meantime, Blind Mice One, bumbling Boris, showed his usual diplomacy by recommending protests outside the Russian Embassy against the destruction of Aleppo. Protesters are not, in our democracy at least, liable to follow instructions from government, though God knows something has to be happen as the Russians ruthlessly target hospitals. Which is indeed a new depravity which the UK and America cannot be blamed for in Syria (what's Stop the War up to, making equivalence between the two?) It was not widely reported that at the weekend Russia again vetoed halting the attacks and returning to talks in the UN. Obscene. I want to hear from our valiant doctor in Aleppo again, and hope he's still able to function in some way.

As for the cesspit into which a man not fit to be called a politician - though still supported here by several extreme Tories who should know better - has tried to drag American politics, the entertainment aspect has vanished and all but the most diehard Trump supporters who steeled themselves to watch the second debate with Hillary saw the fangs and the male space-invading monster, not Farage's fine silverback. Still, though, there can be some innocent relief and of all the creative responses, this one I adore:

Preserving the link/embedding as much for myself as for anyone reading, since these are tonics to which I'll be happy to return in the future. And please, America, though a Trump presidency now begins to seem as unlikely as it has always been incredible, don't make a mistake which would be on an even more colossal scale than the UK's.

 Rant over. Not checking for grammar - let it be a spontaneous snapshot from this very strange time.

14/10 From the worst to the very best: here's the lady I hope will be the next President-but-one of the United States at her emotive best, remarkable not so much for her attack on Trump as for the way she uses it to follow her reactions to participating in Day of the Girl, for young women's education all over the world. I love that couple, even if Obama failed in one grave area - acting strongly enough when he could on Assad's use of chemical weapons. On the home front, I have nothing but praise. This speech is impressive for the way the whooping crowd goes silent with intense listening in the middle - something unthinkable at a Trump rally. Make sure to watch it all.

*Update - 13/10:  I met and chatted to quite a few, the salt of the earth, when I had my stent removed this morning at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. No need to ask if they're UK citizens or not, but the entirely delightful and friendly nurses were, inter alia, from the Middle East and what I guess to be Indonesia and my doctor told me he goes to North Kurdistan a lot. I'd like to have talked to him more but then the procedure - quick, weird and only briefly painful - went ahead.  This is the good side of our International Health Service, and there's no way we could do without these people.