The Russian media rejoiced in Vladimir Putin finally tidying up Syria. Russia would show the world how to win a war and how to crush terrorists.
Over the following few days, the Russians bombed everything but IS. Only one Russian strike out of ten affected the terrorist organization. Most of the damage was done to the FSA—the only secular force in Syria—and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida’s Syrian arm, along with several other militias linked by their opposition to Assad.
The goal was clear: to keep their ally in the Middle East in power.
The bombs were dropped on the peripheries of territory held by the rebel forces. The tactic was to weaken them sufficiently for government troops to retake lost ground. Several of the American-backed groups, some trained by the CIA, were also bombed.
The militias were quick to regroup, find cover, or conceal themselves, while the civilian population remained unprotected against death from above. Moscow insisted their attacks were surgical strikes against terrorists, but many of the bombs were dropped far behind the front line, often in areas Syrian government forces intended to attack. Hospitals, residential areas, and schools in rebel-controlled towns were hit. No target was too soft.
Thus far in the war, the Syrian air force had been responsible for the greatest loss of life. It had used imprecise weapons like barrel bombs—oil barrels or similar receptacles packed with high explosives and metal shrapnel. These were dropped at a height just out of range of the rebel forces’ antiaircraft defenses. Even a gust of wind could determine where they actually landed. They were unguided; they hit where they hit, detonating with devastating force. A red-hot, flying metal fragment could sever a child’s arm, or cut the child in two. When you saw a barrel being dropped from above, you had thirty seconds before it hit the ground.
Thirty seconds.
While Assad’s pilots were dependent upon clear weather to drop their explosives, the Russians’ airplanes were far more advanced. Protection was no longer to be found in a layer of fog or clouds.
Even though the Russian attacks were heavy, it was impossible to win the war from the air. By autumn 2015, there were approximately 150,000 rebel soldiers on the ground in Syria, excluding IS. Many were convinced Islamists with a strong belief in paradise and what it had to offer. No militias, none whatsoever, planned to give in.
Russia wanted to weaken the forces the West could conceivably work or negotiate or bargain with. Putin wanted the world to be left with one choice: Assad or IS.
The West was in a more difficult position. It was looking for someone to take over from the Islamic State if it was bombed out of existence. They found no one.
* * *
“Hell is raining down upon us! Hell is landing on our heads!”
“Calm down, talk to me, my heart is dry, I’m listening…” Sadiq responded.
“The Russians are slaughtering us! They’re only targeting civilians! They’re bombing children! It’s us, us they’re hitting. We, who are against IS! They let IS carry on, while we die!”
Osman sent new reports daily. October was filled with atrocities.
“They’re blowing our ashes across the country. We’re sinking deeper and deeper. The chaos is also in our minds. We don’t know what to do.”
One night he rang in tears.
“The building was completely destroyed, a deep hole, a crater, it was hit by two rockets. One to open it up, the other to kill. They want to get every one of us. In the end only IS and Assad will be left!”
“Who was hit?”
“Our friends! They have children, they have families!”
“May Allah welcome them,” Sadiq said.
“If I had to take the devil by the hand to beat the Russians and Assad, I would do it. I swear to Allah, I’m ready … but I’m very tired, it’s chaos here…”
Sadiq stayed up late every night. His dread was intensified by the fear that Raqqa, where the girls lived, would be carpet-bombed. He alternated between giving up on the girls one day and being overwhelmed by a desperate urge to rescue them the next.
He heard more strange sounds in the apartment. Was that from the stairwell? Outside the window? All these noises were making him jump. Were they also audible when the family was here? Was there an explanation for each of them, the refrigerator, the dishwasher, a pipe, a cupboard door, a branch against the window, someone outside, someone in the apartment above, an echo in the entranceway? Or was it that damned jinn, half a step ahead of him, laughing?
He tried to calm himself. He tried to think straight. No, he was not afraid, he was not. He had always been viewed as having ice in his veins. But the October night was so dark, he could not shake his unease. His thoughts turned to the Syrians who had been killed. Where were their souls now? Why did they not come and speak to him? Tell him whether they had entered paradise or hell, so he could know how it actually was. Imagine if those on the other side could let him know what steps to take. Those who had left this world, had they managed to say goodbye before the bomb fell? He thought about Osman’s friends. Children killed in their beds. Mothers rocking babies to sleep. Death from above, had it come suddenly, without warning? Or had they heard the airplanes first? Had they managed to call out “Allahu Akbar”?
He thought about his dead friends from the war in Somalia. There were so many. Why did they not come to him now and ask: How are things with you? They never did that. He often thought
