It felt dumb, for instance, to ask a family—father, mother, three children aged 12 to 3—who had just escaped from the burning city of Aleppo, what they thought about “Russia’s bombing campaign against ISIS.” Of course, there is no such thing. Russia isn’t focusing its effort on bombing ISIS, but rather on trying to kill the people I was talking to, who are Syrian civilians. Yet conducting the interview without treating this big lie as if it is simply an alternate explanation of events would be considered “biased reporting.” So, I ask the question and get looks of disbelief, and worse.
Nadia, the mother of this family, told me that “the Russians are the worst thing that happened to us. We survived everything before them, but when they came in to help Bashar, we said—enough. They bomb schools, hospitals, refugee camps, buses carrying people to the border.” What specifically did their involvement mean, I asked her. Her reply: “I would ask myself every morning—how are the Russians going to try to kill my children today?”
These militias, which are entering Syria from neighboring Iraq, have quite a reputation when it comes to killing. “They are just like ISIS, only difference is they are Shi’a and they talk Farsi,” says Yasser. “Tell me—why isn’t anyone bombing them? Why is the entire world only talking about ISIS? The Iranians in Syria burn people alive, burn children and women. Where is the world?” The couple then apologized, explaining they had much more to say, but their youngest daughter started crying, and anyway, they had to leave for the bus. They have six more days on the road ahead of them before reaching Germany.
One man in his 50s, who presented himself in perfect English as a university professor from Aleppo, added: “I’m running away from Da’esh (the Arabic name for ISIS), but there are many different kinds of Da’esh operating in Syria today. There is Da’esh-Da’esh, the people who cut off heads and burn prisoners in cages. There is also Da’esh-Assad, which is actually much worse, and Da’esh-Iran, the Iranian militias who rape and murder women in front of their children’s eyes. They have much more money and capabilities, and they don’t film themselves while doing their atrocities. They are smart enough to hide it from the world. In addition to all these, there is also Da’esh-Putin. I’m coming from Aleppo; I’ve seen the results of his bombings. It’s a massacre. People are killed like cockroaches under a shoe.