'West's Syria narrative shattered by Aleppo liberation'

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution to send UN monitors to the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo to closely observe the evacuation of militants, a process which would finally leave the city under full government control. Syrian forces managed to recapture the city recently after weeks of non-stop attacks against militant groups, who had been occupying its eastern side since 2012.​ In this episode of ‘The Debate,’ Press TV has spoken to Jim W. Dean, the managing editor of Veterans Today from Atlanta, and Ian Williams, a senior analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus from New York, to discuss the impact of Aleppo's liberation on the future of the war in Syria.

Dean believes that the liberation of Aleppo has invalidated the narrative that Western states and their media have been trying to propagate since the beginning of the war in Syria.

“The Russians had to get much more aggressive on debunking the fake news because although they were going to win Aleppo militarily, the West was still going to continue attacking them. And the terrorists’ media, I'm not hyping with that term, was totally on board, trying to lay [the blame for] the carnage that the jihadists have done in eastern Aleppo on the Syrian army, which to me was a war crime in itself,” the analyst said.

He also stated that, in his opinion, Aleppo cannot be called a free city until its residents can completely dispel the distorted image rendered by the West of the conflict.

“The people of Aleppo are now only half-free, because they've got the jihadists out there and they've got the Syrian army to provide security," Dean said.

"The people of Aleppo will never be free until they totally destroy the narrative that the Western countries, the UN unfortunately, and the Western media have imposed on the world as the reality of what went on in Aleppo.”

Dean called on the local population in Aleppo to take the UN agents to different places of the city and give them a first-hand image of what the Takfiri terrorists have done so far.

Now, it is the time for the Aleppo residents to “semi-kidnap” those UN monitors when they come and take them around and show them the reality of the crimes that the jihadists have done with support from the West, and in some cases, from the United Nations, he concluded.

However, Ian Williams, the other panelist on the show, blamed the Syrian government and its allies, Russia in particular, for the current disastrous humanitarian situation in the country, saying that the Western media are just reflecting the atrocities on the ground.

“The Syrian army has committed unspeakable atrocities. The Russians have been bombing hospitals. I've spoken to United Nations' staff [who] have been there. This is not a case of swanning by the Western media. This is an atrocity on the ground,” Williams noted.

The analyst opined that not only the Western media, but also “a lot of free media” across the rest of the world are appalled by the acts of the Syrian and Russian forces.

“I believe it's the Russian realization of just how much out on the limb they were putting themselves with the air campaign against the civilians in Aleppo. You can't get away with just calling these people militants and their families. This is the population of Aleppo which was running in fear of being liberated by the Syrian army that had been in charge of bombing them for all of these years,” he opined.

The liberation of Aleppo is largely viewed as a milestone in the Syrian government's military and political victories in its nearly six-year campaign against the terrorists.

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