Enlarge picture i A guy makes bread as residents, background, stand in line in front of a bakery for the duration of heavy fighting between Free of charge Syrian Army fighters and government forces in Aleppo, Syria, on Dec. four, 2012.
A man can make bread as residents, background, stand in line in front of a bakery for the duration of heavy fighting between Free of charge Syrian Army fighters and government forces in Aleppo, Syria, on Dec. four, 2012.
In Syria, the staple of most meals is a thin, round, flat bread that we would most likely contact pita.
Back in November, as fierce fighting raged across Syria, persons started to run out of this bread. Government forces had been attacking bakeries in rebel-held areas and cutting off electrical energy so mills couldn't grind flour. By late final yr, Syrians have been desperate.
But now, the crisis has been relatively alleviated by Aleppo's transitional revolutionary council, a group the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist organization. It truly is essentially a group of civilian leaders trying to resolve Aleppo's issues.
Raafat al Rifai is a journalist, but he's also on the council. He has taken up residence in an abandoned financial institution on the outskirts of the city. There is no electrical power. It really is dark and cold. All he has are cigarettes.
Fairly quickly right after we sit down, some guys come to the door. They tell Raafat they need to have bread.
Middle East
For These Nevertheless In Syria, A Daily Struggle
There are four key grain compounds in Aleppo province, Raafat tells me. These compounds grind grain into flour and keep the flour in silos. Back in November, they all shut down.
Rebel fighters, acknowledged as the Totally free Syrian Army, or FSA, along with civilian leaders, went and convinced the two of compounds to re-open, Raafat says. With aid money they'd collected, the council helped the compounds get fuel for generators. And they provided protection.
Flour manufactured it to some of Aleppo's bakeries, and the bread crisis started off to ease.
Still, even though, in neighborhoods like this one particular, a woman waiting in a prolonged line says she waits for days to get bread. Rebels in the FSA get to jump to the front of the line.
" It truly is been 3 days that I have been coming," the woman says in Arabic. "Wait till you see the FSA coming, they just get the bread, they get what they want, and they just leave. And we tell them, give us some bread, we are the identical as you."
Folks all more than the city have been acquiring frustrated with the FSA rebels. Then about a month ago, armed Islamist fighters with a group referred to as Jabhat al Nusra took over all four grain compounds. They offered fuel and protection. A lot more bakeries opened.
When the group was 1st formed about a yr ago, Jabhat al Nusra explained its aim was to produce an Islamic state in Syria. Back then it carried out Al Qaeda- style suicide attacks on Syrian government interests.
Then the group modified techniques and began fighting alongside FSA rebels on the ground. It really is imagined the well - qualified and properly - equipped Jabhat al Nusra is why rebels have succeeded in taking government military bases.
A Syrian boy carries a pile of bread as persons crowd outside a bakery in the Salaheddin district of Aleppo, on Oct. 25, 2012.
And now, Jabhat al Nusra is all about winning hearts and minds.
I visited one particular bakery at about noon. Bread is normally sold early in the morning, and the handful of men and women gathered outdoors the closed gate are late.
The guys who have bread carry guns and put on black headbands with an Islamic creed written in white.
The fighters invite us within, then immediately disappear. The shoppers keep knocking on the gate. We're taken upstairs to meet the bakery's owner, Abu Kamel.
Abu Kamel says Jabhat al Nusra fighters came to him about a month ago, to sell him flour. They assisted him get fuel for the generator and presented him safety.
His bakery used to make pastries. But he switched to bread when the fighting got heavy. He says Jabhat al Nusra saved his business.
Number of journalists have been granted extensive access to Jabhat al Nusra, but Raafat was able to meet the group many hrs a day, several days in a row. Western journalists are practically generally denied access to the group.
Raafat says due to the fact Syrians see so very little assistance from the worldwide neighborhood and simply because FSA rebels are observed as corrupt and disorganized Jabhat al Nusra is filling the gap.
"Jabhat al Nusra is not only offering a religious different, it is making an attempt to present an different for the government, an alternative for the transitional revolutionary council, and also an different for the worldwide local community," he says by way of an interpreter.
But not everybody in Aleppo is satisfied with how the group is undertaking.
In Aleppo's Bustan al Qasr community, individuals marched previous Jabhat al Nusra's base demanding electrical power and flour. We later on saw persons arguing with a Jabhat al Nusra fighter. Requests at the door were referred to another workplace.
And in that same neighborhood, civilians are making an attempt to perform with the FSA rebels to clean up their act.
Mohammad Aoun al Maarouf is a former physical schooling teacher who now heads a sort of local community policing center in a developing that used to be a kindergarten. Maarouf says he runs a unit of about 32 guys who police the neighborhood. If they see FSA rebels abusing folks at checkpoints or bakeries or looting, they detain them and phone them in for questioning. If there is sufficient evidence, they send them to a civil court.
Maarouf is tight-lipped when asked about Jabhat al Nusra. Our work is separate from them, he says.
His group has obtained its personal donations of flour, he says, and is providing it immediately to the individuals.
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